One screen. Two parents: If I were a mobile phone, I’d file for divorce from my parents like a dirty brat. That’s what I learned today. I’ll explain in a second.

Some background: We’re using mobile phones more and doing a lot more with them. I use my mobile for everything. EVERY-THING: Love, adventures, porn, music, movies. Australians are using landlines less and less (one in ten aged above 14  doesn’t have a fixed line – including me). Meanwhile, there were over 12 million 3G subscribers in the country in June 2009, an increase of 44 percent from the year before. Most of us using the internet on our mobiles are browsing the web, emailing, getting updated, streaming music, making voice-over-internet calls, and getting laid (ACMA Communications Report 08-09; ACMA provides no figures about the number of people getting laid).

Mobile, up. Land line, down. Anxiety for regulators? Through the roof.

I think about it like a teenager trying to get permission to go out on the weekend. A smart teenager knows how to play both parents off against each other, isolating weaknesses to achieve results. But no matter how smart you are, getting mixed messages makes the process of going out a whole lot harder.

The mobile, that single piece of technology in your pocket, answers to two squabbling parents. Mum tells it one thing to do; Dad another. Mum is the Telecommunications Act. Dad is the Broadcasting Act. And there’s very little effective co-parenting going on.

Right now, mobile content is divided into two groups: stuff you get from mobile service providers (like titty wallpaper), and stuff you get from the internet (like… titty wallpaper). They’re both the same, right? Digital information on your mobile. But they’re governed by two different pieces of industry co-regulation, answering to two different federal acts of parliament. It’s an historic split between telecommunications and broadcasting in Australia. This split will be increasingly arbitrary when the NBN rolls out (when we broadcast and communicate even more than we already do over internet technology) — and it already seems to be a relic of a time when telecommunications companies had ultimate control over the web content on your phone.

But staying with mobile phones for now. Let’s start with the stuff you get from mobile service providers. The industry calls these services Walled Gardens (hence the charming pic). The mobile operator provides web content to your mobile without the need to browse the internet. Think: Telstra’s Bigpond delivering sports results, and charging for it. ‘Walled Gardens’ were always the traditional model for getting information to your handset and making money out of it. Sign up to Telstra, get BigPond. Sign up to Optus, get that Zoo thing. And as it has become cheaper and cheaper to make calls from your mobile, mobile phone companies have wanted you to use more mobile data. That’s why you see incentives like paying for some of the content in Walled Gardens, and surfing the rest for free.

Walled Gardens, and other mobile phone services like them, are governed by the Telecommunications Act 1997, and under it a thing called the Mobile Premium Services Code, which started in 2009, and is written by a group called Communications Alliance. This thing makes sure that users have lots of rights when it comes to premium services – like the ability to type STOP when you get really pissed off.

But the other type of content, just a click away on your mobile, is governed by a completely different act. The Broadcasting Services Act 1992. And the bit of co-regulation is written by the Internet Industry Association, called the Content Services Code 2008.

Mum and Dad are a bit different when they come to attitudes about sex and drugs. One’s a prude, the other more liberal. Mobile Premium services hosted in Australia can’t feature restricted content of anything over and including MA15+ without you asking for it. This type of content on the internet – even if you do get it on your mobile – is subject to different rules. In Australia, you’re allowed to provide this content as long as there are age warnings, and age control procedures.

Different, inconsistent. Mum, Dad.

So basically, Mum and Dad should get their shit together if they want to be taken seriously by mobile phone users. Because as we all know, if one parent contradicts the other, neither can be taken seriously.

1 Comments

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February 9, 2010 12:33 am

James West

in the spirit of same-sex reform, I could just as easily file to divorce my two mums and two dads. there. much better.