David Braue

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.

Latest Posts

Skype me

Wednesday seemed like a nice normal day at ZDNet HQ, until all of a sudden in the middle of the afternoon a hush ran through the office. I looked over to the aisle where the consumer technology journalists live, to see my colleague Randolph Ramsay deep in a phone conversation.

April 28, 2006 by Renai LeMay

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Unwired and The Big Sleep

This morning's announcement of a hookup between Internet search supremo Google and wireless carrier Unwired reminded me of an early scene from the 1946 classic The Big Sleep. "You're not very tall are you?

April 19, 2006 by Renai LeMay

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The zero dollar bill phenomenon

If there's one indication that customer relationship management (CRM) systems at telcos are screwed, it's got to be the phenomenon of the 'zero dollar' bill. This typically occurs when a customer changes suppliers, but the telco's computerised billing system doesn't quite know what to do...

April 11, 2006 by Renai LeMay

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Telstra meets The Chaser

I wouldn't have wanted to be in Telstra spokesperson Rod Bruem's shoes when he walked out of a lift last week to be confronted by The Chaser boys asking if Telstra wanted to purchase naming rights to Cyclone Larry. Bruem told Full Duplex he glibly sent the Chaser crew off to arch-rival Optus: "We've been doing a lot of good work up there but Optus is nowhere to be seen -- maybe you should go speak to them.

April 3, 2006 by Renai LeMay

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