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.
I don't normally read the job ads in the morning papers, but this one caught my eye:A rare and exciting role has arisen with Vodafone Australia for a talented individual to join its established Public Policy group at a managerial level.Working within a collaborative team environment you will be responsible for providing economic thought leadership together with leading and advocating Vodafone's economic policies.
Interesting reading in Om Malik's article for Business 2.0 magazine that some parties are expecting a wave of mergers and buyouts to ensue in the ranks of networking equipment vendors if Alcatel and Lucent jump into bed together.
It can't be easy being a Telstra spokesperson presenting to a conference composed of rival telcos, regulators and government officials -- not to mention disgruntled customers. Especially if you're speaking before lunch.
As part of my strategy of ... well talking to people (you can see the life of a journalist is very complicated), I had coffee yesterday with current Tangler and former Dot Communications boss Marty Wells.
It's no secret that shadow communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy didn't have a good day on Wednesday. Full Duplex doesn't know whether -- like many high-flyers from Australia's telco community -- the politician was suffering a hangover after ATUG's annual awards on Tuesday night.
Those of us who've spent a bit of time attending conferences around Australia will know that every event has its bloopers. This week's Australian Telecommunications Users Group (ATUG) conference held in Sydney was certainly no exception.
If there is one thing that the growing blogging phenomenon makes clear, it is that the Internet is not a single-user publishing medium. Online publishing is all about the conversations that develop between professional and, increasingly, amateur writers who are interested in publicly discussing the issues that matter to them.
When I heard last week that global carrier AT&T had signed up local telco People Telecom to provide wholesale co-location and domestic voice services, I wasn't surprised. It probably wasn't too hard to organise meetings between the two given that AT&T has offices in People Telecom's North Sydney building.
The last time I used a payphone was back in the summer of 2001. I remember it being a cool summer filled with constant rain, a summer in which seeing clear sky was a rarity and it was tough to get the mould out of your clothes.