The federal government has promised broadband for all with the announcement today of its AU$162.50 million Australian Broadband Guarantee.
The Liberals have accused the Labor government of "breaking another election promise" after Senator Kim Carr was unable to confirm that high-speed broadband access will be made available to schools in time to accompany government's planned one-PC-per-desk rollout for high school students.
The government has handed out over AU$9 million in two separate grants to bush schools and emergency services in Western Australia.
Telstra has accused the Coalition of turning the country's broadband network into an election issue rather than concentrating on how improvements in speed could affect Australians.
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.
I should have known better, but I was still a bit suprised to find absolutely zilch for broadband in the latest Howard-Costello Budget.
It must be nice to view the world through rose-coloured glasses as Communications Minister Helen Coonan seems to.
Bill Murray's weeks spent in the purgatory of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania -- depicted in the amusing movie Groundhog Day -- have become a cultural sounding point, mentioned in passing to describe a situation where someone is stuck in the same painful, unresolvable situation day after day.
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.
Just a few days after the Australia Connected program was launched Communications Minister Helen Coonan was selling the initiative to the TV talk shows.
The Australian Labor Party's ICT shadow minister wants a national fibre broadband network and enough skilled people to exploit it.
The biggest loser in this week's budget was broadband -- not one cent was allocated to improve infrastructure works. However, security was the winner with funding confirmed to fight intellectual property crime and cyber-terrorist attacks.
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.
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?
The story of how Telstra lost its network is one of hubris and bungling, of misreading the play in Australia by men from the US who thought they knew everything already. Shareholders should never forget this.
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The long-awaited separation of Telstra
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