TOCPCs – The Elite Geeks Blog

It’s not too often I get threats from people / businesses threatening to sue me for defamation, though, I have got 3 threats in the last year.

OzVoIP.com – They didn’t like the domain name I chose (with having no prior knowledge they existed) for what they claimed was an attempt to pass off as the name they had (OzVoIP.com), I had OzVoIPStatus.com.

The person handling it was very immature and carried on like a baby screaming that I was defaming his business by using a different domain name in the .com namespace. He was pretty certain of himself I attempted to pass off as his domain, which was completely incorrect.

None the less, he was dumb enough to take it to the lawyers and they wrote me, to which I asked for evidence, and even ended up informing their lawyers of the relevant laws and advised them to take it to court if they wanted to lose.

They ended up choosing not to take legal action, assumably because they didn’t have the balls to do so, and accepted that we could simply exist in the same namespace, doing different things (they do some sort of VoIP installation service or some crap.. don’t really care).

The next: CAT Computers. They threatened me on this blog here, for defamation.

Apparently, stating the facts of what had occurred during a phone call was defaming his business and he claimed loss of income too.

That n00b didn’t bother going to his lawyer, he was simply trying to “scare” me into removing the facts.

They don’t like embarrassment, too bad for him I play hard ball with anyone who threatens legal action, I don’t care what the circumstances are.

Now, we have the next one.

An eBay Seller, I won’t name him, because I don’t really think he deserves to be shamed out for his actions, though they aren’t exactly ethical.

This eBay seller, I bought some RAM from using the Buy It Now feature on eBay.

The transaction was a success, though it had a few bumps in the road.

It started with the automated email I received from them, sent via eBay, showing an incorrect address, I clearly specified an address for them to ship to, yet I was rather amazed at the response that came through which was suggesting they would ship it to an incorrect address.

I immediately bounced on top of it, as a previous eBay seller, I knew that its difficult to sort out shipping issues after the item has shipped to the wrong address, espiecially when the address they had specified as the delivery address was going to somewhere where a lunatic lived (remember the previous blog post: Live between two bowling alleys (our previous address), he would certainly have received it and not returned it, costing this seller well, $260 in RAM).

I wanted to be sure to get immediate attention, so the email was sent to them, addressing them as idiots for not getting the right address on the email that I had specified for them to ship to.

Amazing service from this bloke though, he called me quickly later on, interupted what I was in the middle of too! :(, and he mentioned the email used automated information from eBay, and he would ensure that the item I paid for would ship to the right address. I apologised to him for addressing him as an idiot, and stated that I didn’t really want to attack them, just wanted to get enough attention to highlight the incorrect address.

At this point in time I believed that the email sent out should be able to access the delivery information I specified and it was purely an email template change for them to undertake, so in my email reply I noted that so at least the situation wouldn’t pop up for anyone else.

A few days later, the good people at the data centre message me, asking if I was expecting a package from some place in St. Peters. Didn’t sound familiar at all. I went and sussed it out, and checked out an active auction by the seller of the RAM, sure enough, St. Peters. They had shipped a Apple video cable or something, a cheap junkyard item, instead of the expensive $260 RAM i had paid for.

Anyway, at this point, I contact them about the stuff up, and state that I would like them to immediately ship the RAM, and arrange shipping of the cable.

Brad, their known eBay legend, who seemingly gets stressed over the most simple of issues contacted me and said he’d send it off on Monday, which was disappointing as I really wanted it there sooner than later. But none the less, I accepted this.

I began to wonder why would they ship a cable over expensive RAM. It doesn’t make sense. 2 items should have shipped (two sticks of RAM), not one cable.

It then started to form a picture that perhaps they were using this as retaliation, in some bizarre way.

So, at this point it began to picture to me that they were stuffing the order up for calling them an idiot. Why act like an idiot if you aren’t? Bugs me. But that’s what I believed.

The RAM arrived shortly later on. It was installed, and it works fine.

I still at this point pondered my feedback decision, and came to a conclusion, they made 2 stuff ups, and I believed one was deliberate for addressing them as “idiot”.

That was pretty deserving of a negative, but I made it a sound negative, stating just they had confused a firewire cable with 2 sticks of RAM, and mentioned it was fixed tho.

I stuck by this.

I shortly afterwards get an email from the ‘eBay legend’ addressing me as “YOU MORON”…

Right, this was off to a good start, so I read on and I reply to Brad, stating that I firmly believed that they were deliberately stuffing up the order as a result of addressing them as “Idiot” and despite my apology stuffed up the order.

It didn’t really matter what I believed completely though, they did stuff up, there’s no questions there, twice, once with the address, the other with the shipment, though the addressing issue was more of an eBay system issue, as well as their process for shipping, which doesn’t check if a buyer specified a different ship to address at the point of purchase, which I did do.

Anyway, the emails continue, and Brad informs me that no, the shipment was a result of two stickers being placed on packages accidentally.

Fair enough. I was wrong. D’oh.

Anyway, I sat there pondering, they were still wrong for stuffing up the shipment, but not really too wrong they fixed it quickly.

I thought, but the negative is worth it to at least demonstrate that this alledged 100%, no negative company is human, has a flawed shipping process, and did indeed cause me to wait a short while longer for the RAM i ordered.

John, the person who had called me, writes me an email back later on asking for it to be removed. Still remaining with my consideration, they stuffed up, I determine that it should stay.

John’s emails continue for a few occasions after there, pressuring me into removing the negative. I remain of the stance no.

I began to wonder, I did have a positive transaction, and I then begin to consider perhaps removing the feedback, it was an option I thought, they only stuffed up twice, but they had a bargain on the RAM, and it all works fine!

Anyway, as I was thinking more about the removal, and what I should do, I get an email from John, threatening:
1. Legal action for defamation (the negative feedback).
2. Legal action for stress suffered by employees as a result of the negative feedback.
3. Legal action for loss of income as a result of the negative feedback.
4. A bill for the cheap cable they had shipped incorrectly.
5. A Square Trade dispute lodged.
6. A negative feedback item in return… For paying for the item I purchased immediately? Right…
7. Contacting his eBay representative.
8. “Various other actions”.

Seeing this email, my response was pretty easy to conclude.

1. The negative feedback shall remain. They had stuffed up the order, the negative is a direct result of that and should remain.
2. They can go ahead and take that to court, I will happily attend, and even discuss the details of any future transactions I might wish to have with them, on the whole the transaction was pretty good, with just one shipping error, and a recently discovered automated emailing error.

So, my response to John was outlining exactly that they can go ahead, good luck proving loss of income in an eBay marketplace, good luck proving any defamation occurred, when you consider millions of feedback items are left on eBay, and we don’t see users suing users for “defamation”. Defamation isn’t correct here though, they bought such comments upon themselves by stuffing up in the first place.

Further, I figure, if they want to bill me for their stuff up, there’s another court case for them to follow on with, as I will refuse to pay for their stuff up.

Anyway, the dispute is still continuing, I’ve given them an option of middle ground here, not feedback removal, but the option of him using his right of reply to the eBay feedback system to reply to the feedback I left with anything he likes, and I will follow up with on the whole I was happy with the purchase.

I really was happy.

But now he made the lawsuit list. That’s 3 in just 1 year. All of them fools for even thinking of taking legal action against me, for numerous reasons, but the top one I can think of is: They’d all lose, I didn’t defame any of them, they all bought such responses on themselves by taking actions they did instead of doing things right in the first place.

If you develop an automated addressing procedure, you at least use the address provided for delivery by the customer, and don’t rely on anything in any initial purchase email as gold (which they did, and as I pointed out, is a huge risk for the business to take).

Further, if you get negative feedback, approach the person leaving it reasonably. I don’t really expect to be addressed as “YOU MORON”. And more importantly, don’t threaten legal action to try and get your way.

I’ve been in and out of courts of different nature as a kid, right from basic petty theft to grand scale fraud.

Further, if you want to try and kick up legal action, go in with little more than ‘negative feedback left on eBay’ as your only ammunition. It’s so easily shot down in the grand scheme of things.

Anyway, my middle ground option is there for John, I will follow up the feedback stating it was a happy transaction and I’d deal with them again, only if he chooses to reply to the feedback I left with the fact they did fix the problem.

Otherwise, he needs to simply sit back, accept that they stuffed up, accept it earnt them a negative, accept that I for one am not threatened by legal action, and move on from where it was left.

It was a simple, quick transaction, he has had a 4 day debate via email over how justified a negative feedback item is, and how he wishes to take legal action against me for providing feedback on actions he / his company took in the course of fulfilling a transaction.

Why businesses even try to threaten defamation legal action is beyond me. You have better luck working with the customer for a mutual agreed outcome rather than trying to scare them into taking your preferred action, and in doing so, throwing any chance of the preferred action taking place out the window.

If I was approached with “I’m sorry to say, I disagree with your negative feedback, I do ask you remove it after you consider the positives of the transaction”, I might have been more inclined to change it. In fact, I would have been given reason to consider all the positives of the transaction, and not just all the huge negatives that stood right out.

What they have done (and I will say I’ve done my bit to participate to) is create a pretty well deadlocked situation. The current situation is quiet happy to remain, on the other hand, a more positive situation is possible by taking a few simple steps on the eBay feedback forum.

And to any company reading: If your threatening legal action, consider the 2Clix case mentioned on Whirlpool. They’ve had more publicity in a week than they’ve had in their lifetime, trouble is, it’s the wrong publicity, and further, the legal action threatened is likely to slam back in their faces. Just as it would with OzVoIP. Just as it would with CAT Computers. Just as it would with this eBay seller. You can’t silence critical comments from users. Grow a brain, and use it.

Enjoy!

It was previously quoted in the media by an Optus spokesperson that the retail prices for OPEL provided services would be metro comparable, and the price attached to that metro comparable was $35 to $60 per month.

Recently, another news article has been pushed out, showing that OPEL provided services retail prices would be up to the ISP who provides the service.

Which makes sense.

The difference between OPEL and Telstra Wholesale is easy to identify.

OPEL is setup as a wholesale only regulated competitor to provide competitively priced services to areas of Australia where Telstra currently underserves the users by pricing services at extortionately high prices.

Telstra Wholesale is owned by pigs. The pigs use to their advantage the advantage they have (that no one else will have- sidenote: Strange Telstra protest in court that no other telco had the advantage of knowing there’d be more funding.. the advantage, but clearly, it had a advantage all along, being government owned, no other telco has that…), to price competition out of the market if they have their own infrastructure, or where they choose to resell Telstra infrastructure, they get high prices, and therefore uncompetitive retail prices.

So, Telstra essentially manipulate the market to how it suits them.

This is done by lowering prices and enabling services where there is a competitive threat.
And raising prices, and refusing to provide taxpayer funded services where there is no competitive threat.
– By refusing I mean the several reports of users being told by Telstra employees to visit NowWeAreTalking -trash when they are on an exchange, which is recently enabled and had 2 customers connected, but refused signups until Telstra get government funding for a service that is already rolled out and wasting shareholder funds by not using it while it depreciates in value as technology does.

– Why anyone accepts line rental price rises is beyond me. Telstra’s technology gets cheaper, as movements in technology typically focus on lowering price.

Anyway, so to put things straight, Optus retail prices for services is likely to be $35 – $60 a month for most services, and other ISPs can obviously go cheaper, or dearer and add in or remove aspects of the service to produce their own unique offerings.. As they currently do today under the TDSL (Expensive Telstra DSL) and ADSL2+ wholesale provided services.

It works well.. More competition won’t hurt anyone or anything.. except Telstra shareholders, but its not our job to give them financial advice.

OPELs real goal, is to serve the underserved areas Telstra doesn’t service adequately now, by introducing competition and therefore price drops. Retail ISPs control the price they use to gather users up.

Enjoy!

Accounting software n00bs, 2clix lodged a Statement of Claim in the Brisbane Supreme Court claiming that the owner of the magnificent Whirlpool, Simon Wright, has caused them injurous falsehood by not following demands to remove content on the website that was critical of their product offering.

The news story was placed on Whirlpool’s front page, in line with Whirlpool’s policy on companies lodging lawsuits against Whirlpool, and has attracted an overwhelming amount of follow on media attention.

Whirlpool’s owner Simon Wright hasn’t exactly done anything wrong by not honouring a request from a company embarrassed by comments about their product offering to remove those comments from his website.

Who’s fault is it?

The users aren’t at fault, all they did was post their experiences to stop other users from making a painful mistake.
The host isn’t at fault, they simply host the server and the site doesn’t contain anything illegal.
Simon isn’t at fault, he just built the site and allowed users to make comments on topics that interested them.

It’s easy to identify who is at fault.
2Clix are.

They bought negative feedback upon themselves by releasing a product that didn’t live up to the standards desired by many users.

The users found many issues in 2Clix’s program.

There are many users reporting the program as a dud program.

The threads contain nothing inappropriate or illegal.

So what exactly are 2Clix suing Simon for? For telling them to get stuffed in an email they sent asking him to remove content from his website? For allowing users to have a discussion on a particular company, service or product?

The case is likely to end up withdrawn by 2Clix. By lodging the statement of claim, they are attracting A LOT More attention. Many more people now know the name. 2Clix.

Many more people now know the company has dodge software, because there are many users reporting that the software is not up to standards they expected (eg. Division by Zero errors).

Many more people know the software was charged at something like $50,000 for an application that uses MySQL and other Open Source software items, and isn’t completely the work of the company itself.

Many more people will see the company in a negative light for not accepting positive criticism, improving the product and moving on.

2Clix will obviously not get many sales as a result of this action, because many more people are going to remember the name of the company that tried to censor fair and reasonable discussion.

2Clix are very likely to withdraw this case, mainly because they will need to find the funding to pay Simon’s legal costs after they have lost, and without any sales as a result of the negative publicity they bought upon themselves by lodging a lawsuit against a not-for-profit public discussion forum, they will withdraw the case, and probably at that point change the company name in an effort to cover its old markings, that is, if they haven’t gone bust by that point.

On the other hand, they could be aggressive, and follow it all through even if they could lose, and end up losing and end up well closed down as a result of lack of income to fund the court case.

Or, it’s very unlikely, but if it did rule in their favour, it could set a new precedent for all online websites. Including some of mine.

If that did happen, it’d be a very sad day for the open internet, public discussion on movies, music, people, politics, products, services, etc, are all going to be stopped, purely because 2Clix didn’t like a few users telling others that 2Clix is a poor quality item of software.

That’s very unlikely, as setting a precedent like that would be looked on very unfavourably by the wider community, so the first outcomes are very likely.

1. 2Clix withdraws realising that in continuing they are going to basically push all the funds put into this case down the gutter as they shot themselves in the foot with even more negative publicity.

2. 2Clix pushes on, they could have nothing left to lose and end up broke as a result of legal costs from Simon winning.

One of those two will happen, and unfortunately for 2Clix, they won’t be getting a click at all.

Enjoy!

Telstra with nothing better to do (its not like there are 18% of all phone lines having faults that need repair) have decided that putting Coonan on trial for OPEL wasn’t enough.

The OPEL case is more and more looking like a frivilous litigation case and will likely close out with Telstra paying costs of Coonan’s lawyers in a big win for Coonan.

The lengths Telstra are going to here seem desperate.

They want to do their best to use litigation action to get their way.

The OPEL move backfired as the lawyers also see that it was a two stage process and Telstra are now stuck in a corner for reasons asking for that information, further Coonan’s defence should now present any evidence they have that the move to attack the government on OPEL’s decision was a calculated move to delay the rollout, and little more, which will place a mark against it’s litigation reputation and could reflect very negatively against them.

This next case is going to backfire on Telstra as well, as CDMA is supposed to be covered in NextG, and if not they can’t turn it off.

Telstra claims they can’t build the network with CDMA being required to remain on..
So Telstra, how is it so that you have overpriced NextG installed alongside CDMA now?

If it’s the costs, well, you were aware of that when you started. No one is forcing you to install NextG. Just ensuring you don’t cut off CDMA services for users who need access to them..

If NextG is so good, and is better than CDMA, what’s the concern about? Why cough up dollars for a lawsuit? Is it because Telstra knows NextG won’t match CDMA and they will be required to leave CDMA running, thus stopping Telstra’s plans to bend rural users over and make them bi*ches to Telstra’s expensive rates? If NextG is better than CDMA, roll it out, get it tested and cleared and there’d be no issue.. The ministers decision wouldn’t affect Telstra then would it?

It seems likely that the decision will have an effect on Telstra. And that’s why they are kicking up legal action about it.

Telstra wastes more shareholder funds, you know, money they could have spent in innovation, instead of frivilous, vexatious or pointless legal cases that will end up getting them.. nowhere new..!

Shareholders with half a brain should wake up to themselves, Telstra’s a business collapsing around itself. Rather than working towards making things happen, they work against it and waste shareholder funds in the process.
Best just selling now, wait til they are done stuffing around and wasting money, and when they get a sound business model, buy back in if they come out with any clean area left on them.. unlikely at this rate.

Enjoy!

The federal government has decided it will sign a funding agreement with OPEL for $958 million dollars, showing the public that Telstra’s legal action is vexatious and unwarranted.

The OPEL funding agreement hands $958 million to an Australian company, OPEL, who will manage a wholesale only infrastructure network for regional australia and offer services at metro comparable prices.

This move is likely to see Telstra scream for more, and see the return of Fat Phil back in the media after weeks of silence. – I knew something was brewing, I even posted on whirlpool that there was!

So, here we have it. The government has the funding deed signed, OPEL is going ahead, there’s nothing any government can do to stop OPEL rolling out services to regional Australia now, and they even already had started work on the network!

Telstra challenged Coonan’s decision on giving the $958 million to OPEL, believing in their crazed minds that it was unfair.

What’s unfair? Telstra trying to get $600 million to do something it already has rolled out in many areas, or asking for $600 million and not offering anything of their own to differentiate the proposal.

In fact, if I were the government, I’d have ruled the proposal as not for Telstra to bid on, considering it is for underserved areas, and those areas are areas Telstra already services, just to a very poor level, and charges through the roof for it.

The government is proposing to independantly test OPELs network to ensure that coverage is acheived at a very high standard, and the services and prices are metro comparable (as were the terms of the tender – which is one clear point why Telstra didn’t win).

Just on the court case however, in an interesting twist, Telstra demanded to see all of Coonan’s decision documents relating to the OPEL decision.

In a nice twist, Coonan’s department have asked for access to all of CEO Sol Trujillo’s emails, including board meeting minutes.

This is a interesting request, because in those emails and board minutes the likely discovery is they will find that the earlier proposal by Telstra that did not get submitted, which offered some of Telstra’s own funding was not submitted.

This goes with the same story about the ADSL range extension devices, which 200 of these currently sit wasted away in a Telstra warehouse, wasting shareholder funds again.

The court case is likely to go no where, as both Telstra and Coonan’s department have little to see in each others documents that can’t be assumed already anyway.

This will however, result in a likely vexatious litigation strike against Telstra, and they should indeed consider legal action differently in the future. Sure, if the proposal they had didn’t fail 3 of the criteria, I am sure the case would be worth fighting, but that’s not the case, and the criteria for accepting applications didn’t exactly change, just what they were bidding on changed, but they were aware of that from the word go, as it was stated there was the oppourtunity for more funding – is it the governments fault Telstra didn’t bid for more? Is it the governments fault Telstra are greedy pigs?

– Of course not.

Telstra’s response to the OPEL agreement is that it is a waste of taxpayer money, and they aren’t suprised to see Coonan sneaking the announcement in on APEC’s sunday afternoon.

Well, let’s think about waste of taxpayer money shall we?

What’s a bigger waste of taxpayer money:
1. Funding competition in regional and rural areas to force price and technology innovation.
2. Funding Telstra’s HiBis and Broadband Connect rollouts and users being denied access to the technologies true potential as an agenda for furthering Telstra’s greed?

I think I would spend the dollars on competition before allowing Telstra any more funds for their greed, wouldn’t you?

Sure, Telstra has shareholders to think of, but the Australian Government has consumers to think of, and naturally, when it comes to consumers, Telstra just cannot win. It’s not the governments fault they are monopolistic pigs, is it ?

Enjoy!

Dodo, obviously failing to learn from its failure in the dial-up and broadband game with reports of poor speeds on broadband services, and very poor customer service have now decided that screwing city people and pissing them off is not enough.

DoDo have now decided to bring extinction services to satelitte.

The move highlights that Dodo are keen to grow as an ISP, but their history shows they have no real idea on how to maintain customer relationships.

The change in industry could cause price drops right across the board as 300k customers that Dodo did gain (and not sure on loss statistics) show that they can at least gain a few customers using an extinct bird as a brandname. Why on earth Dodo? Why not Dinosaur Internet, internet that roars?

I am sure you can easily find comments on the internet that state Dodo’s internet is more “internet that fries” than it is “internet that flies”.

The competition landscape could change dramatically for Satelitte users with Dodo’s low prices being the benchmark for attracting customers, and others follow to around similar levels depending if they want Dodo service, or a working connection that has data. The price gap will close in around them, customers only ever look at price, Bigpond’s deceitful marketing can tell anyone that.

Trouble is, with Bigpond, for what you pay, you get basically nothing! Telstra’s money for nothing idea?

Dodo assumably are going in this to rival Bigpond and to rival OPEL’s proposed WiMAX network by having customers signed up ahead of time in contracts.

In other news, eBay seller with the card had offered to ship me the missing items for the capture card. He left positive feedback and all is happy. I decided that we wouldn’t get the cable from him via Aus Post, not based on principle but based solely on the fact the card isn’t going to work with Windows x64, I can’t be stuffed changing OS for it to work and lose the performance gain of 4GB of RAM as opposed to 32bit’s 3.1GB.

So the transaction ended happy and I have a capture card I can plug into something else soon and do something.. more interesting with :).

Yesterday I wrote about how I had an experience on eBay of the unintelligent kind, where the sellers of all the items purchased all made stuff ups!

Seller 1 had decided to forget rails for a rackmount server.
Seller 2 shipped a $20 cable instead of $260 worth of RAM.
Seller 3 shipped a card missing audio cable, cut FM antenna and missing drivers.

After I wrote my post last night (within 30 minutes), I had a email back from Seller 1 in response to the missing rails.

Seller 1 had simply not realised the rails were to come with, and unfortunately, had 2 servers up for auction, but only one set of rails.

The rails obviously were sent with the other server.

The seller however saw my position, I saw it stated on the auction rails available, and sure enough, he is a very reasonable seller.
The seller has came to a resolution, he will ship me another set of rails after he finds them in his storeroom. Perfect I thought. Honest mistake. Solved.

Seller 2, described the situation as “we made an error”.. Too right you made an error. How on earth you confuse expensive RAM with a $20 cable is beyond me!

Anyway, the resolution proposed is they will ship the RAM on Monday and they have little interest in recovering their incorrectly shipped cable.. Interesting.

To date, neither seller 1, or seller 2 have left feedback, despite being paid and my leg of the transaction being complete just on a week now. Pretty poor form.
The sellers do this for feedback blackmail, basically, if I were to leave either of these sellers a negative, they would do the same back to me despite being paid promptly and my part of the transaction being the most successful, accurate and error free part of the transaction.

Personally, I think eBay should require sellers to leave feedback before they can get feedback, in this way it can stop feedback blackmail and allow buyers and sellers alike to trade in the complete safety that they won’t become victims of blackmail via feedback.

Should they both not have feedback left after 60 days, the transaction goes without feedback, and that’s not good for sellers who want to move items! So it’s a win for buyers who can state exactly what they have experienced, after the seller states the buying experience, this protects each side from being unfairly rated / blackmailed, as the last to rate should be the buyer, which is after the seller has fulfilled all auction requirements (shipped item to buyer).

Seller 3 has not left feedback for us either yet, neither has seller 3 responded about the problems with the purchase being different from the description.

Holding off on feedback for all 3 still until all items received in good working order, after all, that is what I bought…

Enjoy!

Unwired provides internet access services over its own wireless networks.

Engin provides VoIP – Telephone services over the internet.

Seven provides Television, in what can be described as slow play from the US.

Seven bought a large stake in Engin a fair while back.

Engin recently bought a stake in Unwired.

What do you get if you combine the three?

Triple play services.
Unwired provides the internet connection, engin provides the telephone service and Seven give them IPTV and TiVO, etc.

So you end up with a possible triple play scenario forming between the three, though for something really workable, I think the ultimate goal would be to become an all in one setup, that is all 3 merge in someway as a new entity, like.. S.U.E (Seven, Unwired and Engin), that way they can provide all 3 services to customers on the one bill, still a popular marketing trend attracting consumers that don’t seem to have the ability to add 3 numbers together.

There is also speculation that Optus might want a stake in Unwired, however speculation surrounds channel seven being in discussions with Austar over its unused wireless spectrum that could be useful to both a combined company of Seven, Unwired and Engin, as well as Optus and its OPEL partnership.

Seven could take up big stakes now and become a serious TV, Phone and Broadband provider by getting close to Unwired and Engin with rolling out wireless based networks which would allow users to get all three products, the extra spectrum would give it coverage in regional areas.

OPEL would also be on a nice bite for spectrum to enable a deeper spread of its wireless technology over a frequency not so prone to loss after a shorter distance (2.5Ghz vs 5Ghz).

The times ahead continue to get interesting.

Deutsche Telekom for Australia’s FTTN network, and S.U.E for the regional network in competition with OPEL and Telstra?
It could happen!

Enjoy!

are the names of the likely pariticipants in the bidding process for a new FTTN network.

I believe only one will emerge as the eventual winner, unfortunately.

Unless the Taskforce take note of Deutsche Telekom’s idea of a public / private partnership and therefore do something of what Labor is offering, that is, a Public / Private funded FTTN network, which will stretch into more areas (and hopefully mine while it is at it), the likely winner is going to be either Telstra, or None at all.

I don’t doubt the Deutsche Telekom’s or G9’s capabilities, but when I look at this honestly, I don’t see them emerging as clear leaders due to the issues faced with getting access to Telstra’s copper network, and as is evident by OPEL and Coonan’s court case, Telstra are going to do whatever it takes to stop Australia from obtaining affordable, faster broadband internet access.

Telstra will tie up in court whatever it can, simply because its cheaper to spend $1 million and delay the inevitable, rather than face up to it and work together to create something that might benefit them, the same, less or better than they already benefit.
They don’t care about consumers at all. They care about profits. Lots of them.

Court cases are investments to them. Spend $1 million, and as a result of delaying the end outcome (which doesn’t change, ie, OPEL build), Telstra end up making a further $500 million.

On the other hand, by not delaying it, and things speeding along, Telstra stand to lose $50 million plus.

Not happy, are they?

So, the same logic applied to FTTN’s Expert Taskforce. Basically delay it and force it past the ACCC. Delay it and force it past as much of the process as possible.

And in a last effort attempt, the Expert Taskforce has a few delays set to it as well, but essentially, they want to win this one.

So the proposal from Telstra will be a “sensible” proposal, one which will compete strongly against the other two, one which will outline that they won’t put themselves through nonsense legal action to delay deployment plans, one which will outline that they will provide services, and the price? You bet it’s going to be much more competitive than the $59 that can be heard in the media.

Telstra have too much to lose by losing FTTN.

It’s the start of FTTH, and FTTH is the start of the future of fixed communications (where most of our communications occur).

Telstra will lose out on a trillion dollars or more. Litterally, the profit line they depend on will disappear.

Sure, FTTN might still see Telstra make profits off the aging copper, but there’ll be a time on that deployment, where FTTH will instead take off and Telstra will start not making an income off that copper, and they’ll be stuck with nothing in the fixed area except resale services off the infrastructure provider of FTTN / FTTH.

They don’t want to lose that. I know Telstra is maintained and managed by complete idiots with a extreme desire for greed, even if it holds consumers from getting access to services that were and are taxpayer funded (still a stack of Broadband Connect exchanges and HiBis exchanges on Telstra’s lists).

FTTN and FTTH will mean too much to them. The entry point is now, because in 15 years, the established company will be whoever does FTTN and starts FTTH from FTTN.

Telstra’s losses here will be huge if they be dumb and try and hold strong on price. The other providers, should they end up winning, will obviously endure and engage the fight with Telstra for access to the network and eventually win, and the end result is Telstra loses out.

For them to win, not just now but into the future, they need to build FTTN. And anyone with half a brain should see them come down rather steep on price to avoid any chances of losing out to Deutsche Telekom or G9 on what is Telstra’s very own future.

Enjoy!

In news you won’t find on Telstra’s own Now We Are Talking website (why is that? Can’t take the good with the bad?), If you don’t use Telstra for your STD calls, it may very soon cost you more.

Telstra in its latest anti competitive attack have decided that consumers who use competition must pay more for a Telstra service.

The HomeLine Part plan normally retailing for $31.95 will soon increase to a whopping $33.45.

The motivation behind such a move is to stop customers using cheaper competitive offerings from suppliers like AAPT and Optus in favour of making the calls at Telstra’s very high rates.

They introduced a new offer, Line Rental Saver, to reduce line rental for consumers, the downside is you must spend over $80 a month to gain a $10.50 line rental discount on already overpriced line rental.

They did also put a cap on the discount of $100.35 if you manage to push out $600 in monthly calls.

My advice? Go to Optus, AAPT, or anyone really, and put up with the excessive $1 increase, or drop your plan to HomeLine Budget ($19.95), and use VoIP and really stick it to the pigs at Telstra!

Enjoy!

A Topic I discovered recently, is the topic of Broadband and Telecommunications (and the future of it) becoming a voting issue.

The possibilities at this point in time are endless, both sides are fighting for your vote, and both will promise (and not necessarily deliver) on anything they can to get that vote you have.

The more they can keep happy and get the vote of, the likely they are to be elected.

However, the media plays an interesting ‘tool’ to the debates, as they discover anything about any party that might change someones vote, and sure enough, they’ll chew at it until they find something else to chew on.

Let’s think about Kevin Rudd’s stripper incident, now Me, my partner and my little one really don’t look favourably on that sort of stuff, but consider it history given it occurred years ago, and he hasn’t been caught in a strip joint by his wife again yet (or the media, whichever finds him first).

However, Me, My Partner and My Little One would favour someone who is proposing to enhance the education in schools and train teachers, so when its time for him to enter school, we can be sure he will receive a quality education and won’t have to do better ourselves (not that we would dump the full education of our child on the public education system, by no means).

We would also value better roads to drive on, going for a cruise today on the Central Coast NSW, and no doubt about it, you do feel the rough road (compared to the golden paved roads in QLD).

Also, I value any campaign that forces CTP rates down in the age group, because at the moment you can be 30 and get cheaper rates than a 21 year old – not that its the 30 year old or the insurance companies fault there are dickheads allowed on the roads.

I would further value any campaign that enhances technological innovation in our country, that is, in all areas, we are a great country to experiment and grow technology from.

And also, I value any medical campaigns, to keep people healthier, and reduce the obesity levels in Australia so that we don’t squish China or cause the earth to become unfairly balanced.

Add to that list my very, very, very keen interest in the telecommunications arena, and sure enough it rates pretty high on my list of a government policy promise that might sway my vote. No, its not the be all and end all.

Just also, the noise about IR Laws I am ignoring. Why?
Because it is all just that, noise.
No employer is out to force employees out of their jobs, they are valued because they produce the profits for the company along with the customers they serve.

I am all for fair go, and I am sure most Australian employers are too.

The noise surrounding the IR Laws is absolutely misleading, from what I gather, most of the important stuff is protected, so no employer is going to be able to force you to do something.. overly unreasonable.

Actually, I think the agreements more serve as a bargaining point for employers and employees.
If you got the skills, you’ll be able to name your price and deliver what the employer wants, on the other hand, if the employer is strapped for cash, you might accept a mutually agreed rate of wage, or, well, better luck at another job.

Obviously the latter is not likely. Why?

Good staff are hard to find. Ask any employer. They can go through 40 staff and find mostly duds who wouldn’t know the basis of productivity, on the other hand, they can get 10 in and all 10 be great workers, and increase company profits for an overall pay rise in return.

I’ve worked in several businesses. The first, a very remote business, whilst my duties there were very simple at the age of 14, good staff were hard to find because, it was a remote area. I left that position due to family issues.

The next, was a Window Factory in Brisbane. I got my job there after making arrangements with the employer about starting times because I was not able to get there any earlier than 8am, so it was so. We agreed on 8am starts instead of 7am.
He was also chasing more staff, but could never get staff in. They were chasing more employees for a year after I started with minimal success, it wasn’t the interviews, no one got interviewed, it was just no one was willing..

The next, an IT Job at a excellent company in Brisbane, and the employer there is a top man. I still keep regular contact with him and do a bit for him, he paid fairly and was always very thankful for the work I put into his business.
He was a very reasonable person.

I’ve had a few short jobs in the middle as well, and neither of those had wankers of employers.

So, I think the hype is very misleading. Employers aren’t out to attack you, they are there to get the job done.

Anyway, back to the topic. IR Laws being a non issue in my honest opinion, because I am sure most are reasonable, and will pay based on performance (pay rise for those of you who do well, pay cut / training for those who have no idea).

I actually think our teachers should also be paid based on performance also. This way if they under perform (benchmark on a nationalised test), they will end up missing out on higher pay. Incentives for them to encourage learning.

Telecommunications (more specifically, innovation and competition) rate very highly on my list, but not as high as education, hospitals and proposed usage of taxpayer funds, and as such I think I will almost certainly be maintaining the current government for their excellent method of getting themselves out of a disaster they created with Telstra (in relation to telecommunications), but I am still as such undecided on several other factors, so I can’t say for sure they will get my vote, it really will come down to who is best with money I think.

Enjoy!

In what is still doing better than Telstra’s NextG, Virgin’s HSDPA Network experienced an outage lasting a total of 5 hours.

Telstra’s NextG network had network issues spanning 3 days, with one of those days experiencing a total failure.

Whilst Virgin doesn’t offer a 24 hour helpdesk, one is lead to believe that technicians were right on top of the outage the very moment they arrived to work.

The company’s VoIP service during the outage remained operational and accepting calls.

Virgin have acknowledeged that there have been teething issues with the Virgin network since the start of the network and as with any new network, they work towards ironing those bugs out and making the network very reliable.

So, Virgin’s broaband service had a minor outage.

Telstra’s phone and broadband networks by comparison have had numerous outages.

NextG on July 31.
A regional exchange suffered a fibre cut taking out communications in and out of the area shortly before this, taking days to fix.
Telstra’s network took a huge outage affecting access earlier this year, blaming a server fault. This fault carried over onto other service providers.
Add to that the revelation that 18% of all Telstra lines have faults.

Virgin’s network so far, still beats the numerous outages experienced by the australians on Telstra’s network.

Enjoy!

Just when you thought we had one evil company holding Australia’s telecommunication freedoms to ransom, another company is planning to join the arena of denying users freedom.

Amazingly however, Telstra’s Bigpond ISP has been mentioned in the media as not in support of this new company.

– Telstra don’t like competition at all ? Well, this isn’t related to Telstra in any large way at all.

Essentially, a group known as AFACT which has ties in with the MPAA in the USA, are set to start sending ISPs notices over users found to be using P2P to gain access to content that the TV stations and the like choose to take the slow road with and display months behind the availability of the US screening.

Arrrr landlubbers, Australia has the largest per capita of piracy rates, at 15.6 percent of all online TV piracy.

So, for those of you thinking of fetching your daily dose of US aired entertainment by leveraging the internet, it might be time to think about this new move.

AFACT proposes a pressure method to get ISPs to POLICE users use of the retail supplied internet connection.

It’s not the ISPs responsibility to interfere with any aspect of a users access to the public internet.
And besides that, IP owners (Copyright owners) have several avenues to attack pirates should they choose to do so.

AFACT claim ISPs aren’t doing enough to combat illegal downloading.

Well, I think the ISPs are doing plenty in doing nothing. The ISP is a retail supplier of services.

Tell me, who is responsible for a child after it is born? The hospital? No. The parents? Yes.
The parents are in direct control (or lack thereof) of a childs actions.
The same applies to the ISP.
The user is responsible for the actions of their connection, not the ISP.

The ISPs actions should stop – full stop – at the point of supplying IP connectivity to the internet. Anything after that is the users responsibility.

But, and a big but, much like the phone network, connections should be able to be monitored in the presence of a court order. They must obtain a court order to tap a phone line, the same applies to any users specific usage of the network.

It would be invasion of privacy and therefore illegal to do otherwise.

I’m all for maintaining and upholding the law, and I think AFACT are stepping the line with this.

The ISP simply provides IP transmission. That’s where it should stop. Email, File servers, web space, all optional extras to the user should they choose to use them, but the consumer is buying IP connectivity, and not any form of monitoring unless the user specifically requests as such.

Amazing, Bigpond’s stance on it is that content owners have many avenues to pursue infringements and they won’t be taking any of AFACTs claims against users at face value, which is a good thing, because any idiot can draft a letter stating their copyright was breached, its not the ISPs job to police that, civil proceedings exist to police that, and a court order can be used to obtain the required information, anything outside of the structured legal process to target IP (copyright) theft is nearly certainly going to be invasion of privacy.

I’m not in support of copyright breach at all, but I am 100% in support of a users right to privacy, and the way AFACT are going is a clear cut proposal that will forcefully disconnect users, using privacy invading tactics to do so.

Let’s hope the whole industry get together on this one and protect the freedom of the internet and the privacy of its users.

Enjoy!

Continued from yesterday, moving through to Page 9 of the mammoth PDF that is Telstra’s trash about why the ACCC shouldn’t accept the G9 proposal, we see more invalid rubbish from the rubbish that wrote it, Telstra.

1. It does not promote effecient competition.
– Rubbish. The G9 model is all about competition. Everyone buys access on equal terms on an equal playing field. Though, we already know Telstra can’t stand it when they have an equal competitior. Just look at the money they are wasting on the Coonan – OPEL legal action as proof of this.

Telstra’s claim: RUBBISH.

2. It seeks to give G9 a protected monopoly, and blocking Telstra from building its own.
– Ask yourself, if you were G9 and you saw Telstra’s FTTN there, and know from previous competition notices, legal action, fines and compensation cases that building an FTTN will only see Telstra fight back to destroy you as a competitor altogether, and therefore waste your investment dollar before you take any real advantage of it, would you be still investing beside Telstra? no.
The same is true in reverse. If the G9 invest, Telstra will overbuild. They did this with the HFC network instead of investing in areas where no HFC existed, thereby stopping Optus making a good return on its own HFC investment.
– Telstra are only in the business of protecting its telecommunications monopoly, they aren’t investing unless competitors do (or threaten to do), and they aren’t in the business of enjoying friendly price competition, they would much rather suck consumers dry.
– We don’t need duplication (hey, Telstra’s against duplication, but only when it builds, isn’t that right Telstra?) of a FTTN network. That would be wasteful (read the Expert Taskforce guidelines too).
Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

3. It eliminates current retail and wholesale services.
– Rubbish. They plan to use Remote Switching technologies to enable lines to be switched between exchange and node serviced.

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

4. It imposes inefficiently high costs.
– Hardly. Communication between the layers would be much more simpler than it is to get Telstra to do something today. I think we waited something like 2 weeks nearly to get a resolution to a phone issue while being a Telstra supplied customer. Strangely, competitors have faster turnarounds (where incompetence is not involved).

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

5. As most of the industry will participate at some level in the G9 structure, it not only invites collusive behaviour but requires it for the model to work.
– Umm, that’s HIGHLY funny. What do we have now? Most of the industry dealing with Telstra, and getting a wholesale price squeeze. Telstra’s had the chance to make the situation work. They didn’t. It’s the G9’s chance to have a go at it.

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

6. It disables a functioning network that is already capable of delivering more than G9 is prepared to promise.
– Rubbish. G9 propose 24Mbps best efforts services. Telstra supplies artificially limited 8Mb/384k services at higher prices than G9’s proposed prices.
Please explain ?

Telstra’s claim: RUBBISH and GREED.

7. It requires customers to take a risky migration path on a newly built network.
– No it doesn’t. Remote Switching allows lines to be switched between exchange serviced and node serviced.

Telstra’s claim: RUBBISH.

8. It allows and encourages the G9 to prices that are not only too high, but also inefficiently structured.
– Too high? It’s cheaper than Telstra’s current prices, and cheaper than Telstra’s proposed $59 wholesale for 512k! G9 propose up to 24Mbps speeds for just $60 wholesale.

Telstra’s claim: Well, my comments speak for themselves. Telstra’s claim is RUBBISH.

9. It undercuts Telstra’s incentives to modernise the copper network to support the next generation of broadband services.
– Undercuts Telstra’s incentives? If Telstra had incentive would they be waging a political war with the Australian elected government? Not likely. Would Telstra have actually upgraded the copper network if competitors didn’t start adding thier own infrastructure to start with? Not likely.

Telstra’s claim: TRASH.

10. It requires access seekers to inefficiently duplicate facilities and systems not required in the current environment.
– At what price Telstra? What is the current price of those facilities provided by Telstra? What is the price by G9? You get a very clear picture of how things are going to go in the real world. Telstra’s plans are to increase basic internet access costs by a significant amount. G9 propose to drop those costs for consumers to sane amounts.

Is Australia to pay insane prices for broadband services that are already provided cheaper than proposed by Telstra?
Is Australia to instead, get with the future, and follow technologies natural downward pricing path, with a G9 proposal?

Doesn’t take a great wall to work out who is working for consumers here. It’s not Telstra.

Enjoy!

It’s not really new news, any idiot could have guessed that Telstra would not like G9’s proposal at all.

Would you like the idea of someone else coming along, and being able to pay you a fair price for access to your copper wire, and selling it to consumers, and other ISPs for less than you sell it to them for, thereby exposing you for the greedy pig you are?

Of course not. You would want to maintain secrecy and try and at any way possible stop such a deal going ahead so that you aren’t exposed for ripping off consumers as you have been doing for the several years previously.

So, Telstra’s next item after the vexatious law suit in the federal court is the next item, a submission to the ACCC opposing the G9 proposal from going ahead, with several reasons excuses used to try and persuade the outcome to not be a G9 – ACCC approved FTTN.

Telstra, through the release of a public version of a submission to the ACCC, stated a few reasons that they believe the G9 proposal should be rejected. There’s hundreds of them, but alot are just repeated rubbish, so I will cover what I think are the key ones in their submission.

1. Telstra claim the G9 proposal is an expensive, dangerous scheme.
– There’s no proof of this. Therefore, Telstra’s submission should be rubbished, as the information contained in the submission is inaccurate rubbish.

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

2. G9’s proposal is an expensive, dangerous scheme, which degrades services, making cusotmers worse off than they are today.
– How is that so? G9’s proposal proposes an open wholesale access regime, making access equal terms to every provider in Australia. In fact, they go as far as setting up a seperate wholesale / network only body to avoid any conflicts with retail altogether.

Further, there is no proof the G9 scheme would degrade anything, let alone services. Oh wait, it will degrade something, it’ll degrade Telstra’s profits. Can’t have that.

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

3. The G9 proposal is an expensive, dangerous scheme which forecloses a faster, more innovative broadband future for Australia.
– How do they figure that? ADSL2+ is faster than Telstra’s artificially limited ADSL1, so the outcome would already be faster, and as for innovation, well, let’s not ask Telstra about innovation, the innovation they do is in the arts of following competitors. That’s been true in everything that has been done recently..

First with ADSL2+: Not Telstra. – iiNet & Internode.
First with 3G: Not Telstra. – 3 Mobile.
First with Capped Plans: Not Telstra. – 3, Optus, Vodafone, and many ISPs.
First with Services at affordable prices: Not Telstra. Every other ISP.

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

4. The G9 proposal is an expensive, dangerous scheme which imposes a tortured, dysfunctional ownership and management structure that will promote collusion ahead of efficiency.
– The ownership model is not tortured, the ownership model is very much a great model, in fact, better than anything Telstra has proposed.

Look what happens when a retail provider is also the wholesale provider and the infrastructure owner. Any idiot can see we don’t need this situation any more, otherwise, why bother with an expert taskforce?

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

5. The G9 proposal is an expensive, dangerous scheme which perverts the access regime, depriving Telstra of its network so that FANOC can establish a monopoly managed by a cartel.
– The proposal is very sound. Essentially, they will not be depriving Telstra of anything. What they will be doing is being a infrastructure upgrade in the middle of the network. Remote switching technology enables lines to be switched between node and exchange provided, so there is no deprivation happening. Oh, hang, I forgot. Deprivation of greedy profits. Of course. Well, who cares about that? The Australian Consumer? Nope. The Competition ? Nope. The greedy pigs? Some of them.

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

6. The G9 proposal is so contrary to the purpose and intent of the access regime that the commission should dismiss it out of hand.
– How is it contrary?
Does it promote competition? Yes.
Does it bring lower prices to consumers? Yes.
Is it financially viable? Yes.
Does it lock out any current providers from servicing their customers behind the node? No.
Is it anti-competitive? No.
Does it allow Telstra to still provide services to its customers? Yes.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission assess proposals to determine if they are going to work with competition and consumers. Now, everything in the G9 proposal is so pro competition and so pro consumer, I doubt they’d ever get a competition notice.
Telstra knows what these are though, they’ve got several of them.. How many hang on the walls in the director’s meeting room ?
Yet, they still can’t seem to get the basics of a competitive environment working.
How can Telstra be trusted on any view with regard to competition, when they suck so bad at it as it is?

Telstra’s claim: RUBBISH.

7. G9 proposes only best efforts 1.5 Mbps minimum speed service. Telstra already offers faster speeds, to more homes than G9 would pass.
– Really? Does Telstra offer 24Mbps as is written in the proposal for the G9 FTTN network, at affordable prices? Does Telstra propose to drop the current price of service access to match the degrading technology they use with ADSL1, like is proposed in the G9 proposal?

8. Business customers lose access to high quality (not), high speed services (such as Frame Relay and DDS) on which they rely for mission critical applications, in return for a residential-centric “best efforts” service.
– One response here. How does Telstra service those business customers now? Using the same network that they use for residential services. Further to this, those business customers Telstra speak of would reach faster speeds on the G9 network, not because of the network upgrade, but because of the unrestricted access speeds!

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

9. Basic Telephone services go backwards as more parties supplying seperate inputs struggle to co-ordinate provisioning and maintenance processes which are today seemlessly managed by Telstra.
– Question for Sol Trujillo: What percentage did you state recently of phone lines had faults on them ? I recall 18%. That’s on an asset Telstra owned and were paid excessive and increased line rental to maintain. How did 18% of faults occur if they were being paid monthly line rental to maintain it? Shock. They didn’t spend the money on maintenance, did they?
Anyway, how do they figure they will go backwards, when they will be spending money to start with on providing an improved, enhanced, advanced, competition friendly service?

Telstra’s claim: INVALID.

10. Wholesale customers lose access to some current wholesale services without adequate substitutes.
– Hmmm… I’m sure many of them won’t be complaining about having to supply services on the G9 network instead.. In fact, I’m sure a poll would demonstrate many of them can’t wait for the G9 to roll out!

Telstra’s claim: RUBBISH.

That’s the first 10 on the first few pages of the rubbish that is Telstra’s submission to the ACCC about the G9.

If you read through as I did whilst writing this, you quickly get an idea of how close those 134 pages are to the rubbish bin.
It’s rubbish, full of mistruths and lies to push Telstra’s agenda, and given the chance, I am sure the G9 would happily go through and recap all of the rubbish on that mountainous waste of paper.

Telstra, here’s a tip: Next time you want to get attention to a submission that you don’t like, maybe try using facts, instead of lies, mistruths, and rubbish to push your agenda.

Could it be your agenda simply wouldn’t stand on its own two feet ? Well, the question to ask there is: Why?

Enjoy!

Recently, Labor Member, Regional Development Minister for NSW, Tony Kelly can be echoed in the media as stating that the voters should decide on broadband.

Mr Kelly believes that OPEL could leave Regional and Rural broadband users with “second rate broadband”.

I raise a few points directly with him via email, no reply yet, and I still wonder if I will get one from the idiot.

Here’s why I believe Mr Kelly is illogical.
1. He claims the Australian voters are capable of deciding plainly whether broadband services are an issue for them.

That’s not the right way to go about it, as quiet many Australian’s have no idea at all when it comes to broadband services, and so, anything they say can be easily ruled out as uninformed material.

Sure, its the taxpayers money, but guess why the taxpayer doesn’t spend that money?
Because they all have no idea how it should be spent.
– Sorry to the intelligent few out there that very well could have some good ideas about this. The majority would have no real idea.

So, that’s why the spending is left to the government.. who don’t seem much more intelligent than the average joe when it comes to decisions like this.

Could it be Mr Kelly knows little about broadband and thought he’d score points by simply “letting voters decide” ?
Who knows, it’s stupidity, and from the Labor party… again.

2. He claims OPEL’s service could leave regional and rural users with second rate services.
Absolute trash from a trash talker.

OPEL is a competitive network to Telstra.
Telstra currently have overpriced, artificially shaped ADSL2+ DSLAMs throughout most of OPEL’s target area, as well as overpriced, flawed NextG wireless services.

Now, let’s say OPEL launch a service in competition to Telstra’s current offering, so we’ll match them here the best we can, but we aren’t comparing like technology, and Telstra’s is excessively overpriced.

8Mbit ADSL1 from Telstra Wholesale, comes in at a retail price of $90 for high end plans.
24Mbit ADSL2+ from OPEL comes in at a max price of $60 for high end plans.

Hmm.. That’s $30/mth difference, so when OPEL release, the first thing they’ll do is push that cheaper plan, and get users that way.

Telstra will be somewhat annoyed at this excessive loss of customers, and will do something to get them back. They’ll probably match the OPEL offering, and better it in some way with free calls for example.

OPEL will be disappointed at this, and return with innovating its network to have even faster speeds and reduce prices further.

Telstra will be angered by this move and install VDSL2 and get customers on for faster speeds.

OPEL will want those customers back and reduce price.

What is it that Tony Kelly can’t see about the basics of competition? They want marketshare, they’ll earn it. They’ll all compete to get it.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: The wholesale effects from OPEL’s backhaul services will result in even more alternative services able to be offered.

If that’s second rate, then I’ll happily accept second rate. Because the reality is, when true market forces can finally clash together and get the job done themselves in regional and rural areas, is when we will have a true telecommunications network where companies fight tooth and nail for my dollar. As they bloody well should.

Enjoy!

Optus has had great success with the fusion phone and internet bundles that it has decided to revamp the rest of its product line up.

As early as the start of next month, the current Optus plan line up will be modified to suit the likes of the fusion plans, with some interesting changes.

The changes include shaping increase from 28k to 64k, or even 128k on the higher speed plans. This change is one of many new changes that will not affect older customers, who will probably be wishing they were affected :).

The downside to it is Optus will be counting uploads, as they are on the fusion plans.

The idea behind counting uploads is users are uploading more, and at the aggregate point, uploads must be higher than downloads.. hard to believe..

Counting uploads is generally only ever done for two main reasons, in my opinion.
1. To assist in reducing loading on their international links. The savings to them are that they don’t need to pay for more bandwidth.
2. Uploads are higher than downloads at the aggregate level, and this is causing them to upgrade links.
3. Greed.

First, reason 3. That doesn’t really apply to Optus, as the plans don’t charge excess usage, they are shaped. In the case of Bigpond however, counting uploads means if you go over your 200Mb, even if you capture a virus that is not a direct fault of your own, or have an unprotected Bigpond supplied Wireless Access point, you could have to sell up your house to pay the bill.
Optus shape, and have “unlimited” plans (plans that just keep going, at dial up speed, if you exceed your limit).

Reason 1. If user usage is at a high level, but only marginally high, that upgrading a link to the next price point is too expensive to justify, this could be another way of “reducing the load”. Basically they would reduce load by having the uploads count into the downloads and therefore affect usage.

Or, Reason 2. Uploads are really higher than downloads at the aggregate point, and with this in mind, a link upgrade with users having unlimited uploads could just see more money down the drain.

So, Reason 1 or 2 are the most likely, though I doubt uploads are really rivalling downloads. I think there are more leechers on the optus network than seeders, and YouTube isn’t that much of a problem when you consider the upload speeds we have here in Australia..

Optus will also be offering 8Mbit plans with the service, which will come at a additional $30 cost.

I bet the tigers, baboons, zebras and giraffes will be well fed as a result!

Enjoy!

Telstra’s attempt at delaying the OPEL rollout is one which will fail.

Some considerations need to be placed to decide just how far Telstra are going to try and go, to stop any form of regional broadband investment.

Consideration 1: Telstra is the only supplier in Regional areas.
They have a conflict of interest here, in that they were never going to be eligible anyway, as the point of the funding was to provide competition.

Consideration 2: Telstra are wanting to put more consumers on NextG, simply for the fatter profits.

Consideration 3: Coonan’s case is only launched by Telstra, despite the fact that many other consortiums also did not win, yet could have won easily. Telstra is the only one taking it to the courts.
Telstra was never going to be qualified in the first place, the pricing they have is excessive, and from previous experience, Telstra take anything government funded, as its own and still restrict competitors from accessing it, despite being taxpayer funded infrastructure.

— They have how many Broadband Connect and HiBis ADSL2+ DSLAMs, yet these are shaped to limited ADSL1, for Telstra’s own financial gain… They really love thanking the taxpayer and the consumer for their assistance in the purchases, don’t they.. —

Consideration 4: Regardless of whatever avenue Telstra take to put the case into the courts, and however long they keep it there, they will not become the successful tenderer to any bid placed.
Not because anyone dislikes them (wouldn’t surprise me if many did though), but because it’s the competition’s turn now. Telstra had their years of government funding and investment risk management.
It’s how they got themselves to the trillion dollar (and falling) position they are at today. (I say Trillion, because managed right, the national network has the potential to produce that sort of dollars from now into the future, put in the hands of pigs, like Telstra and its shareholders, well, the asset very quickly becomes devalued, not because Telstra are the bad owner for it, but because Telstra have no idea whatsoever about money management and smart investment, just look at the waste of dollars on ADSL2+… They bought ADSL2+ technology, yet only supply it at ADSL1.. Why not just buy cheaper ADSL1 technology? Idiots.)

The point of the tender is to introduce competition to all of the underserved areas, they are only underserved because Telstra serves them at present. Telstra’s service is excessively priced, and poor value.

Telstra’s point with the legal case is to delay the funding to OPEL. They don’t want to see OPEL get building and save all the NextG customers from Telstra’s greedy hands..

Ask yourself, why else would Telstra spend money on a court case that it won’t win, and even if it did, it’s back to the tender boards to redo the tender, and the result.. someone else other than Telstra, getting the funds.?

They have a lot to lose, and they don’t like that idea..

Telstra, the ticking time bomb will explode. Put the matters in the courts all you like, your wasting your own money, eventually, they will be able to invest, and that investment will see Telstra losing revenue and customers.

No point fighting it continuously, and if you think you can try and push it into a political debate, you’ll lose. Howard still has a lot of support, and given the recent exposure the Labor party has had, you can imagine Kevin Rudd isn’t going to bounce back good after the revelation that he well, isn’t exactly the “Family Guy”, and Wayne Swan’s actions recently.

So, your only real count at the moment is that many will believe Rudd’s plan will work… Well, you haven’t got much support from what I can see, when you look at Coonan’s plans over Conroy’s you see a very clear mark that she is doing better by keeping taxpayer dollars in taxpayer hands…

.. All fun and games isn’t it Telstra? Until you waste so much time and money that the competitors end up ahead of you, and your sitting on.. well, court cases and lawyer bills instead of dollars.

Enjoy!

Telstra is the real cause of children not being able to access the resources they might be able to over the internet to further their own education.

Telstra’s broadband plans are far from giving users the freedom to access the information available on the public internet, with plans containing a puny 200Mb of data, users would get to see the opening slides of the great wall of china, and then be paying through the wall in excess usage charges of $150/GB.

Telstra / BigPond’s marketing theory here is, give them a huge bill in the first month, if they take it to ACA, fine, we’ll waive it, if they pay, good for us, if they whinge, they can get moved to a plan, and still be stuck on the 24 month contract, however, by the time that 24 month contract has finished, many should have forgotten about the excess usage bill and remain customers, until a competitor approaches them with a better deal.

The users in that case appear too dumb, or too uninformed to understand the better offerings are out there, and you don’t have to look past the end of the great wall to find them.

Considering seriously here further though, it’s not just the 256k / 200Mb rip off that is holding education back for kids courtesy of Telstra. A new estate, in Gemfields, Qld is capable of getting broadband, as 2 users are already connected (Telstra claims by mistake). Anyone else in that new estate cannot get a connection however, because of Telstra alledgedly refusing to connect anybody else until they get some $ from the government.

Telstra have had far too many dollars from the government as it is. They’ve had billions upon billions, and further, they had a big advantage no one else will have, which is also worth BILLIONS, if not TRILLIONS. The advantage was being government owned while their entire network was built. The risk is 0, the government owns it all, so the risk is the governments.

If you ask me, Telstra’s $60 bn payment is far from fair payment for the purchase. They get exchange buildings, a australia wide network, DSLAMs deployed, countless hours of staff labour, and the big advantage, that they will be the only one to be government owned while it built a network Australia wide.

The advantage they got is worth billions on its own, as they can be sure that no one else is going to be speedily investing in another national backbone network, exchanges, and so forth at all, as it simply isn’t worth it. So, they get to be the monopoly provider in that area.

But, Telstra refusing to connect services until they get government funds for what seems to be services ready to simply connect is far from fair. It’s absolutely greedy.

They won’t be getting a cent, I am certain of it. They don’t deserve it. Holding kids education away from them for no real reason except political games and greed.

Shame Telstra. Shame.

Enjoy!

At a consumer level, there’s little in the way of pricing structure of a service.

Recently on Telstra’s Now We Are Talking site, Leanne made comments that iiNet get her service for $3.20 and charge her $xx.xx for it.

This would be completely incorrect, as the true costs of supplying a service reach far beyond $3.20.

Telstra have repetitively claimed that the services other ISPs are supplying are below cost services, I don’t believe them, and I have good reason.

Telstra Wholesale, Telstra’s Wholesale body, that supplies services to other ISPs, does so in a manner that leaves Telstra Wholesale one of Telstra’s more profitable areas.

Logic tells us, that if you are selling services to other competitors below cost, that essentially the end of year stats means that they would make something of a loss (or wouldn’t be very profitable). When you consider that dollars coming in from profits have to cover losses, you would consider that the profits would be very low (and not one of Telstra’s top performing areas).

So, that’s how I determine very quickly that Telstra’s “below cost” claim is absolute bullshit, but there’s another way of demonstrating that.

The costs of running an ISP.
Every user an ISP connects to its service has a cost of some sort attached to it, now because the “leeching” argument was put into place again, I thought I’d just simply do two comparisons.

1. This is a service provided on the ISPs own DSLAM, in a exchange.

The Costs are:
1. DSLAM: 24 port unit, cost thousands, each port is likely worth near $200 or more each.
2. Cutover: Each customer Telstra cuts over (that is, connect to the DSLAM) they charge $99 for.
3. LSS or ULL line rental: $3.20 – $17.00, depending on whether ULL or LSS is used. Regular monthly charge for Telstra to simply “bill for” and nothing else.
4. Backhaul from exchange: Connecting the DSLAM to the providers internal network. Can cost hundreds or thousands per megabit.
5. Provider servers. These provide authentication, IP addressing, email, and other services. These cost around $900 or more each, add on maintainence staff.
6. Routers. These provide routing to other access providers and to the internet. A good ISP won’t be running an $80 one. $2000+.
7. International Backhaul. Australia doesn’t have much of an open free hardcore industry, so that has to come from overseas. Those international links are not in plenty supply, and charges are in the hundreds per megabit, per month.
8. Support. Because you are a n00b, you will need support. Those monkeys in support don’t work for free.
9. Billing. They gotta get paid some way.
10. Phone system, sales staff, etc. All those add up.
11. A real office, cause you can’t have 200 workers in your backyard.

The total cost per month to the ISP, is definitely not $3.20, and in fact could very well come close to that $39.95 or whatever is paid to them.

2. This is the wholesale model. Lazy ISPs use this model.

The costs are:
1. Port at exchange: Depending on speed (Telstra choose to make bigger profits on the speed you get the line at, it costs them the same though). $25 – $55 ex GST a month.
2. AGVC/VLAN: This is a LAN style network to the providers server from the DSLAM. Telstra requires ISPs to use Telstra’s network and no one elses for this access. Access isn’t cheap.
3. Authentication Servers: Telstra doesn’t do authentication servers, so they gotta be setup at the other end of the VLAN, and you need to obviously maintain these. Costs are $900 upward.
4. Routers: No point being an ISP if there’s no internet on the other side, this router will link you to the internet or other neighbouring ISP networks. Cost $2000+.
5. International backhaul: International websites aren’t just plug in and access, so you gotta contact SXC or AJC to get some bandwidth, hundreds of dollars a megabit, per month.
6. Support: You are an idiot. Admit it. Now call the support lines to get help. Staff in Australia don’t work for peanuts, and neither should they.
7. Billing: They gotta get dollars out of you to pay Telstra for the port and AGVC link, and cover costs of support, backhaul and hardware, etc. Not a big regular charge per user, but certainly not free.
8. Phone system, sales staff, etc. Not free.
9. Real office, again, those support, sales, customer service staff aren’t comfortable in the backyard, parking their cars for free in a council playground across the road from your house.
10. Nearly missed this one, $99 to get the line activated, and attached to that is a 6 month minimum connection contract, so they charge you to connect, and still want to keep you connected for 6 months.. All Telstra’s terms.

And out of either of those scenarios, the ISP still has to add on a bit to make a profit, and support advertising to get customers, etc.

Now, if Leanne is sure her service is fully provided for $3.20, then I’m certainly going to start my own ISP, and I’ll do it all for $5. I’m not greedy. Reality is, Leanne is confused by the misleading crap Telstra spit on the Now We Are Talking shit website.

This is something the ACCC certainly needs to dig in on and get the misinformation and crap on that site fixed.
If not, then our government needs to fund an information campaign to protect innocent bystanders like Leanne from the bullshit spewed out on Telstra’s website, by their staff to the media, and in their dealings with customers.

It’s one thing to encourage debate on a censored public level, its another to go steps ahead and shape the debate to completely misguide the public.

I’m still waiting for anyone, anyone at all (except telstra, who would likely be able to sell themselves at $3.20), to demonstrate that a full consumer broadband service can be supplied at $3.20.

Or further, anyone at all to demonstrate to me, how exactly services are below cost, when Telstra Wholesale are making big profits? It defies the basic theory of logic. But then, that’s not uncommon from Telstra, who still push for regulations in New Zealand, which they fight tooth, nail and shareholder funds to prevent from happening further in Australia.

Hypocrites? Liars? Definitely.

Enjoy!

The two words I can think to sum up the arguments frrom Telstra, Labor, Optus and our current government to be somewhat of a bitchfight.

We see Telstra slamming any moves by our government to introduce competitive, lower priced broadband services across the nation.

We see Labor slamming any moves by our current government to working towards a solution.

We see Optus slamming Telstra for its lack of a competitive proposal for FTTN.

We see our current government highlighting Labor’s plan as a waste of taxpayer dollars (rightly so).

We then see Telstra attacking Optus because Optus Australian is owned by SingTel, yet Telstra themselves are managed by foreign racists.

Then Labor attack the current government for the current slow speeds.

Optus and Elders win a $900 million grant from the current government to fix regional areas from Telstra’s excuse of competition.

Coonan ends up in court over a vexatious law suit from Telstra.

And the bitchfight continues.

One thing none of them are fighting for is getting current infrastructure utilised! No one is. Telstra have ADSL2+, but they don’t want to use it at ADSL2+.

Optus has the ability to run more backhaul into regional areas to stimulate investment, but they don’t seem to be doing much out of the way of ADSL2+ investment.

Telstra are too concerned about feeding the greedy pigs that manage the company than they are about getting consumers on broadband through the use of Long Line ADSL.

Labor only care about winning an election, and they’ll spend any amount of taxpayer dollars to do that.

The current government want to be at least seen as doing something to solve the problems of them doing nothing for the last few years with the exception of HiBis and Broadband Connect, which they let Telstra take, and now the taxpayer funded assets sit in Telstra exchanges artificially limited as a way of holding the nation to ransom to get the rights to feed the greedy pigs more dollars..

Maybe if 3 of those 4 got together, things might be less of a bitchfight and more of a co-operative approach towards sorting out the future for Australians, and avoiding needless duplication in the process?

Nah, that’s just too far fetched to become reality. Telstra are too concerned about feeding the pigs, Optus don’t want to become a Telstra dependant company through no fault of their own (many areas in Australia are just not worth investing in). The government want to win the election and at the same time solve many of the issues Australians face.

And Labor don’t have the decency to answer an email sent to them in response to an invitation (maybe they are still stuck on Google for the speeds of ADSL2?).

Where’s the bitching heading next? Where’s the solution in all this bitching about each other, instead of bitching about a workable solution to it all?

Enjoy!

Today in the mail I received an invite to a forum conducted by the Labor party, faking an interest in Central Coast broadband services.

They state that the new network would be 40 times faster than current speeds.. So, 40 times faster than 8Mbit (my current speed) is 320Mbit.

Sweet. Got my vote!

Not.

The real story is the definition of 40 times faster than current speeds is at least 12Mbit. That is very misleading. Essentially the gain in Labor spending taxpayer dollars on a network to reach 90% of the population is ‘at least a 4Mbit’ increase.

Wow. 4Mbit. Umm… I’m not a scientist in purchasing decisions but isn’t that a big waste of money, considering current infrastructure is already capable of speeds at up to 24Mbit, but Telstra are just being greedy and shaping it ?

Or.. how about the Generally Available speeds to everyone who can get ADSL2/2+ is in the ballpark of 10 – 15Mbit anyway?

For those interested (I was gonna go, but its at Erina, and its at 10am on a Thursday), the details are:
Thursday August 30, 10.00am at The Erina Room, Erina Fair (The Hive).

I did instead shoot them off an email stating how I would never want to see Conroy in Coonan’s job, he is about as informed on critical issues affecting telecommunications as we Australians are informed about Telstra’s good value backhaul prices (they don’t exist).

Whilst I would love to go and get some idea of what everyone else thinks of the Labor party’s attempt at getting broadband services right, I got better things to do.

Labor’s plan is to create a monopoly again to 98% of the population compares to the Howard government’s plan to duplicate a network with WiMAX and therefore promote competition in the backhaul arena, at the same time as opening up a new broadband delivery method and creating an entirely new layer for competitive services.

That’s the only real reason I am favouring Coonan over Labor, aside from the other fact that Conroy tried to pass off that ADSL2+ would be required to deliver 6Mbps, when in reality, many metro homes get at least 8 – 24Mbps (and therefore Conroy would be wasting money).

The Labor party did very little in the way of research on their plan, very little in the way of how it should be funded, very little remains known about how a competitive framework would be developed to deliver competition and therefore competitive prices to consumers.

There’s no point in having a government half owned infrastructure item if you have a ton of greedy pigs on the other side of it hungry for returns and the government conflicted again between getting those returns and delivering cheaper services.

Best do what you can to help investment in investment lacking areas, and do what you can to ensure where investment is going to occur that it is done correctly for the good of the industry as a whole, and not for the good of greedy pigs only. Every business needs to make a return, but of course every business can control the rate of return in favour of a healthier industry, or at the least, to protect their reputation from going the way of being recognised not as an Australian icon, but to the way of being recognised as a monopolistic pig, Telstra did that themselves.

The other thing with the Labor party proposal is I can’t be too sure how dirty they are getting with Telstra, if they are getting real close to them, I don’t wanna see it come to fruition, as I would much rather see Coonan’s plan go forth and see a regulated monopoly go forth.

Enjoy!