QHA Review - September 2017

Michael Sarquis
OLGR
For those licensees providing gaming, if your liquor
licence is cancelled, your gaming licence will be
automatically cancelled. If this occurs, gaming activities
must cease. Licenced Monitoring Operator (LMO) will
be advised to disable all gaming machines and your
hotel operating authorities will be forfeited to the state,
with no opportunity for redress.
Compliance officers are investigating licensees
who paid their licence fees late or did not pay at all.
Infringement notices will be issued to licensees for
selling alcohol or having it for sale without a current
liquor licence or permit. Where it is established that
alcohol has been sold while a licence was suspended
or cancelled, the licensee can expect to be fined.
To learn more about penalties for late payment of
liquor licence fees visit www.business.qld.gov.au/
liquor-gaming.
QCOM 3 UPDATE
In Queensland, all electronic gaming machines in
hotels must be connected to an electronic monitoring
system (EMS) using the QCOM protocol language.
For the better part of 20 years, the Queensland
gaming machine environment has relied on a QCOM
communications protocol that uses old style serial
communications over low speed fibre optic technology.
This technology is becoming obsolete, costly to
source and maintain, is less secure and limits gaming
machine offerings.
What are the benefits to introducing QCOM 3?
OLGR expects the introduction of QCOM 3 will bring
benefits to all parties involved in EGM manufacturing,
monitoring and control. It will utilise the best security
and technology available, is adaptable, flexible and
robust. For gaming venues, the introduction of QCOM
3 will mean:
• Options for varied and new games, jackpots,
services and product choices.
• In the long term, just one gaming network per venue.
• For the foreseeable future, you will not have to
upgrade your LAN again, given that QCOM 3
utilises the most widely used and supported
business LAN in the world.
• Savings for venues due to significant improvements
in serviceability, maintenance and remote
upgradability.
When will QCOM 3 be available?
QCOM 3 protocol is now available to LMOs,
manufacturers and other game developers. It is
targeted to be operational by the end of 2018.
Each Queensland LMO will be the driving force behind
when QCOM 3 becomes available for their venues.
What happens to existing machines?
OLGR and Queensland LMOs will continue to support
all existing operating gaming machines in the field until
the end of their operational life. QCOM 3 and existing
QCOM gaming machines can operate simultaneously.
This means you can add to your QCOM 3 fleet one
machine at a time.
QCOM 1.6 product will still be accepted for evaluation
and approval through to at least 2021. Consequently,
there is unlikely to be any adverse effect on the
availability of new product for the Queensland market.
OLGR is working closely with Queensland LMOs to
ensure that the introduction of QCOM 3 has minimal
impact to gaming venues and operators.
What does a hotel need to do to prepare
for QCOM3?
Hotels will have options as to when and how they may
want to take up QCOM 3.
You will need to start thinking about Ethernet Local
Area Network (LAN) based network infrastructure, to
support QCOM 3. As Ethernet is the most widely used
LAN in the world you won’t need to upgrade your LAN
again for some time.
What will a network upgrade cost a hotel?
This depends on the existing infrastructure as some
hotels already have the necessary cabling.
The equipment is off-the-shelf, widely used in most
networking applications today, and readily available,
meaning costs should be kept to a minimum and a
variety of install options available.
To read more about preparing to upgrade to QCOM 3,
QCOM 3 security requirements and the availability of
QCOM 3 games visit www.business.qld.gov.au/liquorgaming.
To subscribe to the QCOM 3 newsletter visit www.
business.qld.gov.au/liquor-gaming.
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