TOCPCs – The Elite Geeks Blog

An article in Australian IT has quoted an industry member as suggesting that wireless is the BEST option to regional, rural and remote areas. And he is right.

WiMAX is capable of speeds far exceeding that of the proposed FTTN network. Look at FTTN as providing a maximum (yep, even Telstra’s own claim) of 50Mbps.

Look at WiMAX as capable of exceeding 50Mbps, and nearly doubling it, to 100Mbps.

And the fun doesn’t stop there. WiMAX, unlike FTTN, doesn’t require a copper phone line, which means that if someone invested and rolled out a full WiMAX solution Australia wide capable of providing speeds in excess of 20Mbps (or up to 100Mbps), and a reliable telephone product.

And could do that at a rate which meant that the average price from each user was equivilent or less (WiMAX is cheaper to maintain), and therefore get all PSTN users over, well, Telstra can then take the copper out of the ground and sell it off, because it’ll be a big shit heap by that point in time, unused and useless.

WiMAX is a very promising technology, delivering where Telstra simply cannot, a reliable service, to greater numbers, without the cost hassles, without the regulatory issues, without the whinging, and without the US imports.

I’m surprised that an Australian government, you know, one who governs Australia, doesn’t see our land situation, and realise you cannot argue with WiMAX, it’s suited to our conditions, it should be the technology of choice for Australia, we could be leading the way with it, we have open areas in outback making ideal testing grounds, and we have great built up cities for commercially viable penetration.

The only missing link for WiMAX is backhaul, and well, $8 billion for an FTTN network? Scratch it, and spend $4 billion instead on a solid nationwide WiMAX network. No more pair-gains crap, no more ‘transmission loss’, no more ‘regulations stop us investing’. No more whinging. Just a solution to a problem, a real solution, a viable solution, and possibly the right solution.

FTTN will simply waste a lot of money and recreate a monopoly, sending the entire industry in yet another circle, acheiving nothing in the long term.

A WiMAX network, well, there’s a future. 100Mbps, and the technology is still ‘ just getting started ‘. It’s got a lot more promise, a lot more capabilities than the FTTN proposal, it allows competition. Setup a tower wherever they want, and link it to whoever you want, and away you go. No fussing around with Telstra, no intercompany blame, no anti competitive tactics.

Enjoy!

It amazes me how stupid those who get elected are.

The previous government setup a $2 billion communications fund, of which the interest would be used to invest in further regional and rural communications infrastructure.

Brilliant plan. There’s no burden on taxpayers for the funds to advance regional communications, there’s no burden on private industry to make losses in areas to invest, there’s no ‘monopoly’ on services occurring, causing anti competitive conduct leading to fines – yep, Telstra can relate to that last one, right?

Why on earth would Conroy want to destroy such a brilliant peice of legislation and sell the futures of rural users short, just so those who are already in built up areas can enjoy possibly faster, but more expensive services?

Seems like a stupid policy decision to me. That $2 billion could have easily funded $170 million or more infrastructure every 3 years. Over 30 years, they’d have nearly spent $3 billion on investment, and still have the original $2 billion remaining to play with for investment elsewhere.

Naturally though, as stupid as they are, they are just going to piss money away instead, and ignore the oppourtunity to fix the bush. Make it someone elses problem. Doesn’t seem smart, does it.

I consider FTTN a stupid move. Sure, it might give some faster speeds, but, in the words of Fat Phil, it’ll also give ‘premium prices’.

I see that interest rate rises for home buyers (nope, not stupid enough to be buying now :)), are through the roof, and at least the picture painted by the news is that ‘families are struggling’ – How will bringing possibly faster (you must consider that the majority are already getting 10Mbit, in reality, many sites don’t even deliver that anyways), internet access at premium prices possibly help the problem of financial stress?

I’m sure the farmers are interested in the logic here too. Investment in ADSL2+ technology for the nation should suffice many thirsts for data, and those on the fringes should still get a princely 5Mbit. And those who want faster, well, it’s not that hard to relocate if you REALLY need it, or choose an alternative connection means, or heck, get someone (or a group) to start a wireless network, and load balance a few ADSL2+ connections on it, and that’ll deliver faster speeds.

FTTN though? It’ll give faster sync speeds for some, but ultimately, the funds end up wasted in technology not realising it’s full potential, only because the entire internet hasn’t moved to near that potential anyway.

Rural farmers could benefit from a project Telstra scrapped to try and fetch more profits from NextG customers. It’s called Long Line ADSL. It gives ADSL access to long line customers who no doubt could benefit from such a great product.

But Telstra in all its greed wanted NextG customers, so didn’t bother to put the infrastructure it bought into action, wasting yet more money.

Farmers all over the nation would almost certainly be happier with an ADSL1 connection, than trying fruitlessly to try and get 12Mbits to the general public, who should be able to enjoy speeds exceeding 8Mbit where competitors have invested.

And of course, the other issue the communications fund could have sorted out is investment in regional backhaul, encouraging others to provide backhaul.

The government shouldn’t be looking to provide full technology solutions such as FTTN. They should be trying to remove any impairments to investment in any way possible that looks out for the national interest through retail competition.

FTTN doesn’t do that. The communications fund, well it at least had the potential to do so.

Enjoy!

And so did the High Court today when it released it’s verdict on Telstra’s “The Castle” style legal action against the ACCC’s declaration and continuation of competition.

Telstra’s case was that the fair rates set by the ACCC for access to spectrum on a copper line, or access to a complete copper line was a compulsory acquisition of Telstra’s property, and they were not being paid just compensation.

In considering the case, it was revealed that legislation enacted in 1991 was in place before Telstra was even a corporation, and therefore, the legislation remaining in place doesn’t constitute acquisition of property (well duh, Telstra acquired it after the legislation was enacted).

So, with that in mind Telstra is left with nothing else to follow, as the High Court isn’t a court of appeals, and essentially, what the judges deliver is what is set in stone.

Telstra never had a case, and I originally wrote about that months ago, when the issue was prominent last year, that the action taken was purely an act of preventing competition, and that it would never actually pass.

Telstra are just now, one step closer to finding themselves on the vexatious litigator list. Nice move.

Will Irving, Telstra’s Council, must be a bit mixed at the moment, surely. He gets paid a lot to represent Telstra, but at the same time, in the public presence looks like a complete fool for being silly enough to even attempt such a case.

Telstra didn’t actually succeed with anything in their action, they lost the case, are ordered to pay cost, and competition have been carrying on with the declared rates by the ACCC. What exactly did Telstra do to improve things for shareholders? Nothing. Did they piss away money needlessly? Yep. Was that money shareholder profit money? Probably.

Telstra naturally tried to spin the decision and even resorted to misrepresenting the High Court decision, posting that ‘”Buy, not build” says High Court’ as the content of one of its releases. I’m sure of course the judges of the High Court would not at all appreciate Telstra taking a judgement made on a case that the judges found to be ‘synthetic and unreal’, out of context, and completely misrepresenting the judgement.

The High Court didn’t even indicate a preference to resale or infrastructure competition, they simply considered the case before them, and determined that no, Telstra’s case is one which isn’t true, and as such was determined that way.

Of course, Telstra didn’t start this case to try and get legislation to build, they started this to try and have a stab at the ACCC powers that allow for pricing determination, they are indeed a monopoly feeling the threat of competition, and, it’s all due to their own fault. They were too lazy to do something, they could have built out and wholesaled ADSL2+ years ago, they could have done FTTN years ago. They chose not to, and industry decided that they would invest in a more profitable service anyway.

Telstra’s biggest mistake all this time was sitting on its hands, not investing further in its network. Not encouraging investment into newer networks. They sat on their hands, and thought they’d keep sitting on profits, instead of moving to keep with technology and protect them, they have fought tooth and nail on a battle that it would never, and knew it would never have much of a chance of success.

Which still brings to question, why on earth are they even bothering? They should already know they don’t stand a chance at trying to go back to the old days, so they should simply get on with it. I noted they claimed ‘investment options would be considered’ – strangely, that’s something they should have done years ago.

Enjoy!

It would seem that BPL isn’t taking off after the sparks it originally created when first anticipated by the industry as a replacement for the expensive copper from Telstra.

BPL is running broadband over infrastructure that is sure to reach nearly every home in Australia, the common power line.

It’s an easy and assured way to reach masses of customers, without the mass infrastructure costs. In theory, and in practice the technology worked well.

However, it wasn’t sheilded from interference, which meant that Ham radio operators (there are still some around?!), would suffer interference as a result of the broadband signals travelling over the power lines.

The cost of investing wouldn’t be an issue, because such infrastructure is going to reach the customers en masse, and so, the investment would be a no brainer.

New homes being built for example, would be able to choose to not have a telephone cable put in, and instead use powerline infrastructure which they almost certainly will have installed, and obtain telecommunications services that way.

BPL doesn’t seem to be going anywhere however, because the companies that were sparking interest in it, such as Aurora Energy, a tasmanian power company, pulled out from continuing the trials during reviews.

It could be a possibility that someone solves the interference issue and other issues with BPL, however, competition with the cut throat telecommunications market is described as unlikely, because power companies, like Telstra, simply don’t like to play rough with competitors. For them, it’s better to simply stick to their job, supplying power to Telstra, instead of taking power and profit from Telstra.

Enjoy!

According to a recent article in SMH’s “Business Day”, it’s revealed nearly everytime a pricing decision is released by the ACCC, they take that decision for legal action.

The idea here is pretty clear. With a pricing decision made by the ACCC, Telstra takes it to court, the competitor who wanted to have the decision made, so they could get a fair go, with realistic pricing, now faces uncertainty as to whether Telstra has a genuine case in court, and any perceived business model based off that ACCC determined realistic pricing, could indeed be overturned in court, and that would mean that the company could end up having to fill a debt if they used the ACCC pricing as a calculation for it’s plans.

Further, they face investor shakeup if they are listed on the ASX, as the reduced rate could be used in profit forecasts, and if used, and a court overrules the ACCC decision, they could appear to be ‘doing bad’ to a investor who might not see the full story.

So, for Telstra, this is simply exerting more of its market dominance to ensure that they can keep competitors from doing the best they do, competing. It places large question marks over any plans made by a business, because understandably, when you look at ULL for example, where the ACCC rate is believed to be $14.40, yet, Telstra want’s $30, over the course of a year for a company with 100,000 connections, that’s a large shortfall in funding, to the tune of $18,720,000 if the decision is somehow overturned.

Of course, to make it worse, the competitor doesn’t know if there is ever grounds for a decision to be overturned, it has happened only once before, and that was in relation to a competition notice, served incorrectly, so to speak. So, for a competitor, if Telstra gets something overturned due to the ACCC making an error in some part, then the competitor, could face a shortfall in the millions of dollars, if they don’t take caution in their decisions on plan pricing!

Sucks for them, the ACCC are easy either way, since there isn’t much in the way of repurcussions for them if they get something wrong, and well, Telstra are on easy street, they always know where they stand, regardless of any boundaries put in place which introduce uncertainty.

Naturally, all this action from Telstra is simply aimed to reinvent or protect it’s fixed line monopoly rates, which have been completely trashed to peices as a result of strong alternative infrastructure investment.

ARPU, which is how they measure their profit per user, drops considerably for a user on competitors infrastructure. That’s very bad news for Telstra, so they have just a few options!

1. Make it uncertain for companies to make solid and sound investment decisions. That’s what they seem to be able to do now.
2. Place technology barriers in place of as many connections as possible to prevent ADSL2+ cutover.
3. Delay deployments for competing ISPs to protect any revenue from ADSL1 services.
4. Get as many customers as they can on long term contracts.
5. Make it hard for customers to go to competing ISPs, using any number of tactics to ensure they stay a retail customer.

There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of legislation that says Telstra can’t take action on every decision, even if Telstra knows it doesn’t have a case to put forward. So long as they got the money to create a case, then, they might as well as do that to keep competitors on edge from investing.

The solution naturally, would be to introduce a ruling that all ACCC rulings are final, but then, we can see how Telstra might claim to be disadvantaged under such a model.

Enjoy!

It’s amazing, the number of products you can get a guarantee on. For example, through the USO, a basic telephone service is guaranteed to any fixed residence.

And, there’s those “guaranteed, or your money back” style marketing done by various services and products providers in various industries.

But, one thing regional and rural Australia can’t count on, is the continuation of the Australian Broadband Guarantee, at least, that’s Bruce Billson’s (shadow comms minister, replacing Coonan) claim.

It could very well be true however, among the axeing, they silently could pull the guarantee of Broadband to Australians, to make room for OPEL and it’s FTTN network, which as a whole combined, will still leave many of the rural areas of Australia without any guaranteed service.

The main objective of the programme, bought in under Coonan’s reign of fantastic service, was that any Australian, regardless of where they live could have access to a broadband service).

The Rudd government, set to axe that plan perhaps should now cough up an explanation, why they believe that farmers can’t have a guaranteed service, and they think that people should be able to not fulfill their responsibilities as parents and check on what the kids are viewing on the internet?

Why on earth would you put a ISP filter in place, and take internet guarantees away from farmers and other rural and regional areas, which the ABG helped to provide services to?

It’ll be interesting to see the responses from Conroy, in relation to Billson’s comments, because the silence is simply a means to quietly get rid of the ABG program, according to Billson.

They really wouldn’t remain silent on something like this, because it’s a vote buyer from regional australians, who should by now understand that broadband can be very helpful in their day to day lives.

OPEL won’t reach very remote areas, or even some of the lesser remote areas, that’s a easily seen fact from the maps provided, and also the claim itself that it would reach 98%, the remaining 2% will have ABG services (well, would have).

FTTN won’t reach anywhere near the areas that OPEL will cover, mainly because Fibre doesn’t actually get installed cheaply, and those nodes mean that the dollars will be flowing fast, and before they hit the 75% mark, they’ll be trying to pony up some more dough.

And OPEL, well, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that $2 billion only goes $2 billion far, so there will certainly need to be a new programme put in place to push investment in infrastructure further, or someone has to explain to Farmer Joe why he can’t check the current prices of Wheat in a timely fashion.

Enjoy!

Whirlpool have done it again, finally releasing the results of their annual broadband survey, and the results are well, expected.

Survey Results Here

What can be seen from the survey is pretty average.

1. Broadband value is pretty much the same, or even worse, over the last 1 year, which suggests that there has been little done to improve value for money, this is all despite the price drops from the wholesale ports, allowing the introduction of 8Mbit in 2006 as well. Pretty poor result for the entire industry.

2. No one likes long contracts (despite what Telstra’s 3 year marketing ploys tell you), and a majority don’t like contracts longer than 6 months. Personally, I would rather a 6 month over a 12 month, but if 12 months is the best option, and I know I will have it for 12 months at least, then, yep, I’ll sign. I don’t like committing to 2 year or more though contracts. I find the urge to tell a company to get stuffed very strong, depending on my customer satisfaction level, and many have taken as low as 1 month to lose my satisfaction.

3. The government is responsible for any newer internet access technologies, claims an overwhelming large result of questioned people. I have to say, it makes sense, get the government to push out the network, own and operate it, and suppliers get the product off the government at wholesale rates for maintaining the cost of the network. Or, they could lease the infrastructure, that way everyone can have a turn at being the monopoly for a year.

4. It was expected that many people would support and agree with similar services in regional areas, as are in metro areas. I do agree, they should be able to get similar services, but, I do disagree with technology choices, it should be matched to the environment, much like a Palm Tree Mobile Tower in a local park.

5. The government got a big “get stuffed” to ISP level content filtering. So they should, there’s no need for such a drastic waste of money. I guarantee that any filter implemented can be defeated, in some way or another, without much work.

6. Fast speeds or more data? Fast speeds? Well, they are good, but there’s no point going super fast speed if that only lasts you three days, so I’m sort of on the side of more data, but, I have found that there’s not a great demand on data on our connection now either, so it’s probably a middle ground. I’m ‘happy’ with what I have, but could use cost reduction if it were made possible.

7. Longest accepted period when signing a contract,. 12 months, which is fair. I’m confused why near 20% of people said they would accept 24 months. Are they crazy? It’s a dynamic market, Bigpond counts on you being a sucker for a 2 year contract, in 2 years time, the market could have changed 4 times over and value 20 times improved.

8. Wireless Broadband isn’t serious for internet access. Amazing, so many would rather have a fixed connection of some sort, rather than a wireless type. Although, it’s near split on this. I’m not fussed either way, I favour a fixed connection, but if a wireless will deliver better speeds or more data, I’m all ears.

9. Broadband is being used for fast downloads, fast web surfing, always on connectivity, and sharing with multiple computers. Well, duhh.

10. People do want to make calls over the internet, and use video conferencing. Poor Telstra shareholders.

11. 2 people generally use broadband connections, I imagine the average is something like 2.4 or so. Which is probably about par, when you consider the users surveyed, the environments being surveyed.

12. And looks like there are more computers connected than users.

13. More and more users have wireless networks. Taking the world by storm, wireless networks. Who wouldn’t want one? I don’t run wireless. No need for it in our environment, all is fixed. Though, we do have wireless hardware, and have used wireless networking before. All depends on the environment setup though.

14. Many are cheap arses, and don’t want to pay much to get hardware to make good quality internet calls. I suppose that’s expected, afterall, if they are chasing cheaper calls, then they are chasing the dollar.

15. Like me, many have only taken a curious look at the contract agreed to.

16. Most customers don’t like a contract condition that states the ISP can change the terms at any time. Maybe a shift in the marketplace is possible? Much like banks, fixed contracts, fixed terms.

17. Whirlpool, ISP’s website, Broadband Choice, and friends are the common way to find an ISP. Save the TV dollars, they are being wasted. Word of mouth is the most powerful marketing you can get. Word of mouth is very close to a committed purchase. So, if you want customers, keep your current customers happy, and they’ll make you happy.

18. Not a lot of people are still with their original provider, so people do like to change when things get a little grey.

19. Telstra is the blame for all problems, followed by phone lines not being activated properly (Telstra’s database update). Telstra is the cause of near all problems, according to the 17,000 odd people surveyed.

20. Nearly all have used Telephone for support, Exetel and aaNet made drastic shifts to disconnect callers and make them help themselves, and the model works well for professional users who don’t need hand holding (one of my key decisions in choosing Exetel).

21. Many people are satisfied with reliable connections, and very rarely do they stop working.

22. Gamers also found little to not like, but many as usual, will find that it is flaky at times. Sorry gamers, fibre to your door isn’t cheap.

23. Faster speeds DO NOT make a connection unstable, generally.

24. Many have used VoIP, but there’s a good portion who haven’t, and some significant portion who aren’t interested.

25. Not many have taken the big dive and used VoIP more than curiously, suggesting that they might not have had the best experience with it, or something else stopped them enjoying the long term savings. A issue worth investigating perhaps.

Nothing too outstanding there, pretty much ‘as expected’. Nothing changed. And where it did, it wasn’t significant enough to get a good amount of attention.

Enjoy!

When it comes to node based deployment, the issues for regional and rural areas are cost based issues, centred mainly around trenching through a fibre cable to the node, and then cutting the customers over.

Of these however, the costly option is the fibre cutover, as they would need to dig their cable in, and use that for backhaul.

That is, unless they thought outside the square, and looked at a possible wireless backhaul solution.

Internode currently use Microwave links to provide services to entire regions across SA, such technology incorporated with a node deployment (so WiMAX), could possibly provide the speeds of 12Mbps or more that Conroy is demanding, and cut back on the cost of running the fibre cable to the node, possibly making his 98% delivery figure a close reality.

Though, it does seem a bit backward looking, as the WiMAX technology could itself be used to provide the service without the need for a node based cutover.

Maybe they will be ploughing through with fibre afterall.

Enjoy!

Fibre to the Farmyard.

Naturally, I think it’s a common place belief that it isn’t coming to a farmyard at all, because Fibre is expensive to deploy, and is overkill for current and anticipated future requirements for farmers.

But, it is important to note that a recent survey by the ACMA found that 35% of the wheat, beef, lamb, wool, corn, milk, well, food producing farmers, are not satisfied with performance of mobile phone services.

25% of farmers were also unhappy with internet services, complaining of poor speeds. But they shouldn’t expect far much more, because as I mentioned in opening, they aren’t getting a fibre cable dropped into the barn anytime soon, it’s not viable, even for greedy Telstra.

Their metro high-fibre diet metro counterparts on the other hand have generally expressed that they are satisfied with their services, after 81% of the people contacted confirmed they were ‘generally satisfied’ with services. At least, according to this news article: http://news.theage.com.au/farmers-not-happy-with-phones-internet/20080228-1viv.html

Sorry, thanks for the wheat, milk, eggs, chicken, beef, and lamb, but a fast internet connection isn’t something you will be looking forward to this year. Try again next year after OPEL have their hands on some good dollars and a network built.

– Alternatively, if Japan’s test of a satelitte based communication service is successful, you might wanna contact them and get connected. Farmers don’t play games or use VoIP, so they should be pretty well right.

Won’t somebody please think of the children farmer’s porn!?

Enjoy!

I’m amazed by the amount people are paying for houses at the current moment.

It’s a supply and demand situation, as revealed by a report a while ago, that I was reading.

Essentially, the First Home Buyers Grant, and other related items forced prices to become inflated by the amount of the grant, and to top it off, demand increased whilst supply hasn’t actually moved much at all.

What can be done to sort out the supply issue though?

Houses cost money to build, and they require land, something that requires closer monitoring on use, as it is indeed a finite resource, and every man and his dog will inevitably have to accept they can’t all own houses close to work in a city area, there’s simply not enough land.

The only way for increasing supply in those areas, is by reducing demand, ie, encouraging business to move out further regional, so demand shifts to regional, or, build up, into the air space (live on top of your neighbour).

The traditional home and backyard, whilst living close to work, with increasing population, is just not going to work. There’s no physical way to fit houses beside houses in built up areas, and construction is a long process.

So, the time will come for business to move out regionally, or, for all those houses dotted around city centers to become apartment complexes.

I’m beyond belief as to how around $300,000 worth of materials and labour sells for near $1 million in some areas, in others the high $500 – $600 thousand dollar mark.

The upward trend will need to find a dip soon, the price goes up, but there will be a point where the market will start driving them prices down. What will it be? That’s not certain yet, something will put downward pressure in place.

Actually, it was one of Kevin’s election promises from memory to do something about the ‘Housing Affordibility Crisis’. What can be done? Incentives for business to move out regional and use some of the vacant land there for more residential? Not all business is able to be located far from a city centre, but with increasing capabilities in online communications, that’s not too much far away.

And certainly, I doubt many of the traditional australians are in favour of dumping the house and large backyard for a Japanese lifestyle of a single apartment, and your dining room is your lounge room, which is also your bedroom, as I seem to recall being the norm in Japan (they manage to pack things in tight places, and require little room to live).

Australia has lots of land, but we can’t have homes in the desert unless there is matching business in the desert too. I don’t think there is much attraction to starting a business in the desert with exception to perhaps solar and geothermal power, or if there was ever oil found or something of the like.

So, we don’t have an infinite supply of land, and we still have to try and preserve a lot of the natural surroundings to prevent nature destruction, I’m of the conclusion man has done more than enough damage to the planet as a whole.

I’m curious to find out what Rudd has planned to solve the Housing Affordability Crisis. I would love to own a home one day, but that said, I’m not going to pay excessively inflated prices for it. The peak will find a trough to dive into soon enough.

Enjoy!

It’s common debate when in discussion about Telstra, that they claim regulations prevent Telstra running a business the way they wanted to.

But, when you dig into these deeper then getting your toes wet, you generally find that the regulations are designed to protect consumers from any activity deemed to prevent competition entering the market. Competition must be able to be anyone capable with the financial backing, etc, to get into the action, and market itself (so it can’t just be old Joe down the road claiming he wants to wholesale services to him and his neighbour over the road).

So, what I then think about is, where is the line drawn between, regulating so competition can enter the market, and regulating, to a point where Telstra is at a significant disadvantage (and the competitor has too much of an advantage).

Regulations are designed to allow efficient companies to get off the ground and fly straight, and should be able to compete alongside Telstra. This should realistically work, because the competitor would have a ‘smaller’ advantage, in that they aren’t taking 30 minutes to get a hold of, or they have someone answering the phone, and not employing a computer to do that, some people WANT that, others just want the cheapest price.

Regulations protect the competitor from being locked out of the market, such as, let’s say a competitor wanted to sell a DSL service to a customer, the competitor needs access to the copper line into the customer premises, and a DSLAM port, as deploying those in this day and age is uneconomical, and expensive.

It’d cost a lot to dig a ditch from the customer house, through to your office perhaps, so that you can supply the customer a service, as there is already a copper line running from that customer.

So, Telstra already has copper there, and it has been deemed unreasonable for competitors to roll out duplicate copper networks. Regulations ensure competitors can get access to that copper wire from Telstra, at fair and reasonable prices.

The price paid by competitors for access to  a complete line, where Telstra provides no service, is around $14.40 – $17.70. On that same line, if the customer had a basic home service, Telstra would only be getting $19.95, so the reduce price is somewhat (but not entirely) reflective of the additional costs of providing what Telstra would otherwise be providing.

Essentially, a near written law on wholesale products is the wholesale price must be cheaper than the retail price. The reason for this is because the wholesale price is lower, as the purchaser of the wholesale service generally has additional costs in preparing the service for customer use, and staff costs, business costs to cover.

The essential idea in resale based competition is that the prices should come out somewhat close together, and companies compete on service, or lowest price, for the consumer.

In facilities based competition, it’s very similar to resale, however, the prices can vary, just as the products can.

Regulation is going too far, when regulation tries to make it very easy for competitors to simply resell a service rather than invest and supply their own services on their own infrastructure.

It is indeed in the national interest to increase facilities based competition, as the nation as a whole benefits in many ways from it. Facilities based competition needs to be attractive to the competitors who are proposing to compete, that is, they must find it cheaper to use their own infrastructure, to make a bigger profit, then would be possible off resale based access.

Recently, it was raised that the backhaul from Telstra exchanges to capital cities in many regional and rural areas is accessible only via Telstra, so they do indeed have a monopoly on some routes of backhaul from some areas.

Competition of the resale sort isn’t affected at all by any issue with that, as the products are sold with backhaul billed differently, the backhaul is billed at an aggregate price, regardless of where the data comes from.

On the flip side, when you place your own equipment in exchanges, you must arrange your own backhaul for getting that data back to where it counts (literally), that is your ISP datacentre, so that the customer on the line can access the internet for example.

That backhaul is in question, costing 20 times more than where competition exists.

I’m conflicted here in my thoughts however.

Part of me thinks, it should be regulated, access over that backhaul should be metro comparable as possible. It’s disadvantageous, and goes against one Telstra hypocritical comment about competitors leeching off Telstra, and should get their own, then they whinge about duplication.

The backhaul in some sense needs to be as cheap as possible, so might deserve being declared and tight price controls placed on it.

The other part however thinks, well, the price is that high, maybe someone can bring another cable through, and use that to supply services at less then the 20 times higher rate that Telstra would want.

The counter argument here is, the moment that expensive cable is put in place, then, Telstra drop price to near the same level, defying the point of putting the cable in place anyway (and making it near impossible to recover the cost of the cable deployment).

So, it’s a very conflicting situation. The price needs to be high enough for competitors to see that investing is a smart move, but then, they can’t invest blindly, without customers, and they can’t invest without certainty that Telstra won’t cut them out of the market by dropping price (the only reason the cable will be installed).

The demand is an issue so to speak for cable investment, if there were plenty of demand for fibre backhaul in an area, installing it would be easy enough as locking prospect demand into long term contracts to get the return on the cable.

The supply then becomes an issue, because supply can’t be supplied without demand.

So, the backhaul certainly probably should come down, to near reasonable levels, so that investment still looks attractive if demand starts to spike and competitors don’t get lazy, but not too expensive, that it affects investment in DSLAM installation.

The regulation goes too far, when it is best for a competitor to simply resell then invest.

Enjoy!

Simon Hackett, Internode Founder was quoted in Australian IT providing an outlook towards the future of broadband in 2008.

I find Simon’s views near accurate, of course he has to spin it out towards his own companies agenda, he does afterall buy fast cars and other items of his own personal interest, and that costs a lot of money no doubt, which his loyal fanbois help gather for him.

In the shortest possible words, I see 2008 as being SNAFU, that is, Situation Normal: All Flapped Up. Nothing much is going to change in 2008, it’s a continuation of business for all of the providers as it was in 2007, and 2006, and, well maybe 2005 but there were some interesting changes along that path.

The only key interest items in broadband for this year are the results of the high court challenge launched by Telstra in relation to ULL and LSS services, which is invariably doomed to failure, and will mean that there is no news, but Telstra will look like a big fool for trying something so stupid in the first place anyway. Nothing really interesting happening there.

The next interest item is the FTxx proposal by the Labor Government to deploy a national (despite leaving out a large portion of it) FTTN network (which could be FTTH as well).

I don’t think they’ll decide anything with that in a quick fashion, if they did, it’d be a result to Telstra, there is indeed a legal minefield hanging over that FTTN debate, and should G8 (TPG and Soul are Souled out to each other) get the go ahead, they’ll simply be held back with any and all items of legal action Telstra can launch, so by the time they get started, they might as well have ran duplicate copper wire anyway, which would in turn have made FTTH more viable.

We can of course hope that the government realises that they are asking the wrong question of tenders, it should be what is the real need of an FTTN network.. simply, there is none, sure, some are missing out due to technology impediments and Telstra’s refusal to fix areas up, and competitors not finding it viable to do it themselves either, but they don’t require FTTN to fix, they require upgrading and other work to get them broadband ready.

If we don’t do FTTN, all phone lines coming from exchanges will get ADSL2+. All lines from RIMs will not be able to get anything better than ADSL1 if there is no alternative copper path, meaning that there will be a divide in every suburb anyway as to what is affordable broadband, and what is available.

That’s another issue to tackle, and I don’t think FTTN is going to solve it fairly for everyone involved, either competition loses out, Telstra loses out, or consumers lose out, someone will lose out in FTTN, that’s a near certainty.

We might see a bit more play with WiMAX by Seven’s take over of Unwired, and OPEL should have some towers in the air and DSLAMs built out, and Telstra will have found something else to bitch about or increase prices on, pissing more consumers off driving them to go to Naked DSL, which isn’t exactly ideal for many environments due to the inability of a landline voice service to be ‘always’ working.

Oh, we can’t get aside with out mentioning the few other aspects, the porn filter planned to be compulsory at every ISP will be canned, it’s not going to work, it’s not ideal, no one really wants it except extremists, and ISPs aren’t very interested in being anything but an IP transit service provider (ie. Internet Service Provider, wait, that’s what an ISP is).

And the other one, the attempts at curbing piracy aren’t going to be effective, everyone, including the record labels should know by now that its a cat and mouse game, they try and destroy a technology making it ineffective, and something new will pop up, and the cycle continues.

Do they realise they won’t actually get any closer to solving the underlying problem? I think the real cause of it is some of the items produced that are tried to be marketed are absolute crap not worth paying for.

Plus, a lot of the so called ‘new music’ is just rap crap, that is marketed to criminals, or contributing to the growth of criminals, so they are damaging their own bottom line: Get songs about crime produced, market it to the young teen market who really don’t have much respect for themselves, let alone the law, and yep, you destroy your own bottom line because they are more likely to steal instead of buy.

There are some exceptions to that of course, but there is a reason people aren’t buying the content, and I dare say the quality of it is a BIG part of the reason people choose not to buy (and those that do buy the ‘rap crap’ are senseless morons anyway).

Of the key interests to note in 2008, the most interesting will be the OPEL roll out, as the decisions there affect many of the future aspects of regional and rural broadband.

Oh, I missed another, 2008 will see an attempt to destroy the $2 billion communications fund, destroying regional and rural investment oppourtunities for now and into the future (it’s purpose).

A great government screw up in progress perhaps, because if they go FTTH, then it’s not going to reach anywhere near the proposed area of the $2 billion fund, and if they go FTTN, then they will have destroyed competition in many parts of regional areas, destroying any hope the remainder of users have.

There’s never really much long term thought put into such issues like this is my best guess for why anyone would consider to do something as stupid as destroy a interest earning fund, it’s free money for the government to use to fix issues with communications.

Hopefully it is protected, though I have doubts.

And NSW Government, the incapable lot, should possibly be exposed even further for their claim of free wifi, yet their failure to deliver on it. That is, if the opposition get the balls up to attack them on it. Wishful thinking, isn’t it.

That’s what I see happening in 2008 with broadband, I’m sure there will be more to add as the rest of the year progresses, but that sums it up really. It’s just a slow year, 2009, that’s an entertaining year. PIPE will turn its cable on. OPEL will be up and running, and competing. Telstra will be, well, Telstra.

Enjoy!

… and opening on our car now.

At long last, we can finally open and close the window on the car.

The fix came today, as we were able to track down the auto electrician back at the workshop, and collect the items.

Poor bugger has been really sick, and has had us chasing him down for the last few days trying to get our hands on the parts required to put the window back in place. Didn’t really enjoy pestering, but when you have a deadline hanging over, you gotta meet it.

The whole 3 weeks taken for this, and the entire problem could have been fixed in just one day, that is, if we didn’t go to the wrecker which gave us the wrong part in the first place, and then a broken part secondly, and instead, we went to the wrecker where we got the current part from, at an even cheaper price, and took it back to the auto electrician, it’d have been finished in the one or two days.

Really annoying. That said though, getting the pink slip after all this time was easily done by taking the vehicle back to the same place (I made specific appointments with the wrecker to repair, and the workshop to do the pink slip yesterday, so there was absolutely nothing stopping us, assuming we got the items we needed).

We then thought, we better go pay the registration on it, just in case something else cops up in the way, and prevents registration.

Nope, all sorted. The car is registered for another year.

Though, ever get the feeling when you pay for something, that it’s extremely poor value, or that you aren’t getting your money’s worth?

Well, that’s what I describe registration payments as in NSW. I’d take some pictures of some of the piss poor road conditions, but, a not too far away from here, is Somersby, and I’m sure many people remember the news.com.au coverage of the giant gaping hole that was supposed to be a road.

That’s what I mean by not getting our money worth, locally, there is a large bump to one side of the road, where it looks like they’ve repaired the road by fill, but, it’s just been built up excessively to form a large lip on the area where it’s repaired. I’d love to get a photo, but it’s not somewhere I’d stop.

Add to the list the number of potholes that crop up and aren’t repaired, and even reports that a road lifts when driven on (no kidding), and the lack of strong maintenance, and there’s good reason to be annoyed at paying so much as $1 for registration.

They collect registration AND fines, yet, those dollars aren’t fixing our roads.

Reading whirlpool about how much of a disgrace the Iemma government is, I have to agree, NSW is a crap state, it’s in need of a overhaul at many levels, the first of which is the state government, we need someone who knows what they are doing, someone strong, and proven, someone like… John Howard.

Stick someone else in (get rid of NSW Labor), and then see if there’s a bit of fight put in place to try and campaign for votes, and we, those who have to suffer with the piss poor state, get to see something better done.

Queensland just continually looks more and more attractive all the time, family aspects however generally influence the decision to stay in NSW though.

I’d just like to see something done with roads, rail, schools and health for the state. There’s no real way everyone is doomed to put up with this ‘crap’, there are things that can be done, surely.

Anyway, we have paid the hard dollars for what amounts to near garbage (registration), so, maybe this time they’ll do something for the roads to fix them up a little more.

There’s a lot of people in NSW, a lot paying registration fees, yet, the roads are some of the poorest in the country. It just doesn’t really add up, extra money should equal better roads, not fatter politicians.

Enjoy!

So far, we have been trying to get an issue fixed with the car that has taken 20 days to try and get sorted out.

The only issue with the car itself is the back window doesn’t actually work (electric windows), we planned on getting it fixed, but, we seem unable to get a pink slip, because according to RTA rules, the car needs all windows operational to be deemed ‘roadworthy’.

Stuck waiting for the auto electrician to come back to work, we decided to instead track him down, and unfortunately, he seems to have been very, very sick for the last week or more. Sad to hear, but also, sucks for us, because the required screws and other parts to get the door back together aren’t accessible, because his workshop is locked up, and he is at home sick, and doesn’t seem able to get out and about enough to get the items from the workshop so we can get it fixed.

Yep, don’t leave items with the repairer, he might just get very sick, and unable to complete the work in time.

So, anyway, today we contacted him, as he was supposed to be in work today, but, we called around there, and the workshop remains locked up. We gave him a call, and discovered he was too sick to open the shop, so commited to dropping the items into a friends place, but, that doesn’t seem to have happened (I’m thinking too sick, or he has tried, but the friend wasn’t home at the time, or something like that).

Anyway, entering the third week of trying to get this window fixed, and I figure, this really needs to be sorted rightaway, so I’ll see what we come up with tomorrow, and if all else fails, we must start to find alternative parts to get the car back together, so it can be passed for it’s pink slip (and after our previous dealings with wreckers, I’m not sure I am wanting to source an alternative anything really).

The actual process of renewing rego should take just whatever time it takes for a pink slip, plus 10 minutes buying a greenslip and paying the overpriced registration fee (don’t say it’s not overpriced, just look at our roads, it’s clear the money paid is far too much for what we get).

Tomorrow, I want to have this sorted and finished. It’s had a heap of time to be sorted and finished, it shouldn’t take this long, it very well shouldn’t take much more!

Enjoy!

Yep, straight from the reliable mouth of ZDNet, Telstra rejected possible customers for ADSL2+.

The government has been inconsistent also, with it’s Telstra dealings, stating during the election campaign that it would stand strong against Telstra, yet, when the time arises for them to get in a photo shoot and be seen doing something, they are all too happy to backtrack on that.

Realistically, nothing was stopping Telstra enabling ADSL2+ at the 900 exchanges last year, with the previous government in place.

The ACCC was very clear that they could do it, and even publicly stated that numerous times, and sent Telstra a letter for them to sign and send back.

Telstra somewhat deliberately set about ignoring the ACCC’s allowing ADSL2+ to be rolled out, and instead, decided that once the Rudd government was in, they’d try to ‘assist’ the government to make them be seen as ‘doing something’ by enabling ADSL2+, and inviting them along to it.

Conroy’s statement said it best, when he simply quoted the ACCC, and did so throughout.

Telstra’s argument constantly was that regulations were impairing them, and from the get go, I’ve said on their Now We Are Talking website last year, that there was absolutely nothing stopping Telstra enabling ADSL2+, and even if they did, and they got regulated, I’d sit with Telstra.

The only real argument here is for some reason, from Telstra, the Wholesale prices for ADSL1 services, and the retail prices for ADSL2+ are some what near. The ADSL2+ plans offered are somehow the same price as ADSL1 services.

Naturally, this move is deliberate from Telstra to save a reduction in ADSL1 prices, because it would be very unfair for Bigpond to drop ADSL1 prices to encourage ADSL2+ takeup, but, to get people to take ADSL2+ services up, they can’t be overly expensive (who am I kidding, just look at Bigpond and think overly expensive), so the compromise, leave ADSL1 as is, and align ADSL2+ pricing appropriately.

The competitive argument there would be obviously that ADSL2+ services are supplied at the same price for some reason (backhaul is supposed to increase costs, naturally, Kate McKenzie argues that they ‘wear’ the cost – yeh, right).

I think it’s good to see that there are ADSL2+ services coming from Telstra, I think it’s disastrous that they decided to hold consumers to ransom however, to try and argue a case for it’s own network, or try and push political favours if that is the case.

I do hope the government sticks to it’s promises and takes a hard line against Telstra and it’s actions to hold back competition, I hope the government also stops backflipping, like it has done with recent news of the removal of $50 million of funding from climate change, something it claimed it was committed to (you are committed to something, so you remove funding from it?).

I trust that wise decisions will be made with regard to FTTN, but almost certainly believe Telstra are the front runner due to the fact they plan to put in legal protest after protest to hold off FTTN from competitors.

I see that they like to be seen as doing good, so let’s hope they stop doing it for the cameras and start doing it for the consumers.

Enjoy!

At least, one window is closing, and it’s not the one I want unfortunately.

The window for our registration renewal is closing, and we have a little bit of time to accomplish a few things.

We need to get the electric window working, that is, opening and closing, because it doesn’t open, which means we can’t register it, despite the fact it had a pink slip, exactly like that, when purchased.

Tomorrow, we must get the auto electrician to pass over the screws and other parts required to put the door back together, go back to the wreckers who we got a faulty part from, and get them to fit the door back to normal, get them to fix the other issue they stuffed up with the other door.

Then, find out when the next available pink slip appointment is, get the car it’s very own pink slip.

Then, visit the RTA, and process the registration renewal.

Hopefully, by the end of tomorrow, the right window will be closing, and it won’t be the time window left to renew the registration.

In other similar news, I thought we might try out the premium fuel, to see if it really does give us any better performance for KM.

Considering the price is like $3 a tank more (yep, 4c off docket is a $3 discount, so 4c more at the pump is $3 more expensive), it’d be interesting to see if the end result in terms of kms is worth it or not.

For it to be worthwhile filling it with the uber expensive premium juice, we must get around an extra 50k or so, conversations with someone else suggest it is possible to get more out of a tank on premium, assumably due to it’s nature, the car can reach the desired speed on less juice, and therefore requires less to drive as far.

I think it’s like looking at water compared to custard. Water will flow continuously through, custard on the other hand has a different gravational leaning, and takes longer to flow through. Naturally, I’m not suggesting it will flow through to the carbe slower, but rather, just require less.

Compare perhaps LA Ice Cola with Coca Cola. LA Ice is weaker, but due to the weaker nature, you can drink more of it in a same space of time, compared to drinking Coca Cola, which has a different taste to it, and due to that, you drink less. Hey, that example worked on my partner (she thought of half of it).

I guess after that however, I’m very keen to get the engine mount looked at, because it does rattle a fair bit when idle, and even recently, I’ve had it stall when I wanted to idle (and don’t ask about reversing), but it’s OK once it gets up and going. Another service is in the pipeline to get the fluids (that is, brake, clutch, and radiator coolant) changed over.

The issue with the door, and the electric window, should be solved relatively soon! I can’t see it taking much longer to solve considering the issue can be solved relatively easily.

Enjoy!

The NSW government proposed to roll out free wireless across parts of NSW at the previous election.

As per typical government promises, the total work began towards such commitment is absolutely 0. There’s no government based wireless network running for free at this time.

And why would there be? Internet access is far from a essential, and I don’t think any government (espiecially one run in debt, and barely capable of managing roads!), should be putting any money towards something the private sector is capable of funding.

Sure, it’ll be a benefit for tourists to have free wireless access, and it’s still possible for the private sector to decide to set something like that up using ad funding, or even allow purchasing blocks using a credit card through a web gateway.

Free wireless is simply a fad if you ask me. Bandwidth costs money, and in Australia, it’s a LOT of money. Power costs money, and well, you can guess that’s not free, and setup and maintaining a wireless network isn’t free, for you have wireless hardware also!

I can see the general theory with it being sound, in that you can get access to internet where you otherwise wouldn’t for either reasons on technical grounds, or if your a tourist, the terms dictated by retail providers are generally not viable for the access required (a 6 month contract!).

But, it doesn’t make it an easy choice for consumers, who will lose out on the bandwidth they pay for and hardware, and certainly the NSW government won’t gain much by rolling out free wireless. It won’t clean up our beaches, it won’t fix the stuffed roads, it won’t fix the hospital issues, among many other problems that lie right at Iemma’s foot.

I don’t think anyone will start right into any form of ‘free’ wireless, until there is money to be made off it.

Enjoy!

The demolition work has begun to destroy a great work by the Howard government, the established Communications Fund.

This Communications Fund was established so that Regional and Rural Communications services wouldn’t fall behind metro areas due to a lack of investment.

The fund would generate $400 million every three years for use in investing and upgrading networks in regional areas.

To top that off, and prevent the fund being destroyed, a block was placed in the way to limit access to funds from the Communications Fund so that the established amount of $2 billion was not touched.

It was great thinking, great policy, $400 million in networking terms buys a fair bit. Look at wireless access, or even fixed access, such as Fibre.

Using just telephone poles, or existing ducting, or even sewers, the fibre cable could be run through regional areas to ensure they have a future.

The work began to destroy the block (and the fund) this week, when Sen. Conroy placed legislation on the table to allow the spending of the principle amount ($2 billion) as they see fit.

I don’t think it’s a wise move to abolish the fund, sure, Conroy thinks FTTN to regional areas will solve future demands, but what about beyond that? What happens after FTTN? What happens with competition?

Why not simply keep the fund there, and the $400 million be used to fund projects like Opel and other initiatives that will provide a competitive network for broadband providers to supply services from?

Better yet, why doesn’t the government make a better shot of it, establish it’s own network, and charge all for infrastructure access, and use communications fund interest to fund any upgrades and shortfalls.

This way, they aren’t running a retail business, and they certainly aren’t destroying competition, they are instead supplying infrastructure access to anyone and everyone at cost price, what happens after there is up to the retail suppliers.

That’d be more smart use of the funds, but taking $2 billion to throw to the wank jobs at Telstra so they can spend it on a network not needed yet, and charge access prices for wholesale at prices above even existing retail prices, and turning the average home into a 3 figure bill at the least, is a very, very bad move.

$2 billion in a fund could do sooo much more, destroying it just seems pointless. But then, I expect to be repeating that many times over the next few years.

Enjoy!

And on, and on.

We are trying to seek the screws involved with our window repair to the car.

The auto electrician (who is a well known person to us, and others), is still away, and isn’t working until next week, it seems, so that’s going to cut it a little too close to rego time (or even past it), and so we need to get this sorted!

We don’t want registration to lapse, because then you can’t (legally) drive the vehicle anywhere until you have it fixed and registered, which would be a royal pain (despite the fact there is absolutely nothing wrong with the car, except the window).

I’m not going to get hopeful about getting it fixed in a hurry anymore, each time I do that, it’s just another day of setbacks!

We sorted out a debt issue with someone recently, it’s a shame for them that we did have to go through the legal process to get them to finally decide paying us back is painless (to the tune of $154 less painless).

Anyway, rather than let them suffer the pain of a Garnishee Order (we could have simply sat on our hands), we decided to do them a big favour, and fast track the instalment order application, so that we wouldn’t have to wait for it to arrive in the post. Luckily for them, we were able to sort it out by going in there ahead of time, and getting them to change their “unreasonable amount” objection, to an agreement (hey, it’s not even 10 litres of fuel the amount they are paying, but any dollar is a reasonable dollar if you have a debt aged this much).

We rushed over there, got it all fixed up for him, so he need not suffer a heavily taxed pay cheque! I have doubts he’d have gone to the lengths we did for us, if the situation was reversed.. To quote the court and another person, “you are much too nice”. It’s a shame they weren’t nice in return, 2 years or so ago.

I’m hoping the auto electrician collects our message to contact us about the screws for the door, so we can get it fitted, and move along with paying the dang registration on the car (naturally, the delay involved in booking for a pink slip is acceptable, it MUST pass next visit though, because there’s no real messing around time in the middle).

Who’d have thought getting a screw would be so hard..

Enjoy!

… and the pain still continues for the hunt for a pink slip for the car.

We are still no closer to fixing the only flaw found with the car, the rear left electric window won’t actually wind down.

The wreckers stuffed us around a few times, and the auto electrician got screwed around as a result.

The auto electrician seems to be unavailable over the last two days, and unavailable to open up.

I’m hoping tomorrow, he will be open and the sign that said it was closed until Tuesday (yet, amazingly, still closed all day Tuesday), will be taken down.

Then, we can get his version of what happens when they fit the part, so we can work out what to do with relation to the broken part, the wreckers remain adament they will not refund on, because the damage isn’t their responsibility.

I’m curious on what he would normally expect, so if the wreckers do have it wrong, then we can try and get a resolution, or continue the fair trading complaint to see if that gets a resolve.

But, the key issue remains, we have not a lot of time to get the car a pink slip issued, so we can register it for a excessively high premium for the next 12 months.

We hopefully should have the window fixed tomorrow, so long as the auto electrician opens so we can get the parts he still is holding onto, so we can go back to the wreckers and get them to fit the window (the only arrangement they will enter into, due to the part being broken and being unable to reach an agreement on who is actually at fault for it’s damaged state).

So, the poor auto electrician loses out, because his time wasn’t actually paid for the times he attempted to fit the part, but we were provided a wrong part, or a faulty part.

And, naturally, because we can’t get them to swing around and refund, getting them to fit the part for nothing is the best we are going to do without losing out $75 on the faulty part.

The wrecker still needs to fix some damage done to the door they fit a lock into, when they tried to pull it apart, and then actually install part of it correctly too.

The new part costs $600. The second hand part, from a good wrecker cost $50. If only we went to the good wrecker first!

Tomorrow, we should see an end to all this window madness, and have a window that works, and a pink slip coming in the days after (as soon as we can get it booked in).

Enjoy!

My car is loving the attention it is getting right now, no doubt.

I took it back to the auto electrician to get the window part fitted, and.. well, it is one which is broken and doesn’t work. To be expected from a wrecked car, I suppose.

Anyway, at the auto electrician, the door latch packed it in on the drivers door. Fantastic. If it’s not one thing, it’s another, right? It’s that rego time of year, so maybe it’s just the car reading its sticker, and realising, I might as well as milk this for all I can.

What a royal pain in the arse. Anyway, remembering from my ringing around, a company had a part for $50 at another wrecker, so I figure, they might have the door latch there too, so I can get my drivers door latch working properly (would rather be driving with a shut door, k, thx).

Turns out that he doesn’t have one, but he still had the window for $50. Bargain, we’ll take it considering the other mob charged $75 – which is a rip off.

I then went to another wreckers around the corner from the place we went to, and asked for a door latch. Sure, they have one. $90. Your kidding right? Nope. $90 for a door latch. I’ll be back in 10 or 15, just gotta go pick my partner up from the other wreckers.

I decided against paying them $90. I got better things to spend $90 on, like the auto electrician to fit my window. So, I went back to the old wreckers where we bought the old part from, and asked if they had one, sure do, $75 (amazing, so how is a simple door latch worth the same as a motorised electric window?).

Anyway, realising we had the other part there, I thought we might just be able to swap it for the door latch. It’s not our fault it broke, it was in a damaged state when purchased, it just never was able to be inspected simply because we had no idea what we were looking for.

They remain confident it was working when he took it out, because he had to wind the window down to get it out.. and what’s to stop him from yanking on the twisted metal cable resulting in the connectors braking?

Anyway, at this point I’m a little tired from the effort put into the car for a SIMPLE window, that I decide, I need the drivers door shutting properly, it’s not easy driving holding the door shut, and of course, electrical tape can only hold the door shut for so long.

So, we get them to fit it as well, they charge $25 for fitting an electric window, but that seems to double for a door latch.

We were waiting for a fair while while they pulled it out, but they had it out, and someone else was investigating the electric window part that was broken, trying to rearrange the twisted metal cable to try and get it going again.

It was a mess, I was certain it was busted up when it left there, because I know the arch formed by the cable joined, was larger than that of the other unit we picked up from the other wreckers today (unfortunately, I couldn’t compare that, as we didn’t have anything to go off).

So, we’ve now got to wait til Monday to get it back to the auto electrician to get the parts, so on Tuesday, we can get to the wreckers, so they can fit the electric window, because they don’t seem to want to refund on the part that was faulty, and they now need to fix the door lock they broke, and a electrical wiring cover they broke when they were trying to fix the door lock.

I got them to fit the lock, because I realise, if it’s broken, then they can blame none other than themselves for it.

But, it turns out they aren’t any good at fitting parts anyway, because due care doesn’t exist when they reshape a screw so they can take it out!

I’m pondering whether I go bug fair trading over the illegal no refunds sign, or I simply go along and get them to fit the window which the auto electrician would probably be looking at $66 for anyway, and we call it even, and they end up on the shitlist of businesses I never deal with again, along with a local computer shop – Yep, I actually do drive an extra 10 minutes out of the way to ensure they don’t get any business from me.

So, all up, this has cost $75 for the electric window part, $31 for a failed pink slip, $35 for a headlight and middle brake light, $50 for another electric window part, $120 for a door latch and installation.

Plus, add on time, 1 hour to the auto electrician and back in 4 trips to get it fixed. 40 minutes to and from the wreckers the first time to get the large window part, which wouldn’t fit. 40 minutes again to the wreckers to get the part that would fit, but is damaged, 30 minutes this morning at the auto electrician discovering it is damaged, 1 hour today driving to select locations tracking down a door latch and a working electric window part. 2 hours waiting for them to remove and fit a door open part, and find the faults with the electric window opener.

Yeh, that window isn’t exactly a easy fixed solution, yet, fitting the part is something like a 10 – 20 minute process!

That window must feel so good, it’s the only window I know of to have so much time and money spent on it to get going (or involved in the process of getting going).

We are still ahead by comparison (even if you include fuel), because the new part will cost $500 or more we are told (and is backed up by someone else we know personally who had one done, and got it done new – $600!).

Is the lengths we go to, to satisfy the RTA worth it? No, not at all. Good thing we aren’t doing it just for RTA satisfiaction, it’s actually so my little one can actually see out, and sit there with some air flow coming in.

A working window is a big ask.

Enjoy!

If Australians had to choose between an FTTH network, or an FTTN network, the considerations should be looking both into the long term speed advantage, as well as into the short and medium term damage to competition that could be caused.

If we went with an FTTN network, speeds would improve to many users, but, such improvements depending on technology used, would be in the area of marginal, to pretty average.

Such as, if they went with ADSL2+, the improvement to many lines might not be significant enough to realise any additional internet computing power, unless of course one household had such a high demand for bandwidth they should be on ethernet anyway- unrealistic.

The average home user, professional, or noob, should find ADSL2+ plenty fast enough, and providing a great speed service.

The FTTN network has an advantage of delivering speeds of around 20Mbps to areas which are getting 10Mbps (ie. Double), and to others, take 8Mbps and turn it to 15Mbps. This is a pretty good increase, but I think you can ask many, many users that they don’t find they need a peak 8Mbps on a continuous basis, so, the speed increase from 10Mbps to 20Mbps (or 8 to 16), probably will not go overly used.

The other aspect of FTTN is, once the node is in the way of the customer lines, depending on who does it and node setup, customers either will or won’t be able to receive DSL based services from the exchange, presenting a big problem for competition.

Prices won’t be able to be maintained so they aren’t competitive, simply because the infrastructure in place makes it not possible for a user to get past and get competitive access.

The other issue presented, is that FTTN is only a stepping stone, the next path is FTTH, and the network built by FTTN, will no doubt become the FTTH network purely due to strategic position and cheapest cost to build.

So, FTTN delivers minimal to the majority (sorry to those on the outskirts, you are a minority, I’m sure), and disadvantages that same majority. It provides a minor advantage to some in a minority, but overall, is a significant disadvantage (depending on technology used and deployment plan).

FTTH is just FTTN, but good, and bad at the same time.

Take FTTN, and place a single fibre cable into everyones house. The only supplier of that cable is the only supplier capable of servicing that premises, primarily due to the lack of any investment by anyone else to drill more cables in the ground (and the complete disapproval of many local governments too).

So, FTTH is likely ever going to be 1 network, meaning whoever builds an FTTH network will be wholesaling to others.

The problem with that model is, as can be seen from Telstra, it’s far too open to abuse, and requires a lot of costly regulation at the expense of the taxpayer. Our taxes go to keeping companies like Telstra in control. The dollars there are better spent fixing the roads so that I don’t have to count the potholes, or, better spent on reducing debt, and better spent on educating instead of speed cameras, but that’s off topic.

Essentially, FTTH is something that needs to sit on the backburner, just like FTTN, both are inappropriate for consideration at this time, and instead, we should find out what technologies will keep us up to speed.

We could deploy a national FTTN network, but in 20 years time or so, it’s just going to get pulled apart to make room for the FTTH network.

All the while, the only decrease in prices will more than likely be introduced due to increased international cable capacity, and have little, if anything, to do with the local network changes.

We need to see what and where wireless will go, we need to see if DSL can get any better, we need to see if there is a better way. FTTN just means “Flap Telstra’s Terrible Network” – no, I don’t believe that’s G9’s internal codename for FTTN.

WiMAX has potential, and DSL technologies do too, FTTN on the other hand has a disadvantage, and little advantage, except for delivering those DSL technologies.

WiMAX is competitor friendly, so allows price innovation.
FTTN is not competitor friendly, and forces prices up.
FTTH is not competitor friendly, and forces prices EVEN higher.

A new network isn’t going to get our OECD rankings up, sure, we’ll jump in speed, but the price increase for the new network will affect us significantly, that it won’t be worth a gain (we may even go backwards).

The best move will be to encourage uptake of faster plans, ban 256k services full stop, and place pressure on prices at various points, such as domestic connectivity, domestic networking, and international networking.

Put pressure on those and the few core elements of a internet service are dropped in price causing price drops and innovation simply takes over naturally there, just ask iiNet.

Enjoy!

Introducing ADSL2+. Yeh, we knew it existed years ago, Telstra were just so slow at getting the pills necessary to get it up.

Now, however, Senator Conroy, contacted Telstra advising them that he agrees with the ACCC in full, when they said it back in 2006, there is no reason for the ACCC to interfere in Telstra’s ADSL2+ plans, and shouldn’t require wholesale activity (well, they haven’t seen a compelling case).

Conroy says that’s good enough, Samuel said it was good enough back in 2006, Telstra were just too lazy (or using the negative situation to its advantage) to send a letter in to ACCC chair Graeme Samuel.

Senator Conroy saved them the ink (pretty pathetic when a company can’t even write / type / fax / email a simple letter) and wrote to them advising them that the ACCC are right.

However, if you read the media release from Telstra, they try and spin it around as they were trying for the last year to get this certainty.

Well, they didn’t try hard enough, considering it’s been well known for the last year at least that there are no plans to intervene with ADSL2+ from Telstra.

And I echo and agree, there’s absolutely no want, no need, or requirement for well, anyone to intervene in Telstra’s wholesale ADSL2+ offering.

That said, so long as Telstra don’t try and restrict competition by filling up exchanges deliberately, or doing other anti competitive behaviour.

This is of course a major news revelation, and I’ve seen Sydney Lawrence and someone I assume is Rod Bruem out and about on other news sites posting some outlandish comments (that’s pretty much the norm, right Sydney?) – the same is true from users with opposing views on those sites as well.

But, of them all, this article stroke the most interest from me. I don’t care if Telstra are offering 900 exchanges ADSL2+. Don’t give a rats, doesn’t effect me, never will touch Bigpond product, too expensive, not worth it, won’t get any gain from it, ends up costing you more, etc, etc, etc. The article that I found most interesting, is this one, which instead, gives a view from another ISP (Internode), published on APCs website, features some comments from Simon Hackett (who should be hanging his head in shame after thinking such comments). The article is here: http://www.apcmag.com/7972/internode_doubts_legality_of_telstras_adsl2_plans

Simon finds it difficult how a regulatory guarantee exists, well, simple, there is none, there is no guarantee in any of the released information that purports to guarantee there will be zero intervention by the ACCC in Telstra’s enabling of ADSL2+.
The ACCC may find that Telstra wholesaling ADSL2+ plans at higher than retail costs is worthy of them intervening, and they can do so.  The ACCC only ever stated that they haven’t heard a compelling case for them to intervene, and so they shouldn’t.

Telstra is free to retail ADSL2+ all they like, sure, it’s the same ports, sure, it’s a stupid attitude to take, sure, they are piss expensive, but, there’s no reason for the ACCC to get involved, simply because Internode, they’ve shown they know how to invest, so get investing. Put up or shut up Simon.

He claims to have contacted the ACCC and TW for explanations on the guaratee, well, there was none, I haven’t seen any claim of one, just that there is certainty that the ACCC haven’t found a compelling case for them to tell Telstra to share.

Telstra offer ADSL1 services. Optus have proven they are capable of investing in the areas, so maybe it’s time other ISPs copied Telstra and Optus, place more DSLAMs in regional areas, invest, get the plans out there, and hey, if the costs are higher, well pass them on, and if the market shuns you, then you’ll need to find a new path.

Telstra Wholesale doesn’t have to wholesale a bloody thing except for declared products, Simon’s whinge seems to place out the view (at least to me) that he was expecting wholesale prices on ADSL2+ from Telstra.

I doubt you will be seeing them Simon, Telstra can simply stick to marketing and use up to 20Mbps for speed advertisements, and where they have ADSL2+ enabled, give the customer ADSL2+, and where they don’t, give an ADSL1 8Mbps port.

And, on the wholesale front, you simply get, you guessed it, a ADSL1 port at 8Mbps with Telstra’s excessively premium prices attached.

There is no guarantee, there’s only certainty, Simon should perhaps think a little before he speaks, Conroy or the ACCC have not provided a guarantee, and I doubt they ever will.

Our governments and regulatory bodies should never talk in guarantee terms unless they are talking to guarantee a quality of service and have penalties imposed for failing.

The governments and regulatory bodies should already (well, bloody well hopefully) by now realise that making a guarantee is a very much open to punishment when something bad happens (ie. Guaranteeing Telstra no intervention by the ACCC on ADSL2+ would cause Telstra to act anti competitively just because they had that guarantee, which is why they don’t guarantee anything).

That said, Simon seems to be also questioning whether Telstra might withdraw offering ADSL1 services, Simon, ask yourself, if you were Telstra, and anal probing your competitors for lots of dollars on ports that cost two thirds of what is being charged, would you stop? Would you pull it all away? Would you piss off that many public consumers, knowing that many could just seek alternatives like Unwired or other non Telstra broadband?

If they did withdraw from ADSL1 wholesale, imagine how much investment would automatically happen as a result? Optus would be in overflow mode spending big dollars to take off where Telstra let everyone down. And I’m sure Simon won’t be complaining about regulatory certainty, they’d have a strong foothold to invest knowing Telstra isn’t in the way.

I find Simon’s comments published on that article very much surprising, considering I’d have expected them to now see even more certainty, and now are able to invest in a market where they know that Telstra isn’t going to wholesale, so on your bike Agile, get some ports out there, get some customers on them.

But backhaul I hear you whinge? Well, that’s a job for investment to fix, high prices encourage investment, just go ask iiNet, they got encouraged by faster speeds and cheaper prices from what I gather.

Run some backhaul, pay for it, and profit. You got the profit bit downpat, considering Internode’s prices are some of the higher prices by comparison to other ISPs.

Enjoy!

We took the car in for its pink slip last week at some point, and we failed the pink slip for the fact the rear left window doesn’t go down (its electric).

What I found amazing then is that the car was just given a pink slip by another mechanic back in August 2007, when it was given a check over at another mechanic, and passed happily.

Which leads me to point in this post, what faith can there be in road safety, if the RTA can’t even get its inspection stations on the same page, and aware of what is, and isn’t allowed.

K-Mart Tyre and Auto could be just too picky, or on the other hand, the other mob, might have just done a rush job and decided it all seemed fine (and might not even challenge them on the window).

The point I’m making here is clearly, there is some clear unknown area as to whether the windows should be going up and down for the purposes of obtaining a pink slip or not.

I don’t really care, I had planned to fix that window soon anyway, it was rather annoying not letting the little one be able to say hello and bye to others when he is sitting in the car (and it can provide a source of air too).

Anyway, it turns out that not even the auto electrician believed it needed to be fixed, but someone else present believed it was needed, something perhaps the RTA themselves should make sure everyone is clear on.

Because, if it doesn’t matter, then K-Mart owe me a pink slip, on the other hand, if it does, then the mechanic who checked the car a few months back needs to be told so, because we bought the car knowing the window wasn’t working, but, it was road worthy.

Clearly, that isn’t the case!

Anyway, we got him to do a few other things while he had the car for a good section of today (he really is a great auto electrician, he did the immobiliser for us, and is well known to someone else we know).

The car stereo we installed months ago, the speakers in the back on the right didn’t want to work, it turns out that the wiring supplied to that is earthed or something, and so I need to go take the time and wire them up to the head deck directly – bugger, so I have to get fiddly feeding wire – or pay him to. Hmm.. I think I might.

We now have a rear brake light (you know the one above the seat), and the spoiler lights, which are LED based are stuffed, so we can either replace that, or go without, not critical.

And the other issue was a front headlight, now we can see pedestrians, woo hoo (for them).

It’s still going to be a little high cost to get the window fixed though, we have to go buy the internal electrics, because the car didn’t come with them left in place (the previous owner removed them).

So, it’s a trip to the auto wreckers to pick up some electric window components, then book the car back in with the trusty auto electrician, and get that window enjoying it’s up and down activity.

Another issue that popped up in the SEVERE (no exaggeration) rain we had today is one of visibility, one of which I don’t like driving blind, it’s like playing marco / polo, except with cars, and on a busy road. And, naturally, you don’t want to get caught (ie. in an accident).

What happened was the windows in the front seem to have some artificial rubbish tint or something on them, I got out some newspaper to clean a lot of the fog off the inside of the car, and noticed that the window was actually removing some substance from it, on closer examination, it appeared to be a glue like substance, and it was all ‘showerscreen’ like (snowy), and we couldn’t see through it, so, the fix to that was to scrub it right off with newspaper, and viola, I can see the car in the right hand lane without trying to touch it first.

We had buckets of rain, it was flooding in areas.. No kidding, Wyong Road, drivers in the right hand lane travelling at around 60KM an hour were able to spray our car in the left hand lane of the opposite direction (this road has two lanes in each direction), there was enough water on the road itself to splash us.

Off to the wreckers tomorrow, then to someones house to stop a porn dialler (she didn’t like describing it :D), and then to book the car in to get the electric window fitted.

Then, to go ponder (assuming it is dry) how I’m going to feed the cables to the MP3 player!

Enjoy!