Dear Joshua

Thank you for your request, seeking access to information under the
Freedom of Information Act 1982 (the FOI Act).

Application

You have asked for, in reference to an ABC News article (article):

1.      all documents or data relating to justification of "gamers
predominantly" being a "major cause of congestion", and

2.      all documents or data relating to justifying the statement "while
people are gaming it is a high bandwidth requirement that is a steady
streaming process".

As a starting point, please see this nbn Media Statement, which deals with
some of the matters referenced in the article:
[1]https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-infor....
If this statement answers your queries, please let us know.

Request to Clarify

Under the FOI Act, members of the public have a general right of access to
specific documents, subject to certain exemptions. Under section 15(2) of
the FOI Act, a valid FOI request must provide such information concerning
the requested document/s as is reasonably necessary to enable nbn to
identify it/them, among other matters.

For the reasons outlined below, we are of the view that your request is
either not sufficiently clear, or you have not provided nbn with
sufficient information so as to be able to identify relevant document(s)
for the purposes of the FOI Act.  Please note that, until your request is
sufficiently clarified, the statutory time frame for completing this
request will not commence.

·        In relation to your 1st question – It is unclear what you mean by
justification for "gamers predominantly" being a "major cause of
congestion". While these terms are used in the sub heading of the article,
the text of the article does not contain this as a statement or indicate
that this was a statement made by an nbn representative. We also refer you
to some of the specific text from the Media Statement referenced above
(which refers to statements recorded in the Hansard transcript for the
Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network on 4 June
2018), relevant to the article referenced in your application:

The claim that Mr Morrow blamed “gamers predominantly” for the Fixed
Wireless congestion is not correct.

Mr Morrow said there were many causes of congestion including
higher-than-expected take-up of the fixed wireless service and increased
data consumption, but the main cause is concurrency…

Mr Morrow was then asked if a Fair Use Policy (FUP) would be introduced on
Fixed Wireless… [and] …who these users were that might be affected and he
responded “it’s gamers predominantly”.

…

The Member for Whitlam, Stephen Jones, put it to Mr Morrow directly that
he had said gamers were the problem when it came to congestion, and Mr
Morrow categorically and emphatically denied that as demonstrated in this
extract:

Stephen Jones: With great respect to everything you said over the last 15
minutes, you have been saying to us the problem here is gamers.

Bill Morrow: I never said that, hold on, I never said that. I said there
are “super users” out there consuming terabytes of data and the question
is should we actually groom those down. It’s a consideration, so don’t put
words in my mouth.

Stephen Jones: I am content with that clarification.

Accordingly, it is unclear what data or documents you are seeking or
referring to. Would you please clarify specifically what documents nbn may
hold that you seek?

·        In relation to your 2nd question – It is unclear what you mean by
‘all documents or data relating to justifying the statement "while people
are gaming it is a high bandwidth requirement that is a steady streaming
process"’. Is there a specific document/s or data that you are seeking? If
it would be helpful, we would be happy to work with you to clarify
specifically what you are seeking on this point, either via email or over
the phone (we can provide a contact number on request).

nbn’s Commercial Activities carve-out

Documents that relate to nbn’s “commercial activities” are not subject to
the operation of the FOI Act. The following link summarises and provides
[2]general background information concerning nbn’s commercial activities
carve-out (CAC). That background document references two Office of the
Australian Information Commissioner reviews that considered nbn’s CAC in
January 2012 (the [3]Internode Decision) and again in July 2013 (the
[4]Battersby Decision). While we are not making a formal decision, nor
have we reviewed any relevant documents, there is a possibility that
documents falling within this FOI request may be subject to the CAC.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Regards

nbn FOI Officer

References

Visible links
1. https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-infor...
2. http://www.nbnco.com.au/content/dam/nbnc...
3. http://www.oaic.gov.au/freedom-of-inform...
4. http://www.oaic.gov.au/images/documents/...