Senator Coonan's office has hit back at Labor's communication spokesperson Stephen Conroy for comments he made about using VoIP over WiMax during a debate last week.
The government has denied that Australia's bush broadband network will be put at risk of interference from common households gadgets -- such as microwave ovens.
Despite an ongoing legal stoush which threatens to derail the network, the government and OPEL have finally sealed the deal that will bring WiMax to the bush.
Communications Minister Helen Coonan has accused her Labor counterpart of releasing "doctored" maps of broadband coverage in Tasmania, which show the government's planned WiMax network only delivering half the coverage promised by the Coalition.
Broadband subscriptions in Australia grew by 109 percent for the 12 months ended March this year, according to a report by the federal government, which claims its telecommunications reforms have been a boon for the industry.
In the broadband war, it seems, everyone has an opinion and those with a vested interest are playing fast and loose with the truth.
Post-election adrenaline surging through his veins, one of the first acts performed by new Communications Minister Stephen Conroy was to disband the expert panel that his predecessor Helen Coonan had appointed last June to evaluate tenders for fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) construction.
Just a few days after the Australia Connected program was launched Communications Minister Helen Coonan was selling the initiative to the TV talk shows.
There must be something in the water in Canberra. After years of measured inaction, the Coalition is taking long-overdue steps towards universal broadband and working around Telstra's continued domination -- after 10 years of deregulation -- of the country's telecommunications wholesale markets.
If there ever were concrete evidence that Labor is blowing smoke up the proverbials of the Australian population, it came earlier this month as Senator Stephen Conroy, the man charged with promoting Labor's fibre-everywhere policy while simultaneously taking potshots at his counterpart Senator Helen Coonan, put his foot squarely in his mouth.
When the government announced that Optus and Elders had won the bid to build Australia's bush broadband network, it provoked jeers and plaudits alike, but it was the ISPs' choice of WiMax as the bearer technology that has provoked the most furious storm of argument. Just how will the technology stand up to life in the bush?
Unwired CEO, David Spence, has urged Australia's communications regulators to protect a tranche of prime wireless broadband spectrum due to be auctioned September from anti-competitive behaviour by existing carriers.
A remarkable four-car pile-up is about to happen with the National Broadband Network; goodness knows what will emerge from the wreckage. Maybe there'll be no survivors at all.
Is this a marriage made in heaven? The federal government and shareholders at Australia's largest carrier certainly hope so.
In an exclusive interview, the Australian Communications Authority's retiring chairman Dr Bob Horton explains why consumer rights continue to lag. He touches on other topics including regulating mobile adult content.
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