project managmnet

UNIVERSITY OF THE SUNSHINE COAST

ASSESMENT TASK 1

Potential projects for NBN CO. for sustainable growth in the telecom broadband industry

Group members:

RAJBIR KAUR – 1124598

DIPTESH JATINKUMAR PATEL – 1121110

NAGA SAI LATHASRI YALAMANCHI – 1119826

RAJVIR KAUR – 1125165

SARALA KOJU – 1122367

Subject Name: Project Management principles

Subject code: PRM701

Date of submission: 30th April 202

Contents

Introduction & Background to the case……………………………………………………..3

Key objective of NBN Co. …………………………………………………………………………..3

Potential projects ………………………………………………………………………………………3

Chosen projects & business cases……………………………………………………………….5

Strategic alignment to the project……………………………………………………………….6

Research methodology……………………………………………………………………………….7

Sampling method………………………………………………………………………………………..7

References …………………………………………………………………………………………………8

Introduction & Background to the case

The current case deals in NBN Co (lately known as the National Broadband Network Communication) which is the largest and the sole wholesale broadband services provider in Australia. The business is completely owned by the government of Australia; and fundamentally reports to two entities – the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Communication. Being a wholesaler broadband service provider, NBN Co. provides broadband services to retail service providers (RSPs) who in turn sell the broadband services to retail consumers or commercial clients (or business clients).

Key objective of NBN Co.

The key objective of NBN Co. is to provide best broadband services to all customers of Australia (business and retail) at an affordable price, in an optimal cost. Therefore, the strategic priority of NBN is to digitize businesses and uplift the digital capability of Australia by enabling consumers to leverage on its advantage – such as setting up online businesses, increasing opportunity to stay connected and work from home on freelance projects; and in the process bolster the economy of Australia.

As already mentioned before, that NBN Co. enjoys a position of monopoly in the Australian market; therefore, they are closely managed and supervised by the competition commission so that they provide a level playing ground for all retail service provider to operate in the telecom industry of Australia.

Potential projects

As is evident from the business proposition that the direct customers of NBN Co (being a wholesale broadband service provider) are the retail service providers; whose customers in turn are the end users of broadband or internet services (both retail and business customers) – therefore, from the perspective of NBN Co. it is important to not only understand the value proposition & service model of the retail service providers but also understand the preferences, sentiments and attitudes of the end customers in terms of their priority areas in connection to internet connectivity.

Now, considering the twin objective of providing better connectivity and low cost at the same time; the most important agenda for NBN Co. should be to drive optimization in their service model so that they can provide best prices to customers and at the same time, be financially sustainable without being an addition burden or overhead for the Australian government. (R. Yuen, X. N. Fernando and S. Krishnan (2014))

Keeping in mind these factors; the probable projects which could help them cater to these strategic objectives are mentioned below for reference –

Project 1 – Understand consumer priorities & preferences via a wholesome survey across multiple cities of Australia

This main objective of this project is two-fold – first, it would help NBN Co. understand the key preferences and priority areas of the consumers (actual users of broadband) in term of what they want, and what they are getting, and where is the potential gap in the service model?

Secondly, it would act as a medium wherein NBN Co can get proper feedback on the services provided by the individual retail service providers to understand which retailers are providing better services, uninterrupted connections, affordable pricing and so on.

Project 2 – Analysing on the broadband usage data to understand the time of spike and dim for internet usage in different cities of Australia

It has been noticed widely (in fact in many countries as well) that inappropriate demand estimation and forecasting is a major reason of outages as the service providers are not able to match the demand and supply. In case of broadband usages, there are times wherein the usage is at its peak whereas there are times wherein the usage is dim. Proper data and statistical analysis on the data would help NBN Co. and the retail service providers to channelize the connectivity in such a way that they reduce the supply during dim times do that they are able to manage load in a better way during peak times.

Another important and quite prevalent strategy which broadband service providers engages in is to lower the bandwidth & speed in case of spikes so that there is no network interruption. At times when the demand becomes extremely high; the internet service provider automatically lowers the bandwidth – say from 50 MBPS to 25 MBPS so as to cater to the increased traffic. All of these strategies would be enabled by this project as both the retail as well as the wholesale broadband services would get the demand and usage data of consumers across the nation.

Project 3 – Targeted analysis on commercial business clients to look for additional opportunities for value-add services to gain better traction & revenues

It’s a common fact that the way businesses use internet is not the same as the way retail consumers use internet; and the same holds true for the price sensitivity aspect as well. Now, in order to better tap on this business opportunity (i.e. to make more financial benefits out of the deal), many internet service providers tend to provide value-add services in addition to providing broadband or networking services to these business clients. A few of the possible value-add services could be to create the networking infrastructure of the business to ensure that all systems and servers are connected to each other, manage network governance to keep track on all activities happening over the internet, provide safety & security features on the network etc.

Therefore, this project would enable retail service providers (and hence, NBN Co.) to better understand their commercial business clients; to understand their key pain areas and requirements in connection to broadband networks; and accordingly provide value-add services to the same.

Chosen projects & business cases

Considering the three projects; while all three of them are important from both services as well as revenue-generating perspective; the project which would be selected for the current project is the first project i.e. to understand consumer priorities and preferences and therefore, cater the offerings in accordance to the same.

The key reasons for choosing this project are mentioned below –

· Before going into value-add services etc. it is important to set the basics right. Therefore, the first step is to understand what the customers want, identify the key gaps in operating model, and also in the process take feedback on the services provided by the retail service providers

· This project would also help NBN Co, (and thereby the ministry of communications, government of Australia) to perform an internal audit on the operations and services of the retail service providers which can then be used to provide feedback and renew licenses of these retail broadband service providers (G.-K. Chang, A. Chowdhury, J. Yu, Z. Jia, R. Younce (2007))

In line with this, the key use-cases which are intended to be covered in the current project are mentioned below for reference –

· Understand customer needs – There could be cases wherein customers (specifically those working from home or doing online businesses or entrepreneurships) prefer stability & reliability over speed. Therefore, they may not be satisfied with a 100 MBPS line which tends to disconnect or get interrupted may be five times a day. However, they may be super satisfied with a 25 MBPS line which remains stable without any interruption throughout the day

· Track reliability or performance indicators – This survey result would also enable NBN Co. to track and measure performance or reliability indicators such as –

· MTTR (Mean Time to Repair) – This metric is an indicator of service levels i.e. when the network is down, how much time (on an average) it takes for the customer service team of the retail service providers to fix the issue?

· MTBF (Mean Time Before Failures) – This metric helps service providers to track the average time that the broadband connection runs without any interruption. These metrics help gauge the reliability and quality of services provided by the retail service providers

· Track and measure performance of retail service providers – There may be situations wherein certain retail service providers may provide better services, affordable tariffs etc. as compared to other retail service providers. This survey would help NBN Co. to get the ground level realities of the customer’s mindset or feedback on these service providers.

Strategic alignment to the project

The current project is completely aligned to the strategic priorities of the organizations in terms of –

· It would help provide customers with what they need – therefore, improve the overall digital footprint of consumers in Australia

· It would also improve the cost effectiveness of the services for customers as it would enable them to get better services at the same cost

From the implementation point of view, this project requires a lot of research in order to fetch the desired output. The strategic planning of the project; and the stepwise execution of the project is mentioned in the sub-sections below.

Research methodology

Given the fact that the current research opts for primary survey; therefore, the first step is to shortlist the territories in which the research is to be carried out. A recommendation would be to shortlist the key areas – Sydney, Melbourne etc. which are the most commercial states of Australia. Once the regions are shortlisted, the next step is to perform the sampling on which the research would be done.

Sampling method

A combination of stratified and simple random sampling would be used in this case – wherein first the entire population would be logically segregated into multiple groups or strata based on certain identified characteristics. Once this is done, the next step is to perform a random sampling on each stratum so that the net sample selected is a perfect replica of the population.

Survey technique

The survey would be done in a combination of questionnaire survey, focused group discussion as well as depth interviews so that the business tends to get an overall view before drilling down to finer aspects of services and customer preferences related to their broadband usages.

Once the survey is done; the broadband service provider would be able to categorically measure the performance of each of the retail service providers; as well as understand the true gap in service delivery. Are the customers not satisfied with the defect repairing services, or is the connection unreliable and gets interrupted from time to time etc.

Risks, assumptions & constraints

The key risks, assumptions and constraints in the current project are mentioned below –

· Different users in different regions may use different packages – for example, the services of a 100 MBPS package would definitely be better than that of a 10 MBPS package etc. Therefore, the research must take into account the package subscription along with the feedback. For example – if the allocated usage is exhausted, the speed of internet would definitely be much less. In that situation, it is not a problem with the retail service provider, but the issue is with the subscription of the consumer

· The device used by the customer is also a constraint here – the customer may be using a legacy system which may not support 4G broadband connectivity. Again, this is not the fault of the service provider; rather, it is the limitation of the system in use

References

R. Yuen, X. N. Fernando and S. Krishnan (2014), “Radio Over Multimode Fiber for Wireless Access”, IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering, Vol.3, pp. 1715-1718.

G.-K. Chang, A. Chowdhury, J. Yu, Z. Jia, R. Younce (2007), “Next generation 100Gbit/s Ethernet Technologies,” APOC 2007, Invited Paper, Wuhan China.

Miguel de Vega Rodrigo, Guy Latouche, Marie-Ange Remiche (2009), “Modeling bufferless packet-switching networks with packet dependencies” Computer Networks 53 1450–1466, February 2009.

N. Larkin (2010), “ASON & GMPLS; The Battle for the Optical Control Plane”; http://www.dataconnection.com/network/download/whitepapers/ason gmpls.pdf

S. Chahine, U. A. K Okonkwo and R. Ngah (2008), “Study the Performance of OFDM Radio over Fiber for Wireless Communication Systems”, IEEE INTERNATIONAL RF AND MICROWAVE CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS, PP 335-338.

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