A view from the trenches of Australian telecommunications. As the name implies, it’s a two-way conversation and we ask you not to pull any punches ... we won’t.
A bulletin board troll in the 1980s, David Braue has been online long enough to remember using the text-based Lynx browser to visit www.ibm.com, one of around 100 Web sites available back then. Telecoms has remained an obsession as he developed ever more complicated schemes to stay in touch with family overseas without going broke. After more than a decade covering Australia's ICT industry - and watching our telcos stumble time and again - he's eager to call them to task.
For a party that's been beating the drum about transparency in government seemingly forever, the Coalition's election platform is sure looking pretty opaque — and its maths skills are seriously wanting.
We all know what happens when an entire suburb turns on their split-cycle air conditioners on a 43-degree day. This is the same thing that happens to shared HFC networks when a few fanatics set out to download every piece of data known to man.
Labor is naturally keen to paint its NBN strategy as offering the most for voters, but giving too much, too early could very well backfire on the party by empowering Turnbull's alternative in the election run-up.
Honest pre-election costings would finally put a price on Turnbull’s FttN plan. Will the Coalition follow through, or will it use a post-election cost-benefit analysis to worm out of its long-held opposition to Labor’s network?
With the upcoming 4G spectrum auction looking shaky, Stephen Conroy would have to be considering what he'll do if the result falls short. One option would be to direct NBN Co to enter the 4G wireless market and foster new competition amongst NBN-powered MVNOs.
With a 4G auction looming, 3G congestion nipping at its heels, the NBN in put-up-or-shut-up mode, and an election on its way, 2013 is certain to be a thrill a minute. But as analog TV gear stares at its future in the pit of obsolescence, can Labor avoid the same?
The Coalition has been berating journalists for not looking at overseas plans for nationwide broadband networks — but now that the world’s most populous country has committed to FttH, what are we now to believe?
Turnbull is playing the man, not the ball. But the media is not his problem; his policy is the problem. And no amount of bluster will change the fact that there are serious, unanswered questions around the Coalition's alternative policy.
The very fact that Conroy needed to intervene in the digital-dividend spectrum auctions shows how much things can change in five years. But as Conroy reaps what he sowed, is he making things better or much, much worse?
National Telework Week naturally spruiked Labor's NBN vision, but it also highlighted the Coalition's utter lack of vision.