TOCPCs – The Elite Geeks Blog

For some unknown reason, the TV was left on ABC today, and was probably on it for most of the day.

After all the Children’s cartoons flew by, I started hearing the sounds of what can only be described as a waste of time.

Let’s not focus on the fact that I was watching it, and that alone was a waste of time, but let’s focus on what actually was happening that was a waste of time.

There was claims made by some media entities about Peter Costello claiming he would challenge John Howard for the top job 2 years ago.

What kept them from speaking out then through to now is unknown, or maybe they just recently got a kickback from Labor to say that.. Nah, we won’t alledge that.

Anyway, the point here is, for several moments of Question Time today, Wayne Swan, a Labor Member, wasted a lot of Question Time on basically questioning Peter Costello’s meeting with the folks of the media, and that was supposed to be Off The Record.

Costello’s recount somewhat differs from the media entities by “months”, and was completely Off The Record anyway.

The top question that Costello asked, right at the end of the ABC broadcast of it was..

“The questions asked, how do they help Australians… Do they provide answers to childcare? schooling? health?”

He basically outlined that Peter Swan, Labor member had wasted so much of the time today, questioning an event that even if it did happen, was useless to many Australians well being anyway.

And he is paid to be a Labor Member of Parliament, funded from none other than.. well, who pays the government’s wages? You do the math.

Further, they didn’t seem to get any of the many pressing issues relevant to the economy.. even in the open.

The moments I saw I thought, crap, we’d be better off having Rodney Rude or his better opponent, Kevin ‘Bloody’ Wilson in those top jobs, because Costello’s counter remarks were funny, but I’m sure that we can get Rude or Wilson to do it cheaper.

Costello seemed to still have none other than the national interest involved when Swan wasted time with silly questions today. Responses to Swan were funny, but still a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Sack Swan, take his wages for today away. Perhaps that’ll send a clear message that Australian’s don’t want to pay for.. well, attempted exposure of useless information anyway.

I would want these people paid highly to do the job they are there for, governing the well being of our country, and not arguing over who said what, when… More so when it doesn’t do nothing to put my kid through a quality school, ensure Australian’s have access to fair telecommunications services, or fix any health issues or other pressing issues.

Enjoy!

I can never stress the importance of a backup enough.

The same person that had the partition resize issue that other day was having problems starting an application.

It turned out that a while back he had a severe system issue and basically the fix was to reinstall windows on a new drive (smaller though), and instead of reinstalling (or even moving some software folders) the client’s software, they had just placed a short cut to it on the desktop and had the short cut linked into the programs folder on the old drive.

It would have definitely spelt disaster should no one be thinking straight. But, I was.

I realised that we had formatted that old drive, the person believed they had never actually accessed data on that drive and believed that there was no need for them to leave that data sitting there.

The problem was that one application he had so many uses (was pretty critical, never known this person to swear!), was formatted as a result of the users lack of knowing the application was sitting on the old drive.

As far as he knew, F: was an old drive no longer needed, and I would have assumed rightly so too, given that it was old windows, and the user stated he hadn’t a need to access data there in a while.

When you flatten a system and rebuild it, don’t be lazy about it, do a proper job, install the applications (or copy the program’s program file’s sub folder) to the system drive, so at least, when the next person comes by and needs to change things, … they can do so somewhat safely.

All was not lost here however, a fantastic tool, Runtime Software’s Get Data back for NTFS, came to the rescue again, recovering data from a formatted, and written over drive. The good news here is the drive was split into two, and the data writes had occurred at the end of the disk, leaving the first part of the disk.. idle. And a recovery of data on a formatted disk took about 1 hour and a bit.

Enjoy!

That’s an interesting thought.

If I were CEO of Telstra, what would things be like, what would I do differently to the current (and past CEOs).

Let me first state that the idea of a listed company is to release returns for its shareholders, and get them a return on their investment in the company, so I will definitely consider this as a key point in the below.

1. Use the ACCC as a weapon against itself.

I would take the ACCC up on its offer over regulatory certainty on ADSL2+ services, with regard to the requirement to not declaring wholesale rates.

I would definitely accept that.

Because I believe there’s more money to be made from the monopoly on the ADSL2+ infrastructure in regional areas, and if competitors don’t invest there, that’s there loss, no I wouldn’t just keep it retail either, I would wholesale, this is because of the damage to the Bigpond brand name, where many just associate Bigpond and expensive together. So, I would wholesale it, and retail it and do it on higher price terms to ensure they don’t just enjoy reselling us and start investing themselves.

If the ACCC then overturned its decision, I would use that as the basis of my campaign against the ACCC’s regulation (and only it as the basis).

This would leave me able to go in as a clear winner, because competitors have demonstrated they are able to invest in ADSL2+ retail products on their own, and I would definitely challenge a move by the ACCC to regulate ADSL2+, when others have it themselves.

So that would be move 1. Get ADSL2+ running and fulfill demand for ADSL2+ services where no one else has invested. Make the money while we can, before the technology supersedes itself, because Shareholders need returns on their ADSL2+ investment..

2. Arrange for collection of all consumer views.

The reason for this is, in order to get shareholders a fair return on their investment, I would first need to assess the source of the income (no income, no return, right?). So, I would listen to all the consumers current desires in aggregate form, and basically hit one problem out at a time.

Find solutions to the problems that consumers are having, and turn them into happy customers, a happy customer is a long term customer (something Netspace and iiNet both didn’t get the idea of).

Now, before you say this is outlandish, and too far fetched, I disagree. It wouldn’t take armies of staff resources, and would add value to the companies reputation which has been going downhill somewhat. Listening and actioning on consumer complaints by volume will ensure that at least the big issues are looked at, reviewed, and hit square on the head, thus enhancing the income source, and perhaps increasing it, and therefore increasing returns to shareholders.

3. Investigate current asset potential

I would then proceed to investigate the asset the company uses to bring it its customers (and therefore income and therefore returns to shareholders).

I would assess the value of the asset, and what upgrade paths it had, what could we do to enhance our utilisation of the asset to generate better returns, including wholesale access to this asset.

The potential income from a copper wire is both small and massive. It can be used to provide a $0.50c voice service, or it can be used to supply much more, and I would definitely look at all upgrade options to determine what we could do (including FTTN and FTTH) to service consumers with better speeds.

Then after reviewing upgrade paths, I would look at cost reduction, and determine what costs are involved in that asset and how they can be reduced.

That would release returns to shareholders.

4. Develop a business plan

Notice that’s number 4 and not number 1 ? The first mistake you would make is making a plan with bugger all knowledge of what the company is doing as it is.

Plan business goals, over short, medium and long term.

Place this plan into action, and watch its outcomes, develop points where you expect to see results and check the actual result with the expected. If it wildly differs, evaluate plan.

This plan would be the ideal behind bringing in the extra income for shareholders, and therefore a not so critical, but still highly important part of return on investment for shareholders.

5. Watch the enemy.

The enemy is the competition. Keep your friends close, but definitely, keep the enemy closer.

They spend a dollar, you want to know where and what, so you can discover their plans, and certainly either better them, or counter them.

This is a part of returning investment to shareholders, as if a competitor has better value or better priced plans, you can kiss your own income (and therefore shareholder returns bye).

6. Evaluate the current offerings

Right across the board, determine who has the best value offering. Then, determine the costs of supplying that offering. With that in mind, determine the competitor’s goals, and if they are going to gain market share, counter it, by dropping prices or adding more value to the services to keep customers on board.

This adds shareholder value, by increasing customers, or maintaining marketshare, thus, maintaining income and therefore, returns to shareholders.

7. Evalute business costs

Determine where the business spends its money, and how we can hang onto more of it if needed.

If the business is dropping a lot into R&D, sweet, maintain it if the R&D team are not hopeless.
If the business is paying staff to do the jobs of machines, get the machines working.
If the business has high exec bonuses, and the business isn’t performing too well, or has high staff numbers then needed, drop their bonus, afterall, performance is performance.

On the other hand, if the business has investments in progress and is spending on investments, great, maintain the spending and increase if necessary, shareholders get their returns faster if a investment takes 10 minutes and not 10 years.

—

Those are the top 7 I can immediately think of.

I did place a few situations there though.

One I did leave out is dropping prices on backhaul to encourage monopoly / competition investment. I would want to ensure I could make the most income out of all the current assets, and to do that I would want to make sure I wasn’t stopping anyone investing, because in stopping investment, I might shoot my self in the foot because someone else might duplicate and destroy any value I could have made in that investment by dropping price.

So I would definitely drop prices on backhaul to encourage DSLAM deployment investment, and therefore get better returns for shareholders (better them paying for the network usage 24/7 at a “premium ish” rate, then them building their own backhaul network and forcing us down).

Basically, I would do all that the current idiot isn’t doing: Using the current investments to generate a better return! There’s money to be made off the ADSL2+ DSLAMs rolled out, enable them, competitors will invest sooner or later, so milk it while you can. And the same for fibre backhaul, eventually, someone is going to fix it. Somehow. And when they do, all those months and years I could have made truckloads from selling it at a just above highest rates (some will pay that!), would have been destroyed.

It’s like Sydney Homeowners saying their house is worth a gold mine. It’s not if they don’t sell in the current boom.

All it’s going to take for those prices to fall is businesses to rollout elsewhere (and that’s not so far fetched), and those values would come crashing down as everyone looked for housing elsewhere.

So, the Telstra management certainly are not doing all they can to give shareholders a return on their investment. There’s a lot that can be done, without any change to regulation, and without any legal action, or anything really, just a price adjustment, and profits could rise something noticeable…

Enjoy!

I was browsing Whirlpool recently, and discovered that a user was posting that the G9 consortium proposed to “rip out” part of Telstra’s copper network lead me to believe that some are blindly believing the crap spewed out on Telstra’s propaganda machine, or that some people believe a article on “The Australian’s” website is free of errors and is factual and uninfluenced.

The amazing part here is, I told that user on Whirlpool to read the proposal and point out where in the proposal (the SOURCE) does it state that the G9 plan to “Rip out” part of Telstra’s network.

I further asked that user to define how confiscation was occurring when the G9 proposed to pay Telstra at least $5 for the copper tails from the node (very close to the customer house) to the customer.

The user couldn’t seem to provide a valid answer to either of those.

Simply because, I define confiscation the same manner that P-platers in Melbourne would define it after having their cars confiscated for being a bloody idiot.

They get an item of theirs (car) / (copper network) taken away from them against their own free will, and without any form of compensation offered, and they lose all ownership rights to that item.

Just for the sake of highlighting this a little more, I also questioned why the G9 are paying Telstra if they are also confiscating the network.

I don’t see the Victorian government paying those people for taking their cars off them for being dumb wankers.

(Note, I don’t live in Victoria, but I do recall reading a story in the news where a P-plater lost his car for 48hrs whilst driving through a city street at 213kM/hr (a wanker)).

And again we get to revisit the issue of compensation, something the expert taskforce will also be visiting.

Compensation is defined as repayment for the undue damage done to someone, or someone’s assets, without their consent, either deliberate or otherwise, where there is reason to believe the defendant could have otherwise avoided the problem from occurring. This is my definition of it, Google probably has a better one, but for the sake of dumbing it down, that’s as dumb as it gets.

Actually, no, it gets dumber.
Compensation is the repayment, either in the form of asset, or cash, where asset repayment is not possible, as a direct result of damage committed by someone who could have otherwise prevented such damage from occurring, but did not take action despite being fully aware of the problem.

Telstra state that if a FTTN network is rolled out by anyone else, requiring access to their copper network, without adequate compensation, then they will certainly sue for compensation.

I don’t see what damage has been done? If anything Telstra did the damage themselves by sitting on their asses for too long. They had years to move to FTTN / FTTH, but did not do so.
They’ve had all the time in the world to start implementing FTTN even without the ACCC’s permission, so long as they maintained pricing, of a basic service (this is why RIMs are a common occurrance in areas, they could have done FTTN instead of RIMs).

They sat on their hands.

Now a competitor (group of) has decided that, we can do FTTN, and this will also give us a leg up into FTTH when it emerges as viable, and Telstra aren’t happy.

They sat sucking consumers dry and didn’t spend the money they were making and when someone else decides they want to upgrade the network for the benefit of consumers, Telstra cries foul for compensation.

The G9 proposal is somewhat like this:

Add a Fibre to the node “node” at a point near a Telstra pillar.
Install A Fibre cable to the node (this does not need Telstra’s duct, can easily be strung from power pole, ran through sewer, or dig a new trench / use someone elses ducts).

With the node prepared to offer FTTN services, they now just take the distribution side of the pillar’s cable, so this is the copper wires going back to the exchange, and get them plugged into their node on a remote switching platform.

Then, on the customer side, they get all customer lines connected to the node.

Now, with all that connected, customers can remain connected to exchange services, as well, they can be provided a service from the node instead.

Using remote switching they are capable of swapping a customer’s service from node to exchange remotely.

The goal here is to save on technician visits to the node each time the customer might want to change a provider.

The G9 propose a range of possible payment to Telstra for the copper wire they will be renting from them.
They will also likely pay for Pillar Migration service as well, and Telstra won’t be keen to let anyone else but Telstra do such a task, so Telstra still profit massively there too.

I don’t see what Telstra are whinging about really, they are getting their own network upgraded, at someone elses expense, and Telstra will be able to supply services across that network cheaper than what they claim it costs them to provide a service.

If I were Telstra, I’d be shaking hands with them and helping them out every where I could, after all, cheaper costs means higher profits.

That is of course, assuming Telstra is telling the truth when they state the costs of providing a service, I don’t believe them one bit, but oh well, that’s there problem if someone else can do it cheaper.

I go back to the topic now though: Confiscation, What confiscation??

If the G9 are paying for Pillar Migration, and any duct rental, and rental of the last mile copper at regulated (and therefore agreeable) rates, what’s the big whinge about? Telstra not happy being treated better than they treat their competitiors? Oh well, it’s not that hard to get used to paying cheaper for a service than they state they pay themselves.. Of course, they are full of sh*t, but that’s not for me to decide.

What compensation? They still get the revenue from the copper network, so .. what compensation? If anything, I am sure the G9 can sort this out.

Appparently, it costs 17.70 for a copper ULL, so I say the G9 might just do that, give Telstra their 17.70, and shut them up, and still take revenue anyway from offering competitively priced services via a wholesale only model which creates competition.

I do hope the Expert Taskforce chooses a G9-like proposal, not because Telstra are who I dislike, but because we’ve seen Telstra, and they’ve done a pathetic job, I’m sure the G9 couldn’t be worse, and should in fact be better, considering they are the ones responsible behind the majority of Telstra’s fines and anti-competition notices they’ve had dished out over the last few years and have been forced to stick to.

So, how could they do worse? They’d be hypocritical to be doing the same as Telstra did to them, so we can only expect better.

Enjoy!

If you ever wanted a good reason not to vote Labor (aside from the many good reasons out there already, such as Labor’s previous financial mismanagement, or Labor’s Communications n00b, Stephen Conroy being demonstrated as uninformed by the current Communications .. well, better than n00b, but she’s no script kiddie, Helen Coonan, some time ago when the speeds proposed by Conroy were 6Mbps, to which Coonan politely outlined that many were getting 12 – 24Mbps).

The reason is simple, in a recent article published on “The Australian”s website, it is written:

TELSTRA is holding detailed discussions with the Labor Party about its proposals for a high-speed broadband network.

Not a big problem there, except they are holding detailed discussions with the party who said they’d spend money from taxpayers on a network the private sector are happy to build, Telstra no doubt are wanting a big piece of that, and also the ability to price services at exhorbitantly high prices.

But The Australian has learnt that Telstra’s head of regulatory affairs, Phil Burgess, has been in regular contact with Opposition communications spokesman Stephen Conroy and other senior ALP figures.

Here’s the big problem. Fat Phil himself has been talking to Stephen Conroy.

What’s worse than an uninformed idiot?

An uninformed idiot that appears to the masses to know what he is talking about.

That’s what seems to be getting created here with Telstra’s chats to Conroy, and that’s not a good thing. I never want to see Conroy in charge over key decisions on the nation’s telecommunications network, he has previously demonstrated himself to be the wrong person in the wrong job. Give the communications spokesperson job to someone who actually knows about communications, and can at the very least learn a little more about regulation of that network.

Putting Labor up with Conroy in charge and Telstra’s self appointed Lard together at the top of the nation’s network is a recipe for high prices and low competition.

The nation needs and deserves better, and fortunately enough, better does exist (no, its not greatly better, sorry folks), the better of the two is Coonan, who has clearly shown at least a way out of a very sticky situation that the government had created (selling Telstra as one item in the first place).

I believe with Conroy there, taxes would rise, or the outcome would be something that would affect the industry very negatively.

The way they’ve got themselves out of that mess is very good so far. The new Expert Taskforce being the key for metro areas, and the great decision of OPEL for regional areas.

Coonan was likely looking forward also when she decided that the taxpayers shouldn’t fund a network the private sector would pay, because if you spend the money, you gotta get it back one way or another, and a government spending more money than they have? Well the money comes from your back pockets. So, best keep Coonan in for the future, and avoid paying more for a basic service now that the current government have actually opened their eyes a little wider to the broadband landscape and the issues surrounding it. (I would expect them to be more proactive in future when more issues arose with innovation -assuming they did).

With all that in mind, one can safely assume however, that many, many users nationwide would be doing perfectly fine with an uncapped (both directions) ADSL1 connection, maybe if a government committed to delivering that, and just that, costs would blow down, and we’d have more proposals on the table from those willing to do that?

On the other hand, there’s no kidding ADSL has its limits, so a wireless technology is probably more ideal.

Enjoy!

Telstra has decided to proceed and upgrade its Cable network to offer 30Mbps.

But, it didn’t stop there however, it has decided that it will only upgrade the speeds to 30Mbps and offer those speeds to 67% of the population, again, something Telstra are specialists in, is limiting the service a consumer can get.

This news was used by Coonan’s department to slam Labor right into its place, showing further that it’s proposal to take taxpayer funds, and do something that the private industry is keen to do by itself more and more, is a great display of poor decision making (and they aren’t even elected yet).

Here’s the flipside to that though, I do see clearly where they are coming from. If they get a network built out as far as they can get it to be, then they are bringing the entire nation ahead of its time and are future proofing themselves.

What they must consider at this point is, perhaps FTTN isn’t the technology for regional areas, and perhaps the same is true for metro, perhaps the true technology to be used is FTTH.

The real news about FTTH isn’t that it’s future proof to a point where communications will be faster than the human thought process, or communications could be faster than our machines can physically cope with, but rather, a message is sent right back to Telstra.

If they don’t co-operate and participate as an active member of the telecommunications industry, the industry can easily stick them in their place by rolling out a fibre to the home network that clearly should tell Telstra to stick its copper where the sun don’t shine.

That’d cause them a mass, no beyond mass, an extremely painful situation with revenue loss exceeding profits and even revenue loss exceeding resale asset value.

The copper network as they know it could in a matter of just months lose more than 20% of their revenue and over the period of a year dig deep into their overall revenue and profit, therefore sending their overall performance down the drain.

That’d be bad news for Telstra and all of its shareholders.

They’d have just their mobile network and whatever loyal retail customers they can hang on to.

I should add here though, they claimed they added more customers to their broadband services, and the performance of the NextG network has been strong enough to hold off complete starvation and offset any overall loss.

But people should note that there were times where Telstra was making $4bn.

Telstra should also be making much larger profits now too, after sacking of staff and overall cost transformations.

Sol doesn’t deserve a bonus just yet in my opinion, the performance has yet to be demonstrated in full. The cutbacks on costs haven’t been fully reflected, and all he has demonstrated really is that he has been able to deceive many more Australians into signing up for excessively priced broadband, and using taxpayer funded CDMA infrastructure to offer NextG services, which it has had some success with, likely due to those wanting access on the run, or those it sold short when it used Pair Gains systems or those that can’t get broadband taking NextG services as the service of “before last resort”.

He can deserve a bonus when those marks move more solidly, when you see profits increase due to those staff losing the jobs, when you see profits clearly show the gain made from cost realignment.

Enjoy!

A new release on the DCITA website is the Expert Taskforce guidelines for the provision of a broadband network to Metro and Major Regional Australia funded solely by the private sector.

They have released draft guidelines for any interested parties to comment on.

I jumped on this as soon as I could and found some very interesting points in the document.

Let’s start with the ones the Telstra crew might pay attention to:

3.2 (iii) (iii) [The Expert Taskforce also considers that:] if required, proposed arrangements should provide appropriate compensation to affected parties.

This point is key. If there is compensation due to anyone for infrastructure being taken over, or any investment being stranded, and the other party has a just case for compensation, then they should certainly be compensated.

That is, if Telstra can’t provide a service from investments it has made, or any other ISP can no longer service a customer as a result of the proposed network, they should be duly compensated for any proven loss that they can justify.

This should certainly not include the party’s costs of providing a service however, it should only include the marginal loss they may have from having to pay someone else to service their customers. The rule applies to infrastructure also, where DSLAMs for example have been installed and a provider can no longer directly service a customer and are forced to pay another party, they should only be compensated to the point where there original costs, and there original margins are taken into account.

If they stated the cost of providing a service is $5.00 a customer, and they sell that service to a customer for $20, and they have to pay $10 to someone else to provide that service instead, the compensation about is simply the difference, $5 in this case.

The same rule applies to Telstra, who seemingly get great joy in overstating their costs.

3.1 (b) (iv) [Having regard to the Terms of Reference provided by the Australian Government, the Expert Taskforce considers that:] the ability for the investor to earn a commercial return commensurate with its costs and risks of investment;

This news here is also a key point for anyone thinking of investing in a new broadband network.

Risk is what I want to highlight here.

What risk is there in investing in a broadband network? Let’s think: Well, in Australia we have just one dominant provider who provides nearly all the industry’s telecommunication services.

That provider is probably the only threat to anyone in the industry, since other members of the industry lack either the balls or the money to invest and take Telstra head on in a serious manner that would drastically affect services they provide (eg. Someone who provides services without even having to once speak of Telstra to provide it).

And with a mandated monopoly, that is, a guaranteed term of no competitor equipment competing with yours, your risk is further lowered, to a level where pretty much the risk of investing is 0.

The investment risk is what they are speaking of in that point, and commensurate means just that, highlights the risk of the investment.

A no risk investment in this day and age doesn’t get you a million bux, in fact off $1, it gets you something like 6c. A high risk investment, like the poker for example, might net you gains of $40 or more per $1, and naturally that is commensurate with the risk of the investment (you could lose completely!).

So, with all that in mind, the risk level of a broadband network with regulated provisioning is certainly a very low risk investment, and as such, returns on any investment are not expected to be high.

Again to highlight that point, is this little fantastic point, which I am sure is music to ears (literally) of many, many consumers and competitors out there:

3.14 Consumers should face the lowest possible retail prices for services provided using the new network infrastructure. However, services need to be priced so they are economically viable. As discussed in paragraphs 3.17 to 3.23 below, ongoing competition, underpinned by effective open and non-discriminatory access arrangements, is important in delivering these price and choice benefits to consumers.

So, basically they are saying that any prices proposed on a network must be viable (so they network gets paid off and will keep the business running in the long term), but consumers should face lowest possible retail prices.

This is good news, because the focus is on the retail price the consumer pays.

Telstra should know this themselves, considering they have a large share of broadband connections and I would place a strong bet (no risk, this one) that the majority are taking 256k cheap connections. They aren’t shopping for speed, they are shopping for price.

They want broadband so the kids can get stuff quicker than dial up, and that’s all they really give a rats about.

The professionals in the industry will certainly look for the fastest, best value option, and that’s where the niche market lies. Professional users aren’t all of the broadband users in this country and in fact are outnumbered to a large extent by “general residential” users.

So with that in mind, those general residential users generally have no idea what they are buying and if its the cheapest, it’ll do them!

Consumers are a strong key part of the proposal.

I did take the time to use the email address provided to highlight to them that the current situation isn’t 100% ideal and things need to be considered to change the marketplace for the better, not because consumers need high speed, but because consumers need competition, they need choice. They don’t need artificial level competition either, like we have now where we have 200+ lazy, half arsed resellers who couldn’t be bothered to spend money on rolling out equipment (that’s right, they are down right lazy, if they had 100,000.00 they wouldn’t put it into new hardware, I am sure), and then we have the 10+ competitors who will roll out infrastructure, but only where there is a competitive market to do so.

I posted this on whirlpool, but thought it was more deserving here.

Backhaul is a continued problem in many areas.
Competitors will happily invest in areas where there is competing backhaul and customer numbers to make a return. Where they are not investing is areas where Telstra is the only backhaul option.

The industry needs to change for better competition, but that is stuck right in the middle of a conflict:

Competitors won’t invest in areas where there is no backhaul.
Backhaul won’t invest in areas with no competitors.

So, demand is waiting on supply, and supply is waiting on demand. None of those will move because each other isn’t sure whether the demand will increase, or the supply will come.

Supply won’t come for fear of Telstra lowering its prices below the prices they have, thus forcing them out of the market, or making an investment decision pointless.

Demand won’t come for lack of backhaul investment, and Telstra’s prices on backhaul are too high to go in and find out if supply will arrive if demand is generated.

Running your own backhaul network is easiest, but only really worth it if you can get big customer numbers in an area and be sure that you can make a return on investment.

All a big “Jam”. Something needs to change that, someone needs to make a move, or work with the other to see that both supply and demand get aligned right to make backhaul investment a no brainer, otherwise, what does industry expect will change?

Or are they all happy being lazy, half arsed resellers sucking at Telstra’s teats all day?

Enjoy!

That’s the magical question put forth to the leaders today when they are ready to go forth and choose a supplier to win the rights to building Australia’s First FTTN network.

Are consumers prepared to pay more for faster speeds?

Ask yourself (to Telstra): Do you think consumers care more about the speed of their broadband service, or more about the price they pay to access a basic broadband service?

The answer doesn’t take more than a split second to find. The reason G9 got in on FTTN, is because if Telstra did it, they’d have serious business hassles, on the other hand, if they do it now, they will make average low returns on it, and can enhance those returns as the infrastructure is paid off.

Think of it like a mortgage on a house, it eventually works its way down, and all of a sudden, you live rent free, or alternatively, get rent.

But that’s a problematic topic of its own.

The issue being bought up: Are Consumers Prepared To Pay More, is a key issue.

There’s no real point running a fibre cable to every node in Australia if there’s no one going to be able to afford it, simply because it’s faster speeds at higher prices.

The price Telstra proposed for a 512k service with basic telephone access was $59 ex GST for a Wholesale Rate.

This price simply cannot be allowed, regardless of who you are (Telstra Shareholder, or Common Consumer).

Australia needs a network that encourages take up of services, then, when take up consumes, users will discover they want faster, or more data, and in following that through, we can see that they will progress to faster connections as technology requires them to.

Many right now, without a doubt get by on a 256k connection, much like all those poor buggers sitting on dial up still due to no access to alternative infrastructure and Telstra and its laziness (Pair Gains), or the lack of funding to supply those areas, or the timing of OPEL’s announcement and Telstra’s threat to sue Coonan drawing the Mid 2009 date out longer for their own pig feeding schedule.

I mentioned the key points to be considered in an FTTN proposal by any half reasonable person, which are basically, does it satisfy current, and near future consumer demand? All nodes can be upgraded in any proposal, so that points pretty much a self resolving point, but providing services at prices consumers will afford and be able to use.

Enjoy!

This isn’t a post to tear Labor apart, but rather, just to highlight some of what is spat by Senator Stephen Conroy.

He recently wrote an article for The Australian (so it is biased), stating that in mid-2009, Coonan’s plan of spending $1 billion bucks on giving Regional Australia competition could prove to be a waste of dollars.

The first thought that runs to my head is, no, you are wrong you incompetent moron, spending $1 billion to generate competition is going to be $1 billion well spent on ensuring Regional Australia gets three things. Competitive access to basic telecommunications services at good value prices, and two, innovation between carriers to set products apart, and three, competitors will have better choice of products to wholesale, and more methods of innovating themselves.

So, we have what can step into a multilayer ideal where the consumer is the goal of all parties.

eg. Telstra has a copper network and has customers paying excessive rates for ADSL1. OPEL plan to put ADSL2+ speeds in exchanges to give consumers both faster speeds, and a better price. Telstra will be keen to maintain market share, so will likely want to match the OPEL product by offering faster speeds than OPEL, or cheaper prices on ADSL1.

The win there is a combination of price and innovation, and all it will cost for it to start its fury is $1 billion!

Another example of a win for consumers is.

eg. Telstra has a outdated, inferior NextG network, which offers speeds at pathetic, excessive prices. OPEL plan to come along and add a new, innovative, and top of the line WiMAX network to the lineup, which will offer speeds faster than NextG, and at prices a lot more sane than Telstra. Telstra won’t want to waste those dollars spent on NextG and will drop prices to maintain market share. Competitors come along and use the WiMAX network as a form of backhaul for their own different style of service, which is also cheaper than Telstra and OPEL. Consumers discover they have many, many choices.

The win there is a price based win for consumers, a future proofing win for consumers, a competition win for consumers, an innovation win for consumers, and all it costs .. a small $1 billion bucks.

That’s a big win, when you consider that without it, consumers will be stuck, paying the same rate, day in, day out for a slow, overpriced, artificially limited Telstra or Telstra Wholesale service.

Then you consider the other side of Conroy’s argument, the side that would cost a lot of money, for perhaps a long-term future proof gain, however, in the wrong hands, could see consumers paying through the roof for access to services that are able to be produced for just $1 billion.

Labor’s plan is to create a national FTTN network in a public, private partnership. It’s unclear who Labor prefers to be rolling that network out, however the one clear item is that they are happy to blow $4 billion of taxpayer funds doing it.

It’s a mass spend for a gain. It’s future proof though, FTTN is an upgrade path to FTTH, and will avoid the costs later down the track of upgrading regional australia.

However, is running Fibre around regional areas a move that is best right now? When many regional areas don’t have total demand for a full fibre optic network.

Part of me says: Yes, because if its not done now, we will be waiting many, many years for another upgrade when WiMAX’s lifetime ends.

Part of me says: No, because we got years, years, years out of the copper wire in the streets now, and it’s not finishing there, if wanted, they could install VDSL2, or UDSL (200Mbps) and provide services to customers, they also have the option of bonding lines to produce higher speeds as well. So, copper isn’t at the end of its life yet, and it still has some 5 – 10 years left on it before our technology demands will reach those of a typical ADSL2+ connection.

Based on the copper network argument and the lifetime from it, we can be relatively certain that no matter what technology that goes out, it will have some lifetime on it to perform to expectations before consumer demand increases and an upgrade will be necessary (or when the OECD says our networks suck again).

WiMAX being a young developmental technology still, is prone to be enhanced and advanced in many, many ways, and the speeds are just one area they will enhance on (much like Intel, they went from P3 to several stages of P4 in just 4 years), actually, I should also mention here Intel are a strong investor in WiMAX.

WiMAX is certainly in my opinion not a lemon technology, and one where compression, pipe widening, spectrum manipulation, and various other technology innovations might occur to release faster speeds and greater distances.

And again, it will likely only cost just a few hundred million to swap WiMAX with another technology should it ever prove a wrong path many years down the track.

So, I sit with Coonan’s plan is ideal for regional areas, because it’s cheaper on the taxpayer, and offers much the same as what we’d get from FTTN.

I ask: Do you expect WiMAX to be innovated, just like ADSL1 was, beyond it’s initial 6Mbps, to speeds where ADSL2+, or VDSL2 is at today, of 24 – 50Mbps?

It’s fairly obvious to me that it shouldn’t be too hard or impossible for them to pull 24Mbps out of this new technology.

And again, Coonan’s plan aides competition in investing. A FTTN network does not do this, as it simply is an upgrade of Telstra’s network.

In related news also, we can expect to see FTTN guidelines released in the coming day or so, and there is a 30 day timeframe for users to disagree with those, so I will certainly be taking a look at those as soon as I can! I’m interested to see their thoughts on how a proposal should enhance competition in the current environment, and whether they’ve actually looked into some of the problems that exist in the environment, and whether any future problems have been factored in, for example, what if an FTTN supplier decides to use anti competitive tactics just like Telstra has done previously and still do to force competitors out of the market…!

Enjoy!

In another delay tactic move, Telstra has chosen to play a personal card against the Minister for Communications herself, the intelligent Senator Helen Coonan.

Telstra’s move is basically legal action to sue the Minister herself for alledgedly agreeing to the OPEL proposal and changing the terms midway.

What actually seems to have happened here is when the announcement of Australia Connected happened, the terms of the proposals was for $600 million, with the oppourtunity for more.

The oppourtunity for more funding was always an option from the word go.

The companies could all make their proposals and try and fetch the $600m (as they all do, go straight for the maximum), with the possibility for more to be added afterwards.

There is nothing at all stopping companies bidding for more, or stating they would include funds of their own (more or less), and so forth.

Telstra’s proposal was a snatch and run for the $600m without giving anything of their own to enhance it.

In the words of Coonan herself, the better proposal won. She, like me, also seems to believe that its just sour grapes from Telstra, however, it seems to stem past sour grapes.

The tactic here by Telstra seems to extend more to the let’s just mount OPEL in legal action to delay them and therefore keep our PSTN revenue on the increase.

Telstra are in a very threatened state right now, and they know it. Why else would you spend MINDLESS amounts in legal action that you will definitely LOSE, if you don’t have anything to gain?

Telstra don’t have anything to gain from the OPEL proposal, but they have a lot to lose, when OPEL visit many areas with their infrastructure rollout, Telstra will be losing customers by the bucket load, because many customers are sick of Telstra’s overpriced services.

OPEL will at the very least force prices down, at the most, bring on more investment (which is likely).

If you are a shareholder of TLS, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, get out now, you’ll be supporting a company that is going to see a decline, no matter which way you look at it.

Virgin are going in with Optus infrastructure with a $60 unlimited calls and 4GB 512k broadband connection, which is available all over metro areas to the majority of the population.

OPEL will have ADSL2+ and WiMAX services at prices up to around $60 wholesale max, so about $80 retail, and be bringing faster speeds.

iiNet and Internode will be escalating their rollouts after market certainty increases around FTTN, and if FTTN does go to the G9, we’ll see the consortium investing in the rollout.

If it goes to Telstra, well Australians aren’t fully doomed, as Telstra won’t be chasing a competition blockout, and so can simply build beside Telstra in every street just as Telstra did with Optus HFC.

If it goes to the G9. Well, we get to see a new Telstra as well, who will simply be a provider of aged, mutilated copper wire, and they’ll be using their HFC network to provide services to customers, as well as their outdated NextG network, when OPEL get WiMAX running!

So, the marketplace is all shaping up to give Telstra a royal kick in the behind, and Telstra’s legal action is all just a response to this to try and keep things going for a while longer while it is strung up in court cases, wasting shareholder dollars.

Sol, when you grow a brain and use it, you should then take the top of Telstra and start working with industry.

Again, I say, look at BT in the UK, who has done structural seperation, not by force, but to work with industry, and they’ve said they’ve been very, very profitable.

Why doesn’t Telstra listen to BT?

Well, they are ignorant, they proved that by not bothering to sign a letter the ACCC drafted that would mandate them rights to retail ADSL2+ at alledged loss making prices (Telstra claim competitiors are buying services at a price that leaves them at a loss, well, why do they retail ADSL2+ at the same price as 8Mb, if they are making a loss?).

One thing is certain when it comes to telecommunications and Telstra: There is certainly more inconsistent childish games, misleading information, threats of terrorism, and wastes of shareholder funds to come from the idiots over at Telstra.

Enjoy!

Telstra, while bitching at the government for not giving into their temper tantrums and linking possible investment by other companies to both, global warming and terrorism, has decided that they will apparently take some of the $4.1 billion flagged for the FTTN network if they become successful, and are using these funds to upgrade their HFC network to 30Mbps.

The HFC upgrade is cheaper than an FTTN network, but suffers from inherent issues.

HFC is a shared medium, which means all data travels down the single cable and shares all available bandwidth. Wait. That line sounds familiar. Wasn’t it used by Telstra in attacking OPEL for using WiMAX due to being a shared bandwidth resource? Well, the HFC network is very much the same.

Foxtel moved to Digital some time ago, and that has left the HFC network open with some spare channels on it for more bandwidth to be provisioned, so this opens the door to them providing faster speeds on the HFC network.

One would assume that, with faster speeds, more data would be available? In perspective, if you have a 12GB Cable connection at 10Mbps a second, and they times the speed by 3 to 30Mbps, shouldn’t the data also increase 3 times, to 36GB?

And considering the technology upgrade is a cost saving upgrade, the price comes down?

Unlikely, but what is the giant of whinging going to fall back on now? HFC is completely unregulated. Anyone signing with cable can do so under their own choosing, full well aware its not regulated, and prices are the core of competition.

That being the case, Telstra still charge $150 a GB on their Cable plans.. And they certainly can’t blame regulation for those prices, so what is to blame Telstra? Greed is the single answer that can apply here.

The whole concept of recent news from Fat Phil:
1. Pick anyone else and you’ll get terrorism.
2. Pick anyone else and you’ll get global warming.
3. Stuff it, we’ll spend the money on the HFC network, let me have FTTN (and we’ll still sue)

… is all just propaganda designed to incite the uninformed into believing his Fat arse.

One could assume with threats of terrorism being spouted by him, and fighting with the government in an unreasonable manner (blackmail, etc) that they would suspend his VISA and deport his sorry arse.

Well, one can still hope. I’m not mean, other’s have wished he would get run over by a combination of bus, train, car, etc. (and the same applies to Sol).

I think they just need to revisit the character he is purporting and determine if its that sort of character that is deserving of a VISA to live, and work in Australia- it doesn’t say hold the nations telecommunications network to ransom…

Enjoy!

In what can only be believed as a temper tantrum from the big baby themselves, Telstra’s public affairs nuisance Phil Burgess recently was cited in the media.

Basically, Fat Phil states that if Telstra didn’t get their way with their temper tantrum argument on FTTN, Australia would be “vulnerable to terrorist attacks”.

This is obviously nothing but more propaganda to incite fear into the masses of uninformed folk out there who know no better and might believe this trash.

Realistically, (Phil can’t think that way it seems), the countries telecommunications networks could be provided out of Iraq itself and we’d be in no different a position then we are now.

There’s a few reasons why, but essentially, the network can be broken into at various points, points like pillars, or even right at a customer house if someone knew what they were doing, could be patched into and the telecommunications “privacy” compromised.

But, the reason Phil stated as bringing us to a terror attack is that if the network isn’t with Telstra, for some strange reason, ASIO and the police, and others would have great difficulty in gaining surveillance (tapping of phone lines, etc).

That’s interesting to say that, considering Phil is suppossed to be the head of Telstra’s Public Affairs unit, why? Telstra’s a telecommunications company.

Telstra themselves SHOULD know by now (considering they have the nation’s largest) that all communications traffic is IP traffic.

As such, to tap a phone line, it can be done from the ice caps if you can get satelitte reception to administer the servers on the network.

In this day and age nearly everything is administered remotely, when you get a line connected at a rental place, that $59 they charge you, isn’t for someone to get off their fat arse, go down to your telephone exchange and wire you in, nope, it’s going straight to Telstra’s pocket, with the exception of perhaps 5 minutes @ 15.00 an hour going to the telephone consultant you speak to for pushing a few buttons on the computer to assign a phone number to the copper cable.

The same administration is possible on IP networks when it comes to recording calls, you can indeed log a call straight to a file whilst at the same time allowing the conversation to continue with no real human resources necessary (except someone to push a few buttons on a keyboard to set the recording up).

And the same goes for tracing a call, all Telstra need to do to find the destination of a particular call (or an incoming call) is search their databases for it (something like 1 minute).

And it doesn’t really cost them $2 or so to keep those silent numbers silent (a database flag determines “listed” or “unlisted”).

So, the argument that we are under greater risk of a terror threat due to having infrastructure in remote hands is absolute trash, from the king of trash himself, Phil.

Ask the defence forces themselves, who happily get their capacity from Optus, and not Telstra.

They don’t seem to be too concerned about Optus and its Singapore ownership.

I dare say the biggest issue would be incompetence, and I am sure we are likely to find a heap of incompetent telco staff among the ranks in Telstra.

Phil seems to be presenting himself as one, seemingly lacking the basic knowledge behind the networking components of a national telecommunications network that the company he represents owns. It’s very basic stuff. I don’t even work for Telstra (or any related company) and I already can figure out how they would rig that up.. Why can’t Phil?

The real story here is Phil is attempting to spit more misleading crap into the media to encourage more support from the uninformed, one can assume here that it’s not going to be bought, no one wants to pay excessive prices for access to a very basic telecommunications service.

Enjoy!

I sent an email to Netspace Support (an official support medium) questioning the usage figures as being incorrect.

The reason behind this is my router supports logging of data usage and I was looking at it, and the usage meter as the line continually crept closer to the 100% mark, despite the routers logs showing we still had a few GB or more left!

I investigated further by looking at bandwidth consumption over the period of an hour and more.

For the time period between the usage meter updating, and my check of the router, the usage figures varied wildly (by several hundred MBs).

I realised this couldn’t be right, and the router certainly is logging true stats after a complete network search to try and prove the router was lying.

And of course, the router was right, Netspace had been adding more usage to the tune of hundreds of MB for hours after! This continued for sometime, until eventually they shaped our connection.

What’s truly amazing here is, I didn’t hesitate to contact them, emailing them on the 22nd of July, which by now is some 9 days or more since I discovered and reported the issue using an official support medium.

I then sent 6 more follow up emails in the coming days after having no response, except an automated response defining the ticket ID number.

When we had issues way back in February, when we moved with Nutshape, we found them to be on several different levels, incompetent.

However, we were forced to stick to the 6 month contract, because they fear I might have cancelled and they would get slogged with the fee for us disconnecting within the 6 month timeframe Telstra enforces on a competitor to hold a port connected for (or face a $100 fee).

Despite the fact I outlined to Netspace I use my connection DAILY (or for a better word, HOURLY), and it’s a pretty essential part of my day to day life, they insisted I sit with them for 6 months.

So, we decided that rather then break the contract (and have to pay 6 x monthly fee to get out of it- RIP OFF), we would sit with them, and the very moment we could get away from them, we would (and relax Netspace, I won’t forget, there’s a calendar entry for it, but that’s not only it, the same day is a best mate of mines Birthday!).

When is a considerable timeframe for a response to a rather important matter from an ISP using an official support method?
Shouldn’t around 3 days max be the ideal? 4 days for busy periods..?

Exetel, an ISP that promotes itself as a no frills ISP, providing NO SUPPORT, except where required (phone line fault, etc), seemingly do a lot better job then these monkeys at Netspace.

Netspace factor support services into their prices (a reason why they are considerably higher), and they proudly present themselves as providing World Class Customer Service.

Again, just like in February, such World Class Customer Service can only be found in Third World countries, because it seems when it comes to Netspace and alledged Australian World Class Customer Service, you might as well as go to an ISP shipping calls to India… You’d get a response!!

I’m counting the days to the time where I tell these n00bs to GAGF. I’ve absolutely had enough of them, and I want to assure anyone considering Netspace for an internet connection: Sure, it’s reliable for the most part, but you can do better, MUCH BETTER. Go elsewhere, run for the hills.

Enjoy!

Wireless ISP BigAir has beat the lot of them to getting WiMAX off the ground, with wireless ISP BigAir set to roll out and release WiMAX servies across Sydney and Melbourne in coming months.

BigAir also propose to expand services into Brisbane further after.

This comes with the common Telstra play that WiMAX is old generation and won’t go far, won’t service the needs of Regional users for the long term.

Sol, what do you say to BigAir, who are investing in WiMAX networks across capital cities (where FTTN / FTTH is the best technology)?

WiMAX will be able to deliver to users fast speeds, over large distances, in fact, to cover a city with WiMAX, you could do the entire CBD with just 4 towers (one in each corner to focus coverage right round).

On the other hand, to get coverage for 20 – 50km from a CBD, just smack a tower on the tallest building right in the center of the city, and you’ll get coverage spread right round.. Naturally it won’t be of the highest, highest speeds, but last year I head WiMAX was reaching speeds in excess of 30Mbps+, so that’s a big plus!

If you look at the attitude taken by Telstra’s CEO Sol Trujillo, you generally see the common rhetoric being played, that is the dollars going to Singapore are a bad move, despite the fact that Elders are just as much as a partner in this as is Optus.

So, why all the sour grapes?

Why all the, what can only so far be described as lies, spread to play down the WiMAX plan by the government, when private sector themselves find WiMAX a viable technology for city areas?

Why should we be forced to pay ‘typical Telstra prices’, when competitors are offering better?

Why should Telstra, in light of news that others are also seeing WiMAX as a viable solution for provisioning services, be believed at all?

This stems back to the FTTN debate as well, why should they get FTTN and Australia suffer typical Telstra prices, when competitors keep proving, they can do the job better?

I think Telstra might be best retiring from telecommunications, and let the professionals do the trick, ie, those who know how to roll out networks and innovate, and bring faster speeds to consumers at cheaper prices. Clearly, Telstra don’t know how to do this.

Enjoy!

Limits on usage are some what of the norm here in Australia.

Generally you don’t get an unlimited internet connection, you instead, get a limit of xx(x) GB and after you reach that limit, you are slowed right down to dial up speeds.

There are a few driving forces behind this, as opposed to countries like Japan, where unlimited, fast and affordable are probably used so much there, that the words have lost meaning and it’s a standard of expectation in a broadband service purchase.

Force 1. International Connectivity.

It apparently costs something like 10 times more for Australian ISPs to get data from US to Australia, then it does Japan to USA.
This cost is somewhat prohibitive in allowing unlimited plans, simply because they charge a consumer $60 for the internet, and can’t realistically provision 24Mbps of unlimited usage on the cables for that same price as well as all other costs of data.

Force 2. Localised Content (lack of).

Japan has a lot of content that they source within their own country, essentially all their data needs are matched because they have little need to go over to the USA for any webpage data (the majority don’t read english), as well, they have little need for content from other countries, simply because of language.

The same is true for other countries in similar circumstances, like Sweden and so forth. Little need for international connectivity, because most content would need to be in their own language.

On our links, 80% of content is imported from the good ol’ USA (and other areas).

That means that we grab a lot of content from the USA, and don’t do much locally.

There’s a force that can change this though: Local content.

If bandwidth costs and so forth in Australia dropped to a reasonable amount, we’d be able to reduce our dependancy on content from the USA.

I think the reverse is also more true in that we should instead stop importing content, and start producing more of our own in Australia.

Surely, there are enough talented individuals out there to do similar that is done in the US, and try and at least reduce the amount of content we import and instead start producing content that is worthy for export? Get other nations interested in our content?

The way of no limits is possible however, it works based on a different theory to the “unlimited*” and “unlimited!” scenario.

What you would do as an ISP is setup your service centered around a contention ratio only. So users are allowed to milk up as much data as they want (you still need to log usage), and as a responsible ISP, to maintain a contention ratio of 20:1, you give every 20 estimated users online 1Mbps of bandwidth.

Now, say for example, one hour there is a sudden surge, and this is just one hour of a whole month, and the link is saturated, you would enforce a AUP, which basically allows shaping of the connection for a certain timeframe, until demand drops.

Should demand not drop, you would provision an additional megabit, and if necessary rise prices across the entire affected range by the extra it costs to provision.

The theory here is that all users get a fair go at access, those that excessively use it get throttled down for busy busy times.

The ISP makes a commitment to its customer base to not pocket the cash, and instead maintain a ratio and ensure a link isn’t overly full.

The essential idea is users get real unlimited services, except where demand stops it, therefore ..

.. The Way Of No Limits ..
becomes a reality.

Such an idea I have no doubt is workable, as it stands now, the current method is more profitable because you obviously can cut links down to size, where as the other method works on customer numbers, and not actual usage (of course you could also even monitor usage and provision based on saturation).

With PIPE planning to build a cable over to Guam sometime soon, such unlimited plans could perhaps be closer?

Enjoy!

An article several days ago was printed in ‘The Age’, Singapore was found to own a lot of Australian resources.

They own:

Optus Australia.
This ownership done via SingTel, owned by a holdings company, which the singapore government also has a interest in (not sure if this is of a controlling level however).

Myer Melbourne.
It’s a highly priced, expensive, and .. well stupid, retail store. They can have it.

Large sections of the Electricity Board in Victoria.
This seems like a step backward, Singapore owning the electricity company means they get to choose how they run the electricity company, how they invest in the electricity company, and what they do to enhance profits made from that electricity company.

Compared to an Australian company (not Telstra, they would up prices and let the assets run themselves into the ground, and find a case to attempt to sue the government for) owning the infrastructure, and perhaps innovating in more environmentally sound power, such as wind or solar. Nuclear, whilst it doesn’t put out black clouds, is somewhat based around instability (not saying its unstable, just nuclear atoms being broken in half for the sake of electricity generation, when alternatives are available, like wind or solar (or even Hydro!!) seem a little far fetched for an environmentally sound manner, and they still have no idea how to dispose of the crap produced anyway).

Airports, Child Care Centres, and many others make the list for Singapore owned.

Now, what I don’t get is, why sell all that off?

Other countries have kept their own infrastructure locally owned (in many cases) to encourage innovation, but more importantly, maintain control of vital infrastructure.

Singapore own a fair bit of Australia.

The last remaining asset the government will hold is Australia Post, why is that?

I can understand the need of removing a conflict of interest, but isn’t it sensible to encourage local ownership of all infrastructure?

I don’t have a real problem with Singapore owning anything really, unlike the author of that article, who blames a criminal prosecution as an excuse to move his prepaid mobile away from Optus, but I would still prefer to see Aussies own more than half the countries vital infrastructure, as long as they are Australian, we can’t say that about Telstra here, because they are ran by US Imports, and enjoy using excessive racism against their competitor, Optus Australia.

The main reasons for keeping it in Australia are basically economy enhancement, if the dollars get exported, then so does much of the economy, on the other hand, if the dollars stay here and are spent more wisely (like innovation, to a point where we become world leaders) the sensible economy enhancements, and of course the much welcome revenue from selling key infrastructure is very much a well, non differing point.

We generate 100GBps to the home, and well, other countries look to us to supply that technology.

We generate a new way of spinning up more power from wind farms, again, we get seen as the leaders.

We generate a new way of fitting more planes on a runway and decrease delays caused by full runways, again, we get seen as leaders.

If Singapore own our infrastructure, are they going to set about innovating and getting Australia seen as the world leaders? Naturally not, why would they ? They’d want their own economy to get the big cash kicks from innovation on the world stage.

Again, Singapore aren’t bad for owning our infrastructure, but I would still much rather see a lot of it being Australian owned, if Australia got off its arse and innovated, researched, developed and exposed the world to cutting edge technology.

Do we lead? follow? or come right up behind, bringing up the rear and get seen as a poor country, not because of cash problems, but because all the assets and infrastructure for research and development are in foreign hands, and they have little incentive to using it for the development at the world stage level?

The commendable part from the G9 is that they have a lot of Australian companies involved in the ownership of the new network, so that its not something they’ll be taking back home with them.

The G9 consortium sounds like a great idea by Singapore, they don’t seem intent on taking the telecommunications infrastructure off our hands, and instead, simply want to use Australia for development of a FTTN network, in association (and agreement) with 8 other ISPs.

One thing I would like to see though is the names of those on Coonan’s desk, who else wants to take a chunk of Australia, provide it with FTTN, and take some cash back home with them (not a lot, obviously, but still, cash).

The other good benefit of the G9 consortium is obviously, owned by 9, profits go 9 ways. That would mean Optus Australia aren’t running off with millions in profits back to Singapore, but also, innovation at the world stage is dependant on the desire of 9 companies, and that’s actually a good thing, because if we just get Optus, and Telstra..

Optus won’t want to innovate, to put Australia ahead of its own Country’s interest, and Telstra wouldn’t invest because they would just sit milking the profit machine they have now (but as I said yesterday, that’s quickly caving in with other technologies evolving to crash the PSTN network).

Foreign ownership is good, its great to some extent, but if you have your whole country foreign owned, you can’t really lead, you will just simply..follow.

Enjoy!

GoTalk, the company that purchased the poorly administered, financially incompetent Wild I&T has decided to take the cousin of the company, Koala Telecom.

Koala Telecom has 2500 customers, and has a long running bad reputation.

Some items worth highlighting:

– VoIP server downtime. Koala, when I started OzVoIPStatus was so unreliable, that I had no choice but to get them up there for comparison. The VoIP offering was down so much that the time it was up would fit on one hand.

– Account System Insecurity. Koala back last year had several flaws in the online patchwork system they call their members area.
The system was prone to hacks and privacy abuse, in fact, many months ago, and for months after discovery, it was possible to view customers invoice details, and prior to that, the credit card information was readable.

– Poor System Security. When Koala was unstable, there were countless times where users were able to discover flaws in their system security, flaws which exposed that they couldn’t administer their own linux systems, and relied on WebMin to do so.

– ISP was a near failure. Koala as an ISP had many, many complaints about speed issues, and billing issues, and data accounting issues. There were many, many complaints, you’d have to wonder why anyone even thought of signing up.

But, just like the cousin, Wild I&T, Koala Telecom are splitting their internals up a bit differently to make sure they aren’t forced out with nothing at all.

They’ve setup two companies, the Koala Telecom retail company (where they would obviously have got ALL their customers), and they have UTS (Unique Technology Solutions), this company apparently owns all of the assets, such as the network infrastructure.

The only real item on sale to GoTalk is the customer base and the hope the customers won’t disconnect in 15 seconds as a result of the changeover.

One can see by the Wild I&T fiasco that the customer retention rate after such exposure is very low, many customers soon see the light that there is little to be gained by staying with an ISP that has its finances mismanaged.

ISPs like Koala Telecom setup, and they sit in business for a year or two, and this works for the most part, after that initial timeframe, they fail to meet the operating finances required to grow the business.

Or better yet, they piss it all up on $3.5 million on LCD TV’s that require ridiculously long contracts and still take all decade to move.

Koala had several flaws.
They were only attractive to the leech customer, no retail customer in their right mind goes with an ISP that is no name and has a very short (and according to Google, Whirlpool Forums and OzVoIPStatus) a very shaky and unreliable operation.

What happens when you don’t give a Koala it’s leaves? Well, it essentially doesn’t eat, and when you starve something for long enough, it gets weak and hungry.

The big laugh to be had out of the whole Koala crash is a comment made on Whirlpool Forums by Leslie, Curtis’s lap dancing, questionable competence technician, who had this to say just moments before the news about Koala’s finance mismanagement:

Koala Telecom is not insolvent and this thread needs to be closed.

Any further posts stating Koala Telecom are insolvent or closing down will be taken as defamatory and slander and legal avenues will be pursued to ensure this stops.

Regards
Leslie

Leslie, as can be seen by your alternative behaviour on whirlpool, which included posting as another user, in favour of the company you worked for, and this recent comment, you truly have a lot to learn about business ethics, and ethics in general.

You can’t sue for rumours over insolvency, but further, it’s actually bad to be representing a company (as you were) and stating they are not insolvent, when clearly, at the time of the news, they were (as can be seen by the Administration news).

Curtis who seemingly owns (but denies) ownership of the companies claims he is General Manager of all 3. Well Curtis, someone pays you, and if you aren’t getting paid, what on earth are you doing there?

It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain you are intentionally setting this up so that you don’t fall owner of it all, but reality hits back hard. Someone at the top of the food chain is responsible, that someone is the one responsible for all this. In the absense of any known registered owner, one can only assume you as General Manager were responsible for mismanaging the finances.

The trick to growing a business?
Give the customers what they want. The customer is always right (even when they are not).

Customer support at the ISP went downhill.

They bought Powerband Networks, and those customers who would have otherwise had a good deal, are now faced with the same shock that any idiot who bought into Koala will face. GoTalk, and the possible change of plans, or the same problems (that still continue) with TIO complaints and users churning fast!

One would question, with so many TIO complaints, wouldn’t buying an ISP of the Wild or Koala nature (financially mismanaged) be worth it in the end? The TIO isn’t free!

Oh, and to clarify, when I said better ISP, I did NOT suggest Bigpond. Go with Exetel. Go with Optus. Go with Netspace (and they ARE BAD!).

Oh, and on the topic of Netspace: They’ve counted usage incorrectly. I emailed them on Saturday, and it’s now Tuesday night, and they still haven’t responded (aside from the automated ticket).

I took advantage of that response to confirm my 30 days notice. I am churning away from the incompetent bunch to Exetel, cheap, good value, and are still in business (THEY ARE VIABLE).

Enjoy!

Apparently, according to one Now We Are Talking user, it’s not Telstra’s fault they price their Regional Backhaul at the excessively high rates that they do price them at.

It seems, the real blame isn’t Telstra.

Jason Torrento has it occurred to you that perhaps the reason the regional backhaul pricing is high is that no one other than Telstra has been prepared to invest? In no way do I appreciate my tax dollar being spent to subsidise a competitors that was given a head start on full deregulation. Have we all forgotten Optus was given an opportunity to enter the Australian market prior to full deregulation? I am sure the folk at Telstra would like the best part of billion Singapore tax dollars to compete with Singtel in their home market!!

So, based on that logic, Telstra don’t control their own pricing decisions, the competitors do?

Competitors control the price, if they invest, Telstra drop their prices.

If competitors don’t invest in an area, Telstra go with the, sweet, it’s party time, High price motto?

Let’s just think for a minute about the invest decision competitors face.

Telstra were government owned and government funded. So, if Telstra needed a telephone exchange in popular town Warrangamba, they’d be able to build it, and run a fibre optic cable (backhaul) back to the nearest regional centre, and taxpayers, through Telstra’s government ownership and legislated monopoly would be footing the bill.

No other competitors have that ability, they don’t have the government ownership, government backing that Telstra had. They don’t enjoy the low risk monopoly decisions Telstra made.

They face investing with their OWN money, and not that of the governments.
They face Telstra dropping prices in the area they invest (and only in the area they invest) to squish them and squeeze all life out of them before they get to make a return on that investment.

They have to tackle Telstra’s pre-existing brand mindset that is set in many people’s minds (but is decreasing! :)).

They have to basically take all the risk, because if Telstra force them out of business by pricing them out, that’s it for them. They sit there, out of business, broke.

Telstra DID NOT face this. They were government owned. The risk was all on the taxpayers, if a link was too costly to operate and would take 3 years to make a return, it was the taxpayer that would foot the bill for that via Telstra’s government ownership.

And when Telstra didn’t see it viable to roll out infrastructure, they got government funding for it to make it worthwhile.

They built their entire network off the backs of hardworking taxpaying Australian’s. The entire network. Built off Australian taxpayers.

This network was sold off by the Howard Government for $60 billion.

Whilst it might be true over time the government was paid back, it doesn’t change many of the facts above.

Investment decisions carry large risk when you can’t just dump a bad investment decision back on the government. You have to foot the costs.

The risk is only greatly increased when you have a pig infested giant at the top, doing all it can to ensure you don’t exist as a competitor.

Losing keys to exchanges, and high priced backhaul. Two of the common tactics used.

And where you are the only competitor, they’ll price lower than you to ensure you can’t maintain market share and make a return, forcing you out of business.

So, how do you win in that situation?

How do you get “real competition”, like we all so much desire, when the pigs at the top won’t let anyone have a fair go at it, unless multiple companies invest and their power to squish is therefore removed from them?

It’s also believed that Telstra will sell at or below cost to force a competitor out of the market.

Here’s the real kicker though:

It costs the same to transmit data from Sydney to Brisbane as it does to transmit data from Sydney to any where else in the state.

However, the prices are significantly different. The reason why? A monopoly is all that exists in the areas that aren’t competitively priced.

Telstra have no motivation to drop prices, no company has the balls to invest in these areas purely because of the huge threat presented by Telstra.

It’s a strong reason to regulate the backhaul network, to encourage investment.

After investment is reaching levels such as those in many metro areas, drop the regulations. It’s not that hard to encourage investment..

Telstra could encourage it, or the ACCC can force it, or, as the case is, the government will fund Optus Australia and Elders as a consortium to deliver an alternative and put a stop to the pigs pickpocketing everyone for all they can get.

That’s why I support OPEL. That’s why I support G9. It puts an end to the greed.

Enjoy!

In addition to yesterday’s apparently long article (looks short to me?), I didn’t actually state a few other things related to that topic.

The topic was telco consultant, Kevin Morgan, who is likely to be on Telstra’s own payroll, about FTTN, and the compensation claim that could follow it, totalling $20 billion dollars (yeh, right).

Anyway, I covered the fact that the compensation will have a very, very hard time reaching even $1 billion, for a few reasons, such as: The profit they receive is no where near that, the network isn’t being stolen, Telstra are still making an income from FTTN using ULL based products, Telstra will still be able to maintain the retail prices it does maintain now, and make even more profit, because apparently they claim their costs are higher than a G9 FTTN (yeh right Telstra).

So, looking at this realistically, even if they were entitled to compensation, even if they were entitled, by some weird, out of this world, extraordinary twist, that defies all logic, I think they should be given the compensation.

Though, if they were given $20 BILLION, I would expect the infrastructure to physically change ownership, in fact, I expect the G9 members to OWN the copper network, because that’s what it could be valued at MAX.

In fact, if the compensation totalled that much, I say, they screw Telstra completely, and install FTTH to the homes, and that’ll force competition.

That’s not required now, and is too expensive anyway.

I think for several reasons, if Telstra claim compensation for “compulsory acquisiton” then, the compulsory acquistion should take place, and Telstra should lose all ownership rights to that as a result.

I don’t think this is something worth arguing too much over, because the telecommunications services in Australia provide BILLIONS of dollars of REVENUE a year. Further, the decisions we make now shape the future.

So, if we look at giving Telstra another 14 YEARS of the same old monopoly CRAP we put up with today, where they operate not a wholesale operation, but a two teir retail operation, where wholesalers pay the equivilent retail prices anyway, to deliver the same service to a consumer with $5 profit. This cannot be duplicated in the future.

We need an open competitive framework. Telstra’s plans don’t offer that. They offer 14 years of the same crap we presently have.

If we continued this, we’d have the same problems continue on 14 Years later, 30 years later and more.

We should fix this problem NOW, and not let younger generations continue to pay stupidly inflated prices for essential telecommunications services. It cannot continue.

Further, we can’t stop at just giving the G9 FTTN rights. Sure, they won’t have a monopoly in the sense of the Telstra situation, they’ll have a far, far better operation, but we still need to encourage investment, and encourage more competition, we need to make sure that the continued price squeeze situation that currently stands is near impossible in the future.

We need multiple nodes to begin happening as the single FTTN node changes.

We need providers prepared to run fibre to a customers home eventually and kick off FTTH from those nodes, and encourage innovation, encourage growth, and encourage competition.

The framework for that needs to be developed now, and ALL factors should be considered, not just the meters to the customer home, the exchange access should also be considered.

The backhaul that Telstra prices at incredibly high prices should also be considered.

All should be incorporated together to determine the right price point, not a point where everyone finds it easier to simply resell someone elses rubbish, like a lot do now with Telstra, but, encourage them to go further, invest and set up their own businesses, invest in their own infrastructure and make their own profits.

The limit should also be put in place that we aren’t digging up the streets every day! So, we should only ever need to allow no more than 3 seperate operations to customer premises, so that the competition situation remains.

We need to focus on competition, we need it at any cost, because if we continue the monopolistic, artificial competition ways that Telstra enjoys the rip off pricing to, we’ll see us having slow speeds many times over again until the situation is resolved completely. Step 1: Don’t give the rights to any new networks to Telstra.

Enjoy!

There was a recent article published in The Age, by Kevin Morgan, one of Kim Beasley’s ex-idiot (or employee, whatever you want to call him).

The article claims that Telstra is the only choice for broadband, which is an absolute load of crock.

The article claims Kevin Morgan is an independent telecoms consultant, let me just say, Kevin, pull out now, you can’t get any further behind then the article you submitted to The Age. You might want to consult the telecoms debate a little more and realise just how silly your article really is.

Here’s some of the many reasons why Kevin should perhaps evaluate his current employment.

Telstra is not the only choice. News releases from Helen Coonan’s office say might have more than 2 choices on the table, which is good news.

Kevin claims that the reason why Telstra is the only choice is because they would be able to claim $20 billion dollars in compensation.

What a absolute load of crock. They’d have a hard time cracking the early billion dollar mark, let alone $20 billion, why?

The law suit they propose is the same as that in “The Castle”, where a home is wanted to be taken away from a man and his family for a small sum of money, ie. unjust compensation. They fight the case in court, take it all the way to the big house, and low and behold, they were correct all along, a mans home is his castle, and the proposed payment of funds in return for the ability to knock down the house wasn’t enough, as the man’s home is his home, and should be reimbursed for it, I suppose the factor here is sentimental value as well, a home carries memories of the lives lived inside it.

Back on topic. What memories does Telstra copper have? The big expensive burden it has been to Telstra since the day it was installed? Very sentimental, the attitude of the CEO doesn’t seem to show much emotion towards the copper though.. He doesn’t seem to share the love for the copper wire that the family in The Castle shared for the family home.

The value of the copper network under the proposed “just terms compensation” would need to be determined based on what actions surrounded it.

Telstra aren’t losing the copper network, they will maintain ownership of every last decaying bit of it.

Telstra aren’t losing it’s telephone exchanges, they will maintain and own every last cent of those.

What are they losing? Well nothing to be perfectly accurate.

What the G9 proposal is wanting to do (and any other proposals, including Telstra’s) is put a node in a suburb street, connect all the copper wire from the exchange to the node, and connect a fibre optic cable to the node, and service customers.

They won’t stop Telstra servicing the customers they have, they won’t stop other ISPs with investments servicing customers, they won’t stop anyone servicing anybody.

Telstra still will collect its extremely high ULL rates from the provider that builds FTTN.

Telstra will still be able to have its retail customers connected.

The only change?

Telstra will have to pay to provide services on the last mile to the customers house, using FTTN services.

So, the argument becomes something different.

Telstra will have to pay for something it pays high costs for now anyway, that is, servicing customers via its copper network.

It works a little like this:

FTTN supplier builds node, all copper pairs to houses at the pillar are cutover to the node. Anyone wanting to supply a customer service for a service connected to a node arranges a service from the FTTN supplier, and pays them for it. The FTTN supplier supplies the service and pays Telstra for access to its copper network at fair and reasonable rates.

So, the only .. ” ONLY “.. case that does exist here, is the case of Telstra paying to deliver a service.

That’s fair enough, so they can go to the court, state the case is:
We originally had been supplying our customers with services directly, now we get them from someone else, and they pay us for copper network access, however, before we were profiting more (less?), and would like to be justly compensated.

To which, depending on the facts involved, the response would be:

You had to pay to provide services to the customers as well, this would include power, network costs, etc, so we take those from the revenue originally, and subtract any costs, find out the real profit you were making, find the difference, and reimburse the difference.

There’s no reasonable way they can prove any loss or gain of business, as the FTTN network adds a dynamic element, if not by force, everyone decided to move their services, Telstra would have a hard time proving otherwise.

So, it all essentially comes down to that really, the minor difference in the profit made. And if the case is valid and warranted, they could then basically get the $xxx million dollars in reimbursement, and case closed.

It’s not going to be billions, they can’t prove the future, and if they could, they’d have to prove further that costs come down in the futuristic network model.

On the other hand, if the government still didn’t want to risk paying a few hundred million in compo to Telstra, they could legislate against cases of that nature, the laws change, and viola, they are screwed over anyway.

Sure, we wouldn’t want to legislate against that sort of activity for everyone.

But Telstra, and Kevin Morgan are both kidding themselves if they think they are getting anywhere near that much in compensation.

They seem to have the mindset that everything is going to be taken off them, when in reality, nothing is changing hands, just the copper tails that connect to SOME customers will be RENTED at a FAIR RATE OF RETURN, and Telstra will need to pay the company paying them to supply the linking service to the customer.

That’s not much to complain about if you ask me, but if Telstra want that few million in cash, go take it, shut up, and let someone else get on with the job!

OH, and Sydney, I read your comment on Now We Are Talking, you stated:

Good debate folks makes interesting reading. My idea on the situation is slightly different. I think the problem started years ago when Sol Trujillo arrived from the U.S.A. Sol is a tough straight shooting businessman, who tells it like it is, and is used to dealing with adults who are sensible, fair and honest in debate and assessment.

When Sol (and Phil) told the Australian public the truth concerning the state of Telstra on their arrival in Australia they were ordered to shut up by the Howard Government, who intended to flog Telstra to the Australian people, and do what the Government demanded. Sol (and Phil) declined and thereby was the basis of all the trouble. A Government who thought they were born to rule and were determined to teach Telstra a lesson. A Government so vindictive that they are willing to give 1 billion dollars of Australian taxpayers money to a foreign Government to get back at Telstra.

It seems at the moment that Mr. Howard may have been too smart by half and perhaps has placed the noose around his own neck (politically) and may have caused a disaster for his Party.

The question is what will Mr. Rudd and Labor do to right this wrong that Howard has done to Telstra?

Jason T talks about competition, let us look at what competition really is. To me, competition is where competitors compete to gain advantage over opponents and to gain the prominent position in any situation. Actually, Jason T is anti-competition as it is his desire to regulate Telstra to the advantage of opponents and in fact to create a false market that, in the long term, will be harmful to all telcom consumers in Australia.

I did write a reply to that, but they haven’t published it yet, and they have a habit of squishing content that is meaningful to the discussion so it’s not very readable.

I thought, I’d take some time and reply here for you.

You know the only thing the Howard government have done wrong to Telstra is the selling of Telstra without first splitting it up and setting up the right competition legislations.

That’s a big mistake, but not big enough to change my vote (it would have been if they hadn’t announced OPEL).

Competition to me means two or more going head to head in a violent blood fight to the finish, and the fighter with the best support will generally win, assuming no cheating of course.

And when I say cheating, Telstra did cheat. They were government owned and had the government support to build their entire network, that’s an advantage no other competitor will have, and that’s why competition in this country is in many areas, except a heap of Metro places, is Artificial competition. It’s competition, it’s just.. Telstra in disguise.

Real competition does exist in Australia though.

It exists with the cable networks.
It exists with competitiors rolling out ADSL2+ in metro exchanges and servicing customers using LSS and ULL.

It doesn’t exist in rural Australia.

I’m very pro competition Sydney. The sooner Telstra can stop whinging about regulation and start whinging about massive customer losses, the better off we all will be.

I’m only in support of regulating Telstra in support of competition where Telstra has a monopoly, ie. My Exchange, which is only got backhaul from Telstra Wholesale, and that means its expensive for any supplier to setup an ADSL2+ service from my exchange.

That’s where regulations should target, they should push the prices of Telstra’s backhaul down, in support of getting competition in those areas. Not down too far that no one invests in backhaul, but to a point where setting up a DSLAM network is viable, but not at the cheap side.

Regulation basically wants to force competition by doing a few things.

1. Giving an entry to the market (this doesn’t exist in my exchange).
2. Making it viable to install your own infrastructure instead of just finding it cheap to bunk on someone elses.

In metro areas, regulations have worked very well to encourage competition, in some exchanges, you can get ADSL2+ services from something like 7 providers as I understand it. That’s a lot of people FIGHTING for your business, it basically falls to a price fight.

The same cannot be said in Regional Areas, and that’s where I support regulation. I disagree at this point in time with regulations in metro areas to some extent, where competitors have already invested into exchanges (hint: 7 providers in one exchange), that’s a fair call, and should generally speaking, be allowed to be deregulated.

Regulations need to increase in Regional Australia where it’s not possible to invest due to the big roadblock, Telstra Wholesale Backhaul prices.

I wonder if Bigpond pay the same rates for backhaul that Telstra Wholesale use to force competitors to remain out of the area?

What do you think Sydney? Is this fair? Is this a way of helping themselves so they can lose regulations? Is this encouraging competition? No.

So, Telstra are forcing competition out of the area, No one is investing in backhaul, the ACCC are doing nothing about this issue.

We at the LJTY are pretty stranded until OPEL comes in, or someone coughs up the dough to connect a cable from here to the nearest place someone else has backhaul, or Agile sets up one of their microwave wireless networks.

Sydney, maybe we should swap places. You don’t seem to recognise the situation that exists with Telstra and its conflict of interest in being retail, wholesale and infrastructure owner.

Please try to..
Enjoy!

Reading more on the Now We Are Talking, I was thinking, what’s more important to this nation, the businesses (and monopolies) that thrive off it, and the people that live in it?

Fast Pr0n
Affordable Internet Access
Return on Investment

Well, let’s think for a moment.

Fast Pr0n: While this might speed up the time spent waiting for the download, will it ultimately result in solving the bigger issues that are hard hitting the nation, or will it just allow those who have nothing better to do with overpriced internet access to simply use it better?

The likely is, we don’t need THAT fast just yet. And won’t for sometime. We need roughly 10Mbits per user, roughly, to get the best out of most the internet has to offer, with a minimum of 512kbps (more like 1Mbit) upstream for the return data of those applications (and not so much the Fast Pr0n).

Affordable Internet Access: This seems to be the ultimate goal of the entire industry, except Telstra. The goal of a lot of consumers, and the rest of the industry is to bring quality, affordable internet access, at speeds that are “fair” and “metro-comparable” to the rest of the nation. That sounds pretty reasonable, they want Australians to use the internet as a tool for their education, as a tool for their entertainment, as a tool for various parts of the Aussie lifestyle. Smart thinking..? Definitely. Faster services, more value, at “affordable” prices.

Return on investment: The only ones pushing this line hard is Telstra. Why are they? A return on invesment doesn’t get them customers at the prices they propose which are ridiculously high. Return on investment doesn’t get australians using broadband services as a tool for education. It doesn’t get them using it as a tool for their entertainment, it doesn’t get them using it.. at all.

If it’s too expensive, as in, meets “return on investment”, it will be quickly discovered that there won’t be anyone willing to give them any return on investment. I sure as heck won’t be paying wholesale $59 for a phone and a broadband service that RUNS 3 times slower, than I currently get.

Return on investment isn’t something that should be ignored however, that’s the key thing here. It’s important we don’t spend money and make a loss on it like Telstra do and plan to do with their slapped together FTTN proposal. Did they ever think about the CURRENT pricing? Did they ever think that new technology PUSHES prices down? Don’t believe me? Well, ask PIPE Networks, Telstra’s next threat, who will suck the life out of them using their own backhaul. Ask iiNet and Internode who have delivered services that are priced much less than Telstra do them for.

Here’s something, for the wholesale price of my service, you can get double the data, and .. well, 24 times the speed down, and 8 times or more faster upload for the same price (retail).

So, that says a lot about Telstra’s pricing, doesn’t it? Wholesale customers on Telstra’s network are paying retail level prices for other competitor networks.

That’s all well and good, because as the market shapes up, we should see them keen to invest in further areas and expand the networks they have to more, and gain market share on pure price competition.

Hey, Telstra, ever watch My Name Is Earl? Well, perhaps its time you made your own list of bad things you’ve done to the Australian Consumer and the Australian Economy, and the Australian Competition and start making up for them.

Earl tells us that Karma will come to bite you for your wrong doings. Maybe the OPEL rollout is a sign? Karma trying to tell you something?

Heh. It’s a great TV show. For those who want to read more of it, check out the series on IMDb, and the DVDs – Season 1 or Season 2

Enjoy!

Welcome to a new theme, this theme is a little more, readable, and much easier to read, and allows a little more focus on the comments section, which I don’t think many others were finding too easily in the previous theme. This theme is a little more easier on the eyes, drops the green effect that I never really liked, and gives this blog something that.. well, I like the look of!

Open Source software, Sydney Lawrence, is a classic example of how the works of one can go to support the many, with the work of just one, Linux has turned into an operating system that a user can install and do most, if not all the same on a Windows box for, well nothing. It’s not an apples to oranges comparison, and neither is the new news that it’s cheaper and better value to get a Three Mobile Wireless Internet Connection, than it is to get a fixed ADSL connection. One would think the aging, outdated copper technology would, by now, be very cheap in cost, as the network has been eroded away, or the other fact, the price paid has been returned many times over.

Oh, and Sydney, I do hope you realise I check and reply to your comments (and anyone elses), if they warrant a reply. I don’t ignore you, I reply to them onsite, you do have to check back to see the responses!

Back to the topic, Australia’s latest statistics on broadband and telephone services have yet again (for the nth time in half as many months) been slammed for being slow, expensive or poor value (or all three).

The maximum speed that can be offered (in some exchanges due to restrictions placed by the greedy pigs over at Telstra) has risen to 20Mbps, with other rivals offering speeds of up to 24Mbps, and 2.5Mbit up stream.

The generally available maximum speed to anywhere with DSL coverage is 8Mbit, with a artificially capped 384kbps (0.3Mbit) upload.

Now, recently Craig Breen blamed the limits of the technology, but Craig Breen, as can be seen in the comments he makes on NWAT, is clearly an uninformed individual, and just like Rhonda, the NWAT Media Matters blogger, finds it easier to pull ‘facts’ from the ass, then they do to research the writings and realise that the comments made are absolute trash.
Relax Sydney, it’s true, refer to yesterday’s blog where I posted a copy of Craig Breen’s post, and refer to this NWAT article (with a reply by me) outlining where Rhonda pulled ‘facts’ from her rear, and completely ballsed it up: http://www.nowwearetalking.com.au/Home/PageBlogComments.aspx?mid=321&pid=582

And I just flicked over to the main discussion page of Broadband Australia while fetching that link, and saw this:

Jason, maybe the reason Telstra is getting slammed with the fine is the ACCC is bias, or maybe its because when the ACCC dropped the pricing to a ridiculous low they also thought it was a great idea for Telstra to repay companies the difference in price for a few years previous to the change.

Bias heh? Really? What do you base this bias on? What evidence do you have to support your claims? Would you assert to those claims in a court of law? No? Why make them then?

This just outlines the types of people, and just how clearly uninformed they are. Anyone who researched the issue would know it’s not because of bias, or a ‘fine’, it’s because the decision was to backdate the $2.50 LSS price to when iiNet first lodged the complaint, some 2 or so years ago. That’s why. That’s how silly the people who post at that site look, but I notice the editor didn’t add this fact to the post, the editor titled the post as ‘Maybe the reason is bias’.

As we can see, the editor clearly wants to shape the views on the site to that in favour of Telstra, and in reading that website, you should keep this in mind.

Further read Vasso’s comment below, suggesting I am involved in IIN. I’ve only ever watched them and I’ve watched TLS, NAB, CBA and a few others for a few years now, without any intent on buying, realising that just as much as they go higher, there’s just as much risk they’ll go lower. My reply on the site just then outlines this fact and a few others, wonder if it’ll make it live?

Back to the article, again.

It’s not fair to compare Australia to France, Italy, or Sweden, as they are closer together, and have a more dense population, so delivering high speed broadband services is much more cost effective.

However, what is a well, should be an eye opening issue, for those out there that can open their eyes and not generate false, claims nothing short of libel, you’ll see that our telephone services cost small business around $36,000 in Australia, in the US, the same would be available for $14,000.

The Australian article is located here: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22080536-5013404,00.html

For Australian small businesses, phone and internet costs are the third highest in the world. That’s right, 1, 2, 3. Australia is 3rd most expensive. This isn’t something we should be aiming for number 1 on, in fact, this is where our broadband ranking should be, and swap the telephone costs with the speed rankings on broadband services.

It’s time for action in the telecommunications area, and it’s time a decision was made over the future direction of this country.

Let me make one future driven decision right now.

Telstra, a company with a conflict of interest in retail should not be allowed the rights to building a fibre to the node network. We all learn from our mistakes, and one mistake that was made is allowing an infrastructure provider to be a retail provider also.

This needs to change in any new network, the model proposed and agreed to needs to be a model that no retail company can have full control over the infrastructure company, ever. Simply because they are overcome with greed, they become the filth of society, and all of a sudden the nation is held ransom to the hands of greed, and not held ransom to the hands of competition and innovation.

The only good thing in the report (and it’s not that good) is that costs have come down 26% since 1997. If you look at that, why on earth has Telstra been pushing line rental UP?

Why on earth am I paying $80 for a service people in the city pay $50 for, which is faster, and in cases more value added?

The answer is clear, Telstra.

Everywhere I look, the one problem that constantly surrounds the issues in the telecommunications arena, is Telstra, they are the root cause of all problems. Every one of them. Regional Backhaul is expensive? Blame Telstra. No ADSL2+ on an ADSL2+ DSLAM? Blame Telstra. No investment in regional areas due to uncertain times ahead? Blame Telstra.

If Telstra ever want to paint themselves a good corporate image, at all, they need to start doing what’s good, not what’s good just for shareholders, but what’s good for a nation as a whole, and that is: Join the G9 proposal and make it work, or withdraw the proposal and sign a legal action waiver.

It’s the only good thing they can do. I think the best option for everyone is them joining Telstra, will they? No, why give up the high profits they make when they can drop around 20% of shareholder funds in frivilous legal claims and court time and maintain the current situation. They want to maintain the current situation for as long as they can.

Soon the bubble is going to pop for Telstra and it’s shareholders and reality will strike. They won’t get to build FTTN, no government in their right mind is going to allow Telstra a monopoly again, they’ve learnt from their mistakes, never again, ever. They had the chance, they blew it. Now, the best they’ll do is pick up, clean up, and join the G9 and make a return on the ADSL2+ infrastructure they rolled out and is losing value fast due to being artificially limited and devaluing over time.

Enjoy!

It seems that the so called discussion guidelines on the Now We Are Talking website go right out the window in some cases.

Cases where Telstra’s rather absurd agenda is being supported by the uninformed.

Forums like Whirlpool, allow discussion based solely on the rules they set. People can post what they like to, anything at all, however, if it breaches the rules, it might get moderated.

The theory here: Users behave to get their content to stay live on the website, and keep the privilege to continue posting content on the Whirlpool.net.au website.

However, Now We Are Talking take a different approach.

Users can message in anything, anything they like. They have a set of discussion guidelines that users can choose to view and adhere to. Users can make any comments they like, so long as the discussion guidelines are met.

The comments are added to a queue, where they can be selectively allowed or denyed depending on the editor’s mood, or whether you expose anything that is too truthful for their liking. They want to ensure shareholders read it, and believe the focus for Telstra remains to be that the company will succeed in any challenge it makes.

Despite, in recent times, losing 3 significant objectives, such as the Regional Broadband funding, the case with the ACCC over the pricing model, and the repayment of $16 million dollars to iiNet, the giant of ADSL2+ services.

Back to it, the post that I find questionable, and I am seriously looking at this from a general perspective, is this comment here, by n00b, Craig Breen:

Jason Torrento shows what a complete ignoramus he really is when he seeks to blame Telstra even for “placing limits’ on what levels of service can be provided over copper. It’s called the laws of physics Jason. There are physical limits on what the technology can deliver over certain distances. Go on, blame Telstra if it makes you feel better. What hope is there for informed debate in this country when supposedly “informed” debate is shaped by people like Mr Torrento, the Whirpool website and people of their ilk. No wonder Minister Coonan can survive in her job and “industry expert” Paul Budde is seen as a visionary.

If you can’t find the obvious problem with this comment, you are blind as a bat.

For those that are not yet familiar with the discussion guidelines set by the ever so hypocritical Telstra, here is the most relevant bit on the entire page:

Contributors may not submit content that:

is threatening, abusive, defamatory, indecent, menacing, harassing, offensive, infringes any person’s intellectual property rights, including copyright, impersonates anyone, misrepresents a relationship with any person or organisation, encourages others to commit unlawful acts, harasses anyone or is unlawful in any way.

Looking at his comment, the use of the word “Ignoramus”, can be included as “indecent”, or “abusive”, or “menacing”, or “offensive”.

Is the so called moderator blind?

I wonder if the result would be the same if one were to say post a comment that went something like:

What kind of fat jerk is Phil Burgess anyway? I wonder who makes the Lard’s pants each time he splits them? Does he employ an emergency tailor to stitch his rear each time that over payed salary feeds his lard ass too much Hungry Jacks?

Naturally, one wouldn’t post that. It doesn’t contribute to the discussion, and doesn’t do much to enhance the discussion, or do anything for Telstra.

If I posted:

I disagree with Phil Burgess’s comments as a whole, everything I have read from him suggests that he is uninformed, has little idea of what is going to happen if they threaten the commonwealth government as they have been, little idea of the outcomes from attacking a regulator, or my favourite, little idea of what is going to be the overall outcome from attacking a regulator that protects australian consumers, and attacking the australian elected government.

I can’t keep count of the number of people I either know personally, or have had read on the internet, or have seen the feelings towards Telstra they have.

The majority are in at: “I am going to be so happy to get every dollar I can away from them.”.

Is it any guess why that is? Maybe they should look to the biggest loud mouth of them all ?

Anyway, back to topic here.

I find it absolutely poor form if they allow that.

What are they blocking? Must be all the comments explaining why people don’t want to deal with Telstra, they don’t want shareholders seeing that, it’ll devalue the company too much, won’t it.

Enjoy!