Around one third of Australia's telcos have shut their doors over time, but that isn't stopping new ventures hoping to chip away at carriers' mobile call bonanza. By fighting carriers at the smartphone rather than the home phone, could the latest two contenders be onto something big?
Last year I opined that, even if Telstra did launch Apple's iPhone 3G, conflicting goals meant it couldn't afford to seriously back the product. This year, Telstra proved me right, and the reason is simple: Australia's biggest telco just wants to be a Mac.
Sure, better 3G coverage is good for competition, but it's what you do with the 3G that will ultimately make the difference. As Vodafone expands its network footprint, the practice of selling 3G-enabled netbooks like mobile phones should really resonate with end users.
People were apparently switching their brains off before joining the 3G iPhone queues, so it's somewhat surprising that considering an appropriate amount of storage was quite a high priority for many buyers.
A while back, frustration with my inability to get online outside of the office drove me to invest in a 3G data service from Hutchinson's 3. For $30 per month, I get 2GB of data that's accessible pretty much anywhere I go (I do all my work in metropolitan areas).
Is Hackett the Saruman the once-good wizard who is seduced by the dark powers of Sauron of my recent Lord of the Rings scenario? Is something rotten in Renmark and elsewhere?
How much should Telstra be charging for unconditioned local loop?
Victorian Web start-up My Perfect has a strong story and rationale for why it will succeed. But it has to overcome some challenges and design flaws first.
Sprint's WiMAX roll-out in Baltimore will prove the Australian government's decision to worm its way out of the Opel WiMAX contract was a short-sighted, and ultimately damaging, political stunt that has benefited nobody.
Mobile phone companies have seen the green bandwagon go by and are flinging themselves on it faster than you can say "lazy, greenwash-spewing me-too merchants" but in the pantheon of would-be eco-friendly mobile makers, Nokia is coming up with some of the best and worst ideas on the market.
Steve Jobs' backflip on a key aspect of the iPhone stood out from a normal day -- broadband furore, antagonistic marketing, personal attacks and government inaction -- in the world of Australia's telecoms market.
Qualcomm has poured money into its broadcast mobile television system, MediaFLO. Now US carrier AT&T is hoping that consumers will do the same, following the launch of a consumer mobile TV offering based on the Qualcomm tech. Good luck with that.
A few weeks ago, I was in Shanghai, at the Intel Developers Forum. Intel was keen to show off what it hopes will be the bridging device between high-end mobiles and laptops: the mobile Internet device or MID. Intel was showing off a lot of interesting things at the conference. The MID, sadly, was not one of them.
Despite the fact that a study out this month has shown that the cancer risk from mobiles is more hot air than anything, how many people would be willing to put a base station in their home?
We truly live in the lucky country, what with being able to easily change our mobile ringtone to the song from the VB ad. Others are not so fortunate.
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