Korea, Australia and NZ discuss digital futures

The Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Steven Joyce, will this week travel to Tasmania to attend 2011 Korea Australia New Zealand (KANZ) Summit: Digital Futures.

KANZ, which runs from April 27-29, is a biannual forum for business and government officials from the three countries to discuss broadband infrastructure and the latest research and developments in digital applications and content.

Mr Joyce says the summit is an important event on the ICT calendar for all three countries.

“New Zealand, Australia and Korea have all identified broadband infrastructure as critical to economic growth.

“KANZ builds on existing trade and ICT cooperation agreements between New Zealand and Korea and provides opportunities for bilateral discussions with each of the other parties as well as exploration of joint projects.”

A bilateral meeting between Mr Joyce and Australian Senator Stephen Conroy will include further discussion on mobile roaming rates between the two countries.

The meeting follows the release of a discussion document in both countries in May last year seeking stakeholder views on whether a formal investigation was warranted.

“New Zealanders have expressed concern that the prices charged for international mobile roaming, and in particular data charges, are excessive and that pricing transparency and consumer awareness of prices is low - leading to ‘bill shock'," says Mr Joyce.

"With the greatest volume of roaming traffic occurring between New Zealand and Australia - approximately one million visitors travel annually from each country to the other - it is appropriate that we look at the market."

The objectives of the KANZ summit are to:

• Build greater commercial cooperation and partnerships between Korea, Australia and New Zealand in ICT with a particular focus on digital content and applications;
• Provide a forum for commercial collaboration and greater pre-commercial cooperation and research in applications dependent on very high speed broadband networks;
• Build and strengthen relationships between Ministers, government officials, researchers and companies from Korea, Australia and New Zealand in the areas of telecommunications, broadband and trade-related issues