The spat between Telstra and Communications Minister Helen Coonan has cranked up a notch, with the government introducing a draft guideline to prevent the telco switching off its CDMA network until its Next G replacement is deemed equal or better in coverage.
The government has officially given Telstra the all-clear to close its second generation CDMA mobile network, saying that the telco has made all the necessary improvements that delayed its closure earlier this year.
As Telstra prepares to close off its CDMA network at the end of the month amidst concerns over customer migration to Next G, industry observers have said that after the dust settles the new network could hold promise for bush users.
NSW farmers are concerned that "patchy" coverage offered by Australia's latest mobile phone network could leave them isolated in cases of emergency.
Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, hosted a meeting of high-level Telstra executives and industry figures this morning, with the intention of abating concerns over the migration from CDMA to Next G.
Last week, a family friend rang for some technical help. "Telstra sold me this wireless Internet service and they promised it would work both at my home and at my office," he said. Said home is in the Melbourne CBD, and said office is in Kyneton, a lovely town about an hour away from Melbourne.
The day of reckoning finally arrived for CDMA -- and was then postponed, leaving everyone with any strong feeling on the subject a nice window of three months to once again enjoy the semantic back-and-forth the closure provokes.
Friends, industry watchers, readers; I come not to bag Telstra, but to praise it. The evil that telcos do often lives on after their Investors Days, while the good is often lost during interminable speeches.
With the OPEL bid cancelled and procedural questions dogging the FTTN bid, Australia is currently in something of a technological limbo.
Australian telecoms is increasingly resembling the US during Prohibition, with Telstra as Al Capone and the ACCC as Eliot Ness.
New technology gains legitimacy when it solves real business problems, but becomes indispensable when it offers to take that business in completely new directions. Such has been the case at Maroochy Shire Council, where a quite conventional thin-client rollout is now facilitating new ways of working for employees in the office and on the road.
Getting broadband to everyone in Australia should be a major concern for businesses and government.
After we published a list of the funniest and most biting public comments by Telstra's bombastic public policy chief Phil Burgess last week, a number of ZDNet.com.au readers wrote in suggesting more.
Telstra is determined to create new sources of revenue by investing in new IP infrastructure and building managed offerings around the integration of infrastructure and services. This means turning the company into a new kind of business -- with major implications for the whole economy.
The Australian Labor Party's ICT shadow minister wants a national fibre broadband network and enough skilled people to exploit it.
Telstra Country Wide has announced a AU$231 million investment in 2003/04 to improve services to regional areas.
Third-generation mobile technology has arrived, duly accompanied by a barrage of hype. But the industry is already casting its eyes forward to the next big thing - 4G.
The Queensland government has used its buying power to increase mobile coverage within the state, after it "got tired of waiting for the federal government to do something".
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