Broadband News
Tue, 16th Aug 2016
NBN's EBITDA worsens to AU$1.57b loss
NBN's revenue has increased alongside its EBITDA loss, ARPU, capex, opex, and number of active premises as the network rollout intensifies.
Source: ZDNet Australia
NBN Says Its Rollout Is 'On Track'
The National Broadband Network released its 2016 yearly results today, showing the rollout “continues to exceed its connection and financial targets”. A spokesperson for Senator Mitch Fifield, Minister for Communications says this is “the latest evidence of the benefits of the Coalition’s faster, more affordable NBN rollout”.
Source: Gizmodo
NBN confident but closemouthed on future funding
During FY16 NBN received a $7.1 billion equity injection from the federal government, bringing total equity funding to date to $20.3 billion.
Source: Computerworld
NBN to add 2.5 million homes to network in FY17
By the end of FY17, NBN is planning to have some 5.4 million premises able to order a National Broadband Network service — adding some 2.5 million premises to the network’s footprint during the year.
Source: Computerworld
Mon, 15th Aug 2016
Optus EPL fail: Aussie sports fans deserve better
As English Premier League fans suffer at the hands of Optus, the ACCC needs to intervene when broadcasters and telcos can't deliver on their streaming sports promises.
Source: SMH
Optus Out: EPL fans rage after football streaming service hits technical faults
When Optus shocked the Australian sporting landscape by buying the rights for the English Premier League, outbidding Foxtel three-to-one, there were murmurs of discontent within the football fraternity.
Source: SMH
Ten times faster than NBN: DGtek brings gigabit fibre to Aussie suburbs
Following the lead of Google in the US, Melbourne telco DGtek is launching a 1 Gbps suburban GPON fibre service this month to serve homes and businesses hungry for bandwidth.
Source: SMH
Has TPG started building its own 4G network?
TPG Telecom appears poised to step up work on its own 4G network, revealing plans over the weekend to design and implement a “LTE network rollout”.
Source: iTnews Australia
Fri, 12th Aug 2016
ABS staff point finger at government for Census crash: Union
The union has said ABS staffers blame the Turnbull government for the Census crash after 'dilly-dallying' in appointing a chief statistician, changing ministers thrice, and cutting staff members.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Telstra's AU$3b network spend criticised by analysts
The AU$3 billion to be sunk into its network betrays Telstra's previous underinvestment, according to telecommunications analysts.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Optus’ operating revenue slips 13 per cent
Telecommunications company, Optus, has reported a 13 per cent decline in operating revenue for the quarter ending June 30, from $2.3 billion in 2015 to $2 billion this year. Its underlying net profit also dipped 1.9 per cent to $194 million, from $194 million the same time last year.
Source: ARN
IBM defends itself following Turnbull’s accusation
IBM has broken the silence about the incident involving the Census 2016 website, where the website was brought offline by four distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Source: ARN
Netflix And Fill: How The World's Largest Video Streamer Shares New Titles Around The Planet
Ever wonder how that latest season of Orange Is The New Black actually made its way across the planet from Netflix’s little home in Los Gatos, California to your big-screen TV? Netflix engineers have talked in depth about how one copy of a new video is converted into dozens of different resolutions and bit-rates, uploaded to a storage service, and then distributed as smartly as possible to thousands of different Netflix nodes around the world — including the one closest to your home.
Source: Gizmodo
Thu, 11th Aug 2016
Qantas Is Launching Free, Fast Wi-Fi On Domestic Aircraft
Qantas is gearing up for the rollout of free in-flight wifi on about 100 domestic aircraft, under a partnership with global broadband services provider ViaSat that will tap into the NBN network.
Source: Gizmodo
Telstra pledges $3bn to network, systems overhaul
Telstra will spend an extra $3 billion over the next three years to improve its networks and customer experience following a spate of outages earlier this year.
Source: iTnews Australia
Telstra takes AU$5.8b net profit out of controversial year
Australia's incumbent telco has posted a 36.6 percent profit jump for the 2015-16 financial year, but CEO Andrew Penn is disappointed with the negative opinion mass-market customers held of Telstra's tumultuous 2016 performance.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Optus profit drops 12 percent for 1Q17
Optus continues to remain optimistic about the business transformation it is undertaking, despite seeing net operating revenue drop to AU$2 billion for the first quarter of the 2017 financial year.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Census failure leaves very big issues for IBM and ABS: Turnbull
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said he is angry with the failure of the Census 2016 site due to a "entirely predictable" denial of service attack.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Wed, 10th Aug 2016
Telstra denies involvement in Census stuff up
Australia's incumbent telco has denied it was to blame for a router failure in Tuesday night's Census.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Australian government pins Census collapse on geoblocking failure and overloaded router
The ABS has said it was under denial of service attack throughout yesterday, before a hardware router failure sparked a series of events that resulted in the Census site being pulled down last night.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Vaya Now Has Australia's Cheapest Unlimited Mobile Plan
If you send a lot of text messages and make a lot of calls to your buddies around Australia, then you definitely want a mobile phone plan with unlimited SMS and national calling. You don’t have to spend much money at all to make that happen, though — Vaya says it can do exactly that, plus a little bit of 4G data too, for just $16 a month.
Source: Gizmodo
Is Your Census Data Safe?
At 7:55pm last last the Australian Bureau of Statistics shut down the Australian Census website, revealing this morning that the move was a precaution against a series of denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Two million Census forms were submitted before the site closed, which raises the question — is your data safe?
Source: Gizmodo
The Australian Privacy Commissioner Is Investigating The Census Attack
Today the Australia Bureau of Statistics announced the Census website fell victim to a series of DDoS attacks yesterday, causing the department to shut down the site. Moments ago the Australian Privacy Commissioner announced he will opening an investigation into the “cyber attack”.
Source: Gizmodo
ABS blames Census 2016 site failure on DDoS attack
As widely expected, the Census website fell over last night -- but the ABS has said it was with a little help from external players.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Tue, 09th Aug 2016
Privacy Commissioner 'satisfied' with Census data security
Australia's Privacy Commissioner is "generally satisifed" with the security provisions guarding the extra personal information being collected in this years' national Census, despite widespread public concerns.
Source: iTnews Australia
Tonight Is Census Night, Or Next Month If You're Busy
Can’t make it onto the Census website tonight? The ABS says its server infrastructure is pretty sturdy, but as with all things running electricity through silicon there are no guarantees. If you don’t complete your Census form tonight — for whatever reason — you won’t automatically be fined the government’s default $180 per day penalty. The actual deadline is around six weeks away.
Source: Gizmodo
Mon, 08th Aug 2016
TPG, Vodafone latest to join the mobile data feast
The data feast for mobile phone users continues to roll on, with TPG partnering with Vodafone to hit the market offering big increases in data allowances with three of its newly released plans on the Vodafone 4G network.
Source: iTWire
Telstra to axe, offshore more jobs
Telstra will cut more than 200 jobs across its global finance and service operations businesses and potentially offshoring as many as half of the roles.
Source: iTnews Australia
Telstra considering cutting more than 200 jobs
Telstra is considering axing another 204 jobs, with the majority to be offshored, according to a report from the union.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Fri, 05th Aug 2016
ACCC to examine effects of NBN, mobile, OTT on communications sector
The changing telecommunications landscape thanks to increased data usage, mobility, and the NBN rollout has spurred the ACCC to examine the effectiveness of its market regulation.
Source: ZDNet Australia