Telco industry body Communications Alliance is calling for a strategy which will drive awareness, leadership, and opportunity through the Internet of Things.
Established March this year, the Comms Alliance IoT think tank prepared a draft report recommending the development of a national IoT strategy. The draft details were revealed in Sydney at a Comms Alliance seminar.
Geof Heydon is from marketing consultancy of Creator Tech. He is also a co-author of the report. According to him, the Department of Communications is responsible for developing a national strategy.
He said the IoT’s engine room is the ICT sector, thereby making it the DoC’s responsibility. That means they need to get buy-in from the Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and they will be canvassing him for that. Their goal is to get him to see that the call for an IoT strategy makes sense and that he agrees to do it.
Bureau of Communications Research head, Paul Paterson, said the department is close to taking some initiative towards the IoT.
He said it was the right timing to approach the Department of Communications on the IoT.
Frank Ziechner, co-author of the report, talked about the national Internet of Things strategies and policies and how advanced they are in countries considered to be Australia’s peers and customers, particularly China, USA, UK, India, Korea, and Germany.
He said if we were to look overseas, it is evident that Australia’s peers and customers are more advanced as far as their IoT narrative and strategy goes. In those countries, you can read, see, and hear about the IoT. However, in Australia, he said there is nothing, and that no one at any level is talking about it.
He also talked about Germany’s €200 million investment for research into the application of the Internet of Things across its government, the manufacturing industry, academia, and business in general.
Mr. Zeichner said countries like Germany lead because they are already discussing it and are already creating solutions to problems.
Whereas in Australia, the IoT think tank was the first body to persist talking about IoT. He said this is not good and that the debate needs to widen.
This can be done by encouraging both government and industry to work together and to focus on specific industry sectors.
Mr. Zeichner said it is not about picking winners, but opening doors that lead to the greatest opportunities.
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Article originally published as: Australian Government set to tackle Internet of Things