Adam Gifford: Departing boss sees net future in convergence

The internet exists in its present form because thousands of people round the world fight to keep it - in the words of InternetNZ chief executive Peter Macaulay - "open and uncapturable".

Macaulay steps down in July after what will have been two-and-a-half years of frenetic activity.

When he took the job, InternetNZ needed to rediscover its mission. A bruising internal battle had left it stripped of one of its core functions - running the registry for the .nz internet name space.

Macaulay threw himself into the task with the energy and enthusiasm he brought to more than two decades in the IT business, where any idea - no matter how far-fetched - needed to be considered.

Sitting in the office above Queen St in Auckland that InternetNZ shares with other internet groups, Macaulay told me the organisation was in a better position to play an advocacy role now that it was out of the nuts and bolts of running infrastructure.

In his leaving note to members, he focuses not on what the organisation achieved during his tenure - the annual reports cover that - but what remains to be done.

Topping the list is ubiquitous, real broadband, which means fibre to the home for starters.

"DSL2 [the next generation of copper-based connectivity] is okay, but fibre is best because it will give you unlimited bandwidth.

"We need people to recognise the services that will be generated by true broadband are going to make a huge difference in New Zealand. Once we get to critical mass in New Zealand of true broadband, we will start to see development of services in the New Zealand market that will then be globally exported."

Macaulay wants to see a lighter but more effective and nimble regulatory regime.

"Even with a truly competitive market, we still need regulatory oversight of non-competitive and cartel behaviour. The Commerce Commission is doing its best, but it is hampered by bad legislation."

The big loser from the present situation, Macaulay says, is Telecom.

"What is sad is Telecom has had the opportunity to behave well in a commercial manner, which will allow them to benefit from this technology in the future. If they had made all their services wholesale at good competitive rates, we'd see faster penetration in the marketplace."

He says InternetNZ needs to lead the introduction of Enum and other new technologies and standards.

Enum is an Internet Engineering Task Force standard for mapping the public telephone number address space into the Domain Name System.

"Enum will be one of most significant shifts in technology we have had because it will truly converge the internet, IT and telephony.

"All the pieces come together in one cohesive application and you can pick what that application will be and it can be delivered by any party, so little ISPs can deliver it, anyone can deliver it. I find that incredibly exciting."

InternetNZ will run a trial this year so internet service providers and other interested parties can start identifying the services they want to provide off Enum.

"We need to work out how the numbering allocation is going to work, which is going to be a bit of a regulatory bunfight, but I believe now we are seeing a shift in attitudes because of the inability of the numbering administration deed to make a six-month job happen in under seven years."

He said the lengthy battle between Telecom and other telcos over number portability could not be repeated.

"It can be done in six months. We could bring in an external contractor and do it in six months, and we are quite happy to do that."

Macaulay said InternetNZ had not been part of the portability debate because the numbering administration deed wasn't really part of its patch.

"It is now with Enum. We need to see [that] the way blocks of numbers are released is managed in a much more efficient and lot more equitable manner. If it isn't, Enum will not take off and we will be left behind, again. And to be blunt, that really is a regulatory thing, because we don't have a competitive market."

He says the internet has become too important to our lives to be run by Governments, telephone companies or even the United Nations, as some would have it.

InternetNZ has been through some challenging times, but its mix of utopianism and hard-headed techiness now looks fairly balanced.

Macaulay has set a high benchmark for his successor.