In This Issue

In this issue, the Journal includes topical articles that cover Australian telecommunications, historical events and an article on the state of the U.S. telecommunications industry.

The role of regulation in preventing Wi-Fi over-congestion in densely populated areas highlights the need to ensure that Wi-Fi infrastructure installation is managed to prevent a loss of performance caused by interference.

Implementation of PCC-OFDM on a software-defined radio testbed provides a description of the development of a testbed used in the development of a software-defined radio implementation of polynomial cancellation coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing on a field programmable gate array based hardware platform.

Interference to Telephone Lines introduces a historical paper from 1936 that explores the effects of electrification of country Tasmania and the increasing interference to telecommunication circuits by high voltage power lines installed in close proximity.

An Evaluation and Enhancement of a Novel IoT Joining Protocol provides a description of a novel and enhanced Internet of Things to Wi-Fi network joining protocol.

Utilisation of DANGER and PAMP signals to detect a MANET Packet Storage Time Attack presents an approach using Artificial Immune System based Danger signals and a Pathogen Associated Molecular Pattern signal to identify a Packet Storage Time routing attack in Mobile Ad hoc Networks.

Fact of Fraud? describes the rise of the Repetitive Strain Injury phenomena in Telecom Australia over the period 1983-86.

U.S. Telco Industry History as a Prologue to its Future considers historical events as a means to highlight the competitive tension between the forces of competition and concentration and the latest battlefield - net neutrality.

Household bandwidth and the ?need for speed?: Evaluating the impact of active queue management for home internet traffic aims to contribute to the policy debate on bandwidth needs by considering more closely what happens in household networks.

Social Network Behaviour Inferred from O-D Pair Traffic utilises anonymized Internet Trace Datasets obtained from the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis to identify and estimate characteristics of the underlying social network from the overall traffic.

Making ICT Decommissioning Sexy! Challenges and Opportunities provides an insight into the challenges of decommissioning decision making and uses a framework and case study analysis as a means to improve the timeliness and financial motivations.

A Time for Renewal

The Telecommunications Association, publisher of this Journal, has commenced the second phase of a renewal process that began in 2013. The next steps include launching a new brand, updating the Association?s website and hosting the first of what should become an annual two-day telecommunications forum.

The Telecommunications Forum 2017 is to be held in Melbourne in November with a focus on telecommunications and security. The Australian Government?s telecommunication sector security reforms program has the potential to send a minor tremor through the industry later this year as legislation is passed that could start a major security shakeup within the industry in response to growing international cyber threats.

For the Journal, the past year has seen key milestones achieved. The Journal has been added to the SCOPUS list of indexed Journals and over coming years the Journal will build credibility as papers are added and the Journal?s impact factor increases. It is difficult, of course, for public policy related papers about Australian and international telecommunications markets to attract a large number of citations, and it is for this reason the Journal continues to seek high quality papers that present new and novel research related to telecommunications and the digital economy.

The Journal has been included in the Australian Research Council?s Excellence in Research for Australia, which is the national research evaluation framework. This is a major outcome for the Journal as it highlights the perceived value of the papers published in the Journal.

Over coming months, the Journal website will be updated and additional information added to assist authors through the publishing process.

Looking Forward

The key themes for 2017 will be International Telecommunications Legislation and Regulations and International Mobile Cellular Regulation and Competition. As the global digital economy evolves it is timely to consider the different telecommunications markets and how each is coping with the transition to next generation networks ? the ?gigabit race? ? and how competition is being fostered with the market. Mobile cellular continues to be an expensive consumer product and for many nations the promise of a competitive mobile cellular market has not eventuated due to the inherent advantages enjoyed by incumbent telecommunication companies during the deregulation years.

Papers are invited for upcoming issues and with your contributions the Journal will continue to provide the readership with exciting and informative papers covering a range of local and international topics. The Editorial Board values input from our readership so please let us know what themes you would like to see in the coming year.

All papers related to telecommunications and the digital economy are welcome and will be considered for publication after a peer-review process.

Mark A Gregory