Elders this week announced it would make 80 per cent of its telecommunications staff redundant as it closed its internet service provider division.
The government's plan for bush WiMax coverage may well have hit a hurdle, after concerns over an ongoing court case with Telstra reportedly led to a delay in signing the contract with OPEL to build the network.
The national carrier has said the federal government's decision to cancel the Optus-Elders (OPEL) consortium's rural WiMax network contract was a matter of "common sense", after Communications Minister Stephen Conroy gave indications as late as yesterday that he was still considering the proposal.
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.
Telstra will disclose thousands of its execs' private e-mails in the ongoing legal scrap between the telco and the Federal Communications Minister.
Hopefully, you've been spending your end-of-year break better than the executives at Optus, who seem to have taken advantage of the annual industry-wide lull to get onetime WiMax aspirant Austar United Telecommunications to the negotiating table.
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 world of speculative telecommunications investments has quieted down considerably since the beginning of the decade, when hype-fuelled carriers plunked down billions to reserve the right to carry mobile phone calls, video calls, and massive volumes of spam at high speed using then-fanciful 3G mobile technology.
The government's Australia Connected program, it appears, is no longer an altruistic and long-overdue investment in Australia's infrastructure, but a political football whose primary purpose seems to be to send a massive "nyah-nyah" to the Labor party.
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.
WiMax, the controversial long range wireless broadband technology, is set to spread across rural Australia from next year -- but despite the outgoing Howard government's ambitious project, both fixed and mobile variants of the technology are already being deployed around the world.
An analysis by representatives of Australia's two largest IT industry groups shows that neither political party in the federal election has come up with a comprehensive policy around technology.
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?
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