With the Rugby World Cup in its final week we are now starting to see political parties winding up for the elections in just five weeks.

The New Zealand Labour Party has this week released their policy on Information and Communication Technology (ICT). What a self-blinkered document it is, full of "investigating ways" and "independent reviews", lacking in specific actions that could have differentiated the Labour Party in this important area. More importantly, the policy provides no recognition of the hegemony of corporate control of ICT infrastructure that has resulted in the need for government subsidies to telecommunications providers.

The policy covers three main areas and a number of minor ones.

The first main area is about the convergence of broadcasting and telecommunications.

High speed broadband is blurring the lines that differentiate telecoms and broadcasting.

There was a time when broadcasting was clearly about television and radio transmissions. And telecommunications was clearly about telephone lines and data connections.

In the US today, just one video streaming service accounts for nearly 30% of peak downstream internet traffic. One of the world's major internet equipment manufacturers estimates that by 2013, world internet traffic will be five times what it is today and that fully 90% of that world-wide traffic will be consumer video. In radio, the number of internet-only 'radio' stations is growing each day. So clearly, traditional broadcasting is moving in to the traditional telecom's domain.

Let's be clear – whilst some broadcasters are moving in to telecommunications networks, it is more the content providers, the creative individuals and companies making the videos, that are driving this change. Today, anyone can produce video or radio content and make it available on the Internet for little cost. This represents a power shift from a few broadcasters and studios, to a multitude of individuals and small companies.

Traditionally, it is the broadcaster, the entity that transmits the video to the airwaves, that is regulated. The regulations are about technical standards (to prevent interference) and content issues around copyright, decency and localism.

Regulating broadcasters is a very different proposition from regulating content providers. And given that the Internet was conceived and constructed on the basis of resilience, it is very difficult for a government to enforce regulations in the converged environment that we are moving towards.

New Zealand regulators were late in coming to regulate our telecommunications service providers. The reason that our Ministry of Commerce introduced telco regulations was principally to combat Telecom NZ's reluctance to invest in broadband infrastructure and the impact that had on our economic standings. We are now in a new regulation regime, one that is regarded as being enlightened and light-handed. Whilst there is a need to review the regulated advantages afforded to the winners of the government's ultra fast broadband contracts, this need is only around price. To change our telco regulations now could undo a lot of the economic momentum that the significant investment in broadband infrastructure has secured for us.

So what is it that could be regulated in this converged broadcasting and telecommunications environment?

Technical issues are covered by industry standards so that leaves only content, which involves censorship and controlling access to Internet sites. On the principles of net neutrality, neither of these things should be in the domain of government control.

So I see little need for government regulations in a converged broadcasting and telecommunications environment that open access competition could not cover.

Next week, we will explore the digital divide and broadband network aspects of Labour's policy.