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I have no voice. I got soaking wet. Do you think I care? Nope!
Two weeks ago we defeated Carlton – yesterday, we defeated Collingwood. That’s a pretty satisfying year already. David Zaharakis kicks the winning goal with 4 seconds left on the clock. Nice.
EDIT: 9 May 2009:
Just took a capture from the Ten / ONE HD broadcast – circling myself in the crowd – almost two weeks later, and I’m still excited about this game!
After a number of recent “twitter-related incidents” in the Australian arena in recent weeks – such as “Fake Stephen Conroy” (Federal Communications Minister), and the “Commonwealth Bank Loan Approval”, it seems that corporate Australia is realising the power that tools such as Twitter and Facebook can actually command.
| Commonwealth Bank All A-Twitter Over Mortgage Approval Tweet |
Telstra, the “corporate victim” in the “Fake Stephen Conroy” incident, are releasing a corporate policy in regards to the use of such tools by it’s employees. Possibly fair enough.
| Telstra Staff on Notice After Twitter Gaffe |
But forcing employees to clearly identify themselves as Telstra employees on such sites? Surely it would be more sensible to not do so – that way the chances of someone saying something less than complimentary about their employer, and actually having that publicly associated with Telstra would be lessened?
Hmm…they’ll never learn.
With the progressive analogue television switch-off in Australia commencing from early next year, Freeview, a consortium representing the existing Free-to-Air networks have been busily pushing their “new” channels. So far, only one new channel – (incidentally called “ONE”) – has made it to air as yet. Some people are sceptical – as this parody of the Freeview commercial illustrates.
Freeview had their lawyers get this pulled off YouTube once – only for it to go straight back up. So they decided not to be so precious about it. Perhaps they should listen to the message if they REALLY want people to start taking up digital television in Australia.
Essendon have one mission during an season – beat Carlton. Once again, last Saturday, they did just that.
I need to say nothing more than: “Superb!”
Many of you will recently have seen examples of “hacked” roadside signs – actually they aren’t hacked – people just managed to find out the default password, which were never changed, and then crack open the compartment with the computer in it, and then change it.
I don’t know if this one is a joke or not – ie: whether someone changed it or not – but I still found it funny.
The Reject Shop is a “dollar store” down here in Australia for the unaware.
There was an possibly alarming report late today in the Australian IT section in regards to the potential for an end user service on the NBN likely to cost in the vicinity of $100 per month.
| Service To Cost $100 A Month |
This “information” comes from Internode – a notoriously anti-Rudd/anti-Conroy ISP – but does hold an element of truth about it. However, I can’t see it costing that much – firstly – who would pay that much?
Currently in Australia, xDSL services cost a minimum of $20.00 per month – this is the deal that most ISPs get from Telstra to access the local copper loop into homes and businesses. This is a direct cost to the ISP that gets passed straight onto the customer.
ISPs then make their money on charging for higher speeds and/or excess data – this is why some ISPs have ridiculously low bandwidth quotas.
But the biggest cost to the ISPs – which also ultimately gets passed onto customers – is international data backhaul.
Given that most content viewed by Australian users on the internet lies outside our borders, the biggest demand for data services is out through international data connections. Australia is currently serviced by the Southern Cross Cable – (via New Zealand and Hawaii to the US west coast) – and a Telstra cable – (via Japan and Hawaii to the US west coast).
That’s not a lot of competition, and this allows these international carriers – within reason – to charge pretty much what they want.
PIPE Networks are about to begin laying their PPC-1 (PIPE Pacific Cable) – which will travel from Sydney to Guam (via Papua New Guinea), and connect directly to the US backbone there. They are already projecting that data carriage rates will be around 50% less than current pricing available from the incumbent carriers.
| More Bandwidth For Australia |
The NBN will probably require even more international bandwidth – and this could and would only further drive down international carriage costs. So, $100 per month for the NBN? In today’s environment – more than likely. In eight years from now when the project is completed? I doubt it.
Yesterday’s announcement of the scrapping of the Request for Proposal (RFP) process for Australia’s upcoming National Broadband Network (NBN), and therefore the federal government’s plans to go it alone in building the network has raised a lot of questions, and sparked much heated discussion within the industry.
| NBN Plan Scrapped; Govt Seeks New Partners |
Without going into the “good versus bad” aspects of the plan, I thought it timely to elaborate on what a properly designed, constructed, and (most importantly) legislated NBN means. What’s in it for home and business users?
Starting with business users first of all – you’ll be able to get a fixed, hard-wired (via optical fibre) connection of up to 100Mbps. Fast? Certainly – it’s as fast as the local network in most small to medium businesses today. The big question will be contention ratios – will the upstream backhaul networks be able to cope with the massive increase in data.
I’m sure that that network will be designed with this in mind – so I think we are safe there. However, international backhaul will be equally important. Australia is somewhat lacking in international “firepower” in this regard at the moment, so this will need to be considered also. Certainly, PIPE Networks new submarine cable PPC-1, currently under construction to Guam – (and directly connecting to the US backbone) – will become very necessary. More such cables may be required as the build out of the network continues.
The biggest advantage in laying out the NBN won’t just be related to the carriage of internet and other data. Advanced telephony services (such as VoIP) will finally have the raw bandwidth required to make them a REAL challenger to existing fixed line copper-based services. The advantages of such services were lost to small, and even to medium sized businesses, due to the bandwidth requirements adversely affecting call quality. This problem will practically disappear.
For the home user – costs should be able to come down. Instead of paying $50.00 every month for an internet service at a fraction of the proposed speeds – and bundled with web space, email accounts, and all the other rubbish – people will be able to choose what they want.
Just want data, don’t need web space, and using a Gmail account for email? Just pay for data – you’ll probably get 12Mbps – the previous minimum requirement for the NBN tender – for around $25.00 a month once connected. Nice.
If you want those features from your ISP – you can pay for them in addition. A-la-carte – exactly what you want, and nothing you don’t need. This helps the ISPs with economies of scale for their add-on services also.
Power users – who might run their own mail and web servers – can finally get cheap, serious bandwidth, and not have to worry about all the frills that are normally tacked on for home users.
The end result will be a very competitive SERVICES market – completely free of worrying about data carriage. Such competition can only be good for innovation and allowing market forces to determine the right price.
There’s been a lot of debate and controversy since yesterday’s federal government announcement in regards to the National Broadband Network (NBN).
The doomsayers would have you believe that this is a massive white elephant, and that we should not be paying so much for potentially 100Mb connections to the home. The bottom line is, you don’t have to have a full 100Mb, and there is a great deal more you can do with this connection than just internet.
A network like this has a lot of potential. Basic telephony without relying on Telstra. Subscription services for things like downloadable movies or pay-tv. Interactive television. Interactive education services in the home. In-the-home medical services. The list could go on and on and on, with as many ideas as people can come up with that require connectivity between two parties.
Before people assign this thing to the scrap heap, saying it will be obsolete before it is completed, I say try learning a little about the possibilities, before kicking this around as a political football. This has the potential, if done correctly, to transform the Australian economy.
In something of a shock to the industry, the federal government announced the winning bidder for it’s National Broadband Network (NBN) project. And the winner is……….nobody! Well, not one of the bidders, anyway.
The government decided that none of the bidders actually satisfied their requirements, so they are going to form their own company to do the work, with a aid of partners, whom they are now seeking. In this way, the “National” in NBN is truly lived up to!
| NBN Plan Scrapped; Govt Seeks New Partners |
Importantly, the government has realised the folly in seeking that the NBN be run using the existing copper loop into premises, backended with the Fibre-to-the-Node network, and in making their announcement today, have stated that for 90% of the population, the network will be a Fibre-to-the-Premise network. This siginficantly future proofs the network, and allows for speeds of 100Mb and beyond.
Nice – I just hope that they can actually build it now.
I thought it was time for a site refresh, so today I uploaded and tested the new theme for my site.
Almost everything has gone off without a hitch – but there are a few things that haven’t quite translated from my testing server, to the live server. So I have a little more tinkering to do.
Some stuff will be moving to a new site – namely the pages relating to the “Wyres” family name – I’ve recently managed to get a hold of the domain “wyres.com” – (after three earlier unsuccessful attempts) – so if you can’t find any of that here, you should find it over there within a couple of weeks.