That's rich, Coonan panning OECD broadband stats

Stuart Corner
Monday, 21 May 2007 19:26

Opinion and Analysis

However within 24 hours, in a letter to iTWire, OECD economist Taylor Reynolds, had rebutted Market Clarity  claiming that its data gathering and analysis were flawed. These views were echoed for the New Zealand market  by New Zealand research firm, Network Strategies.

These documents gave Labor a perfect weapon with which to hit back at Coonan. Shadow communications minister, Stephen Conroy, issued a press release saying: "The public confusion caused by this utterly discredited report could have been avoided if the minister (or the media) had bothered to put Market Clarity's criticisms to the OECD. The only news story here is the desperation of a government minister that would blindly trust a report by a recently formed minor Australian analyst company over a long standing, universally respected international organisation."

However others have voiced concerns about the OECD. Last month The US Government's coordinator of international communications and information policy, David A Gross wrote to OECD secretary general,  Angel Gurria, saying "we are concerned about the methodology on which the new statistics were based, and their failure to capture important factors, particularly their reliance on user subscriptions as the measure of broadband use"

In her latest press release, Coonan cited this letter and said: "I will shortly write to the Secretary General of the OECD raising similar concerns such as the omission of data on wireless access. I will also be offering to continue to work with the OECD to broaden and improve the depth and the rigour of their reports to ensure that their representation of Australia's performance is measured more accurately against those of other OECD countries."

So some good might eventually come out of this sorry saga.