Broadband News
Fri, 05th Oct 2018
Taxpayers foot $2,800 home internet bill for Federal Assistant Treasurer
Prime Minister Scott Morrison orders an investigation into why his Assistant Treasurer Stuart Robert has been slugging taxpayers up to $2,800 a month for his home internet bills on Queensland's Gold Coast.
Source: ABC News
Plan change mysteriously solves South Australian's NBN HFC issues
The Internet problems plaguing a resident of South Australia who has an NBN connection via HFC have suddenly disappeared, though neither the NBN Co nor his retail service provider are able to cast light on how it was resolved.
Source: iTWire
Telstra wins $8.2M Govt contract for the landing of the Coral Sea Cable System
Telstra has won a $8.2 million contract with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) for the landing of the Coral Sea Cable System.
Source: ARN
Tassie ISP sees NBN Co move pushing up prices
The NBN Co has issued a blog post warning that congestion on the broadband network may "fluctuate" as it forces providers to choose between the original pricing and the new "bundled" pricing system.
Source: iTWire
Thu, 04th Oct 2018
Aussie Broadband sets $55 floor for NBN internet charges
Aussie Broadband will stop offering sub-$55 a month NBN internet plans from next month as it transitions customers over to NBN Co’s permanent bundled pricing.
Source: iTnews Australia
NBN Co warns of potential network congestion as discounts end
NBN Co says it expects congestion levels for National Broadband Network services to fluctuate as retail service providers (RSPs) shift to the wholesaler’s bundled products, which it launched earlier this year, and as a promotional discount scheme winds up.
Source: Computerworld
Wi-Fi Alliance dumps 802.11 naming in favour of version numbers
802.11ax is Wi-Fi 6, 802.11ac becomes Wi-Fi 5, and Wi-Fi 4 was 802.11n.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Vocus against Telstra plan for copper migration delay
Vocus has come out against a proposal by Telstra to delay the disconnection of business Ethernet and DSL users from their existing services over the summer.
Source: iTnews Australia
NBN Co warns users about rising congestion
NBN Co has finally confirmed that congestion on its network will “fluctuate” - or increase - when it removes a temporary price offer at the end of this month.
Source: iTnews Australia
Wed, 03rd Oct 2018
100Mbps fixed wireless: NBN Co forecast fewer than 6000 users
NBN Co says that its forecasts showed that only around 5600 households and businesses would take advantage of its planned but now cancelled 100/400 megabits per second fixed wireless service.
Source: Computerworld
NBN: 1,500 fixed-wireless users download over 1TB in a month
NBN had forecast just 1.4 percent of fixed-wireless users to take up its 100Mbps service, with the company also pointing the finger at more than 1,500 'extreme' users who individually downloaded more than 1TB during May.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Aussie Broadband chief scores a PR coup by detailing outage
The head of small Australian ISP, Aussie Broadband, has taken the unusual step of telling his customers the intricate details of an outage that occurred over the recent weekend, in sharp contrast to other companies that try to paper over such incidents with bizspeak.
Source: iTWire
Tue, 02nd Oct 2018
Aussie Broadband properly explains broadband outage to customers
Bucking the trend of remaining tight lipped in the face of network issues, Aussie Broadband reached out to customers during an outage of its NBN services over the weekend, explaining the cause, effect, and fix.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Telstra delivers 500th mobile black spot base station, 100 million calls and 5000TB of data
Telstra is making it easy for its customers in former black spot areas to make calls, with over 100 million made from those locations, so Chuckie's cry of "why didn't you call" can't be because you didn't have mobile service.
Source: iTWire
Vocus confirms Sea-Me-We3 back online
The break that knocked the Sea-Me-We3 (SMW3) cable system offline has been repaired, according to Vocus.
Source: Computerworld
Mon, 01st Oct 2018
AFL and NRL Grand Final stadium spectators generated combined 5.7TB of data, 21% more than 2017
Fans attending the AFL Grand Final and NRL Grand Final on the weekend generated a combined 5.7 terabytes of data on the Telstra Mobile Network, a whopping 21% more than last year.
Source: iTWire
Call for more telecoms consumer safeguards
There has been a call for further safeguards to prevent consumers being misled about telecommunications billing charges in the wake of Telstra’s refunding of $9.3 million for misleading consumers over Premium Direct Billing charges.
Source: iTWire
Fri, 28th Sep 2018
Telstra refunds customers signed up to billing service without their knowledge
The telco refunds more than 72,000 customers more than $9.3 million after they were signed up to a billing service without even realising it when they were using third party apps on their phones.
Source: ABC News
Australia bid to push Huawei out of PNG cable project
Australia, along with Japan and the US, is once again trying to elbow out Chinese telecommunications company Huawei from building a cable system, this time an internal one in Papua New Guinea.
Source: iTWire
Lack of NBN Co discounting forces MyRepublic to hike prices
The prediction made by the chief of Launceston-based ISP Launtel that smaller retail service providers selling NBN plans would be in difficulty after October appears to be coming true, with one small provider, MyRepublic, announcing that it would raise its prices from 27 October.
Source: iTWire
Verizon pushes LTE to 1.45Gbps speeds
Verizon, Nokia, and Qualcomm have achieved speeds of almost 1.5Gbps on the carrier's live commercial LTE network in New York.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Telstra refunds customers AU$9.3m for billing practices
After being fined AU$10 million for misleading customers on its management of premium direct billing services, Telstra has also had to refund customers a total of AU$9.3 million.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Thu, 27th Sep 2018
Telstra and Ericsson deploy long range NB-IoT connections
Ericsson and Telstra have successfully deployed and tested Narrowband internet of things (NB-IoT) data connections of up to 100km from any Telstra base station.
Source: ARN
Telstra NBN users in Brisbane's west hit by outages
NBN users in western parts of Brisbane, who are Telstra subscribers and are connected via HFC cable, have been enduring outages right through the week, with the Internet suddenly cutting off as early as 8.10am and reconnecting as late as 6pm.
Source: iTWire
Milne resigns as ABC chairman over Guthrie sacking fallout
Justin Milne announces he will resign as ABC chairman after the corporation's board met over the growing fallout from the sacking of managing director Michelle Guthrie.
Source: ABC News
Wed, 26th Sep 2018
ACMA expands telco consumer forum
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has expanded its Consumer Consultative Forum (CCF), with the appointment of eight new members.
Source: iTWire
Tue, 25th Sep 2018
NBN upgrades transit network to 19.2Tbps per fibre link
The upgraded capacity on NBN's backbone fibre-optic transit network will initially be available in Sydney before being switched on across the nation.
Source: ZDNet Australia
NBN Co doubles transit capacity in upgrade
NBN Co has announced a doubling of capacity on its 60,000km fibre network, after it delivered an update it expects will deliver broadband to more customers seeking more data.
Source: iTnews Australia
NBN Co doubles transit network capacity
The company building the national broadband network NBN Co has flicked the switch on a major upgrade to double bandwidth capacity along its 60,000km fibre optic backbone.
Source: ARN
Telstra restates its NBN fixed wireless speeds
Telstra has revealed a more conservative set of numbers for the speed of NBN fixed wireless services during the evening peak, six months after becoming the first telco to publish fixed wireless data.
Source: iTnews Australia