Tech Stream
Archive for the ‘ Telecommunications’ Category
Australian government proposes Telstra split
16 September 2009
The Australian Government announced yesterday that they were seeking to overhaul telecommunications regulation in the country, and that it was their “clear desire for Telstra to structurally separate, on a voluntary and cooperative basis.” The company faces restrictions on it’s business, like access to advanced wireless spectrum, if it does not split its retail and wholesale arms.
The media release from Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy is available here and coverage of the announcement is on ABC Online at Conroy Moves to Split Telstra and on ABC TV’s Lateline last night at Telstra Forced to Split. Stephen Conroy also spoke with Fran Kelly on ABC Radio National Breakfast this morning about how the decision fits within the government’s vision for the National Broadband Network.
Shares in the company took a dive on the news and Telstra shareholders weren’t over the moon at the announcement, with chief executive of the Australian Shareholders’ Association Stuart Wilson telling ABC News that “It’s a situation where Telstra shareholders have purchased shares in good faith off the Government and then only a few years later the Government changes the rules and sets all sorts of limitations on Telstra to the point where profitability will be affected.”
Analysts like Paul Budde (speaking here to The World Today) are enthusiastic about the news and Telstra’s competitors have also reacted positively to Stephen Conroy’s announcement. Optus welcomed the idea of a split in Telstra’s business, with their director of government and corporate affairs, Maha Krishnapillai, telling ABC Radio’s PM:
“This is a great piece of microeconomic reform by the Federal Government. Very clearly they are getting a competitive advantage today. They have 60 per cent margins on their fixed communications networks. They make sure that it is as difficult and litigious as possible to access those networks. They make sure that the quality of those services, let alone access to the IT systems from everything from billing to provisioning to turning on services, is as difficult as possible. So it isn’t just price. It is in fact equivalence of access to those services.” MP3 Audio link
ZDNet have more of the industry’s response and AM this morning reports that Australia’s consumer competition watchdog, the ACCC, is welcoming the breakup of Telstra with their chairman Graeme Samuel saying that consumers will be the winners if the companies splits:
“…there’s 21 million Australian consumers, about 16 million of them are using some form of telecommunications service and they are the big winners because at long last we’re seeing competition quite clearly infused into the telecommunication sector.” MP3 Audio link
But what does Telstra themselves make of it all? Well their CEO David Thodey said in a statement that they were disappointed with the direction the government wants to go in but would play ball. ZDNet also have more on this, and we’ll have more in the Tech Stream on Friday.
A Pacific Superhighway
4 September 2009
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Undersea internet telecommunications cables, managed by Tata Communications. The full map is online here.
Internet access in the Pacific is frustrating slow and expensive. This is mainly due to most of the internet traffic being routed through satellites. But that is set to change. A new undersea fiber-optic cable, part of SPIN, South pacific Information Network, should provide internet users in French Polynesia and New Caledonia, as well as the countries in between, with high-speed, affordable broadband. I spoke about the new network with Remi Galasso, CEO of SPIN SA.
We also caught up with Simon Cooper from Tata Communications this week. We spoke about how Guam was turning into a telecommunications hot-spot, with multiple undersea internet cables connecting it to Asia and Australia. Their communications network played a big part in picking up the internet traffic in the region during the recent typhoon near Taiwan which affected some other undersea cables supplying telecommunications into the region.
You can hear both Simon Cooper and Remi Galasso in the MP3 link at the top of this blog post. We’ve had stories on these undersea internet cables in the Pacific in Tech Stream #25 and also back in March this year.
Tech Stream 025
7 August 2009
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Hacking in China, the internet in the Pacific, Microsoft and Yahoo cut a deal and updates to the Wii controller. Its all in the Tech Stream this week. You can hear the latest program with the MP3 link at the top of this story or to the right and keep reading for the full lowdown…
Tech Stream 023
24 July 2009
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Mobile money, Google vs Microsoft and gaming in the Wild West. Its a mixed bag in the Tech Stream this week. You can listen to the full program with the MP3 link above or read more after the jump…
Tech Stream 020
3 July 2009
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Micro-USB connectors, already in use for charging some mobile phones, are set to become a standard for all.
We heard back in February that the worldwide mobile industry had at last decided on the connection format for a universal charger compatible with all mobile phones. Its good news for you and me because we don’t have to keep an assortment of chargers on hand, or get a new type when we upgrade our phone. But its even better news for the environment, with less of this kind of electronic waste finding its way into landfill.
That’s coming up in the Tech Stream today, plus the future of e-books and publishing in the digital age… and the intersection between virtual and real economies. Full details after the jump.
Tech Stream 018
19 June 2009
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PNG school children in Gaire, outside Port Moresby, trying out their new OLPC laptops in June last year. Photo from Flickr.
In the Tech Stream this week: Twitter connects the world to the post-election protests in Iran; the latest mobiles on display at CommunicAsia in Singapore; online vigilantes shutdown racism on Facebook; ICANN’s Dr Paul Twomey on the future of internet domain names; the One-Laptop-Per-Child scheme expands in the Pacific; and Bajo from Good Game joins us to chat about Infamous, the latest ‘open-world’ video game. Listen with the MP3 link above, full details after the jump…
Broadband growth driven by Asia
18 June 2009
The ICT expo CommunicAsia is taking place in Singapore this week and their daily newsbrief (pdf link) has some interesting stats on the growth of broadband take up in the region. Their figures indicate that broadband lines topped 429.2 million globally as of the end of the first quarter of 2009 with most of that growth being driven by Asia.
Tech Stream 017
12 June 2009
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A WiMAX USB dongle. Photo from Flickr by Hirotomo Oi
In the Tech Stream this week we get serious about our games. The Good Game team return from the E3 games expo with news of motion sensor technology which could allow us to throw away our controllers; and we’re joined by “Serious Games” experts Noah Falstein and Dr Ian Bogost who are in Australia for a conference on Serious Games in Sydney. You can listen to their full interview on a previous post.
We also look at the rollout of WiMAX wireless broadband in Fiji and Papua new Guinea… and tech-journo Danny Gorog join us with the lowdown on the new iPhone 3Gs and OS3.0 mobile operating system which was announced at Apple’s WWDC on Monday.
You can listen to the full Tech Stream program with the MP3 link above or the “Listen Now” link on the right. Feel free to comment on any of these stories or suggest something we can follow up in future programs. You can also subscribe to the podcast too!
Tech Stream 015
29 May 2009
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In the Tech Stream this week: Dr James Chon from Swinburne University in Melbourne discussing their research breakthrough in optical disc storage. As reported on ABC News Online, the new technique uses gold nanorods and could potentially allow storage of up to 1.6 terabytes of data on a single DVD disc.
We also meet Professor John Hullet who, along with his colleagues from the University of Western Australia, invented a solution to broadband congestion called “Early Packet Discard” without which the internet as we know it would not function. They are now working on new ways to minimise delay in real-time communications online. You can also read more about their recent award on our Radio Australia program Innovations.
Simon Goodrich from Portable Content joins me for breakfast and we discuss a service called oDesk and trends in digital outsourcing in the region. And finally Bajo rockets in from Good Game on ABC TV to review the new Quake Live browser game. Fragadelic!
Tech Stream 013
15 May 2009
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In the Tech Stream this week we’re at CeBIT Australia 2009, which is a massive information and communications technology (ICT) event in Sydney. I’ve been posting, tweeting and filing audio from the conference all week, and today we catch up with Dr David Skellern from NICTA; Peter Harrison from Austrade; Geoff McQueen from Hiive Systems; the Australian and New Zealand web development teams battling in the FullCodePress competition; and finally Christoper Hire from 2ThinkNow who sums up some of the ideas and discussions that took place at CeBIT.
We’ll have more from the conference and exhibition next week as well. Thanks to all the people who helped organise interviews for me, or gave up their time to speak with me during the week.
You can listen to the full Tech Stream program with the MP3 link above or the “Listen Now” link on the right. Feel free to comment on any of these stories or suggest something we can follow up in future programs. You can also subscribe to the podcast too!
