Broadband News
Tue, 23rd Jul 2019
Police cop the most blame for illegal telco metadata searches
Police agencies made a series of illegal - or otherwise problematic - telecommunications metadata searches between 2015 and mid-2017, according to the Commonwealth Ombudsman.
Source: iTnews Australia
Data retention costs Australian telcos upwards of AU$210 million to date
Law enforcement agencies have stumped up only AU$39 million to poke around in Australia's metadata.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Ericsson and Telstra make standalone 5G call
Telstra and Ericsson have teamed up to make what the pair are calling first end-to-end 5G standalone call in the southern hemisphere at Telstra's 5G Innovation Centre on the Gold Coast.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Law Council wants warrants and crime threshold for metadata retention scheme
Agencies that are allowed to view metadata should be spelled out in legislation, Law Council of Australia states.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Mon, 22nd Jul 2019
Govt to reintroduce consumer data right bill
The government will reintroduce legislation for the consumer data right (CDR) to parliament this week after it lapsed without passage when parliament was dissolved back in April.
Source: iTnews Australia
Fri, 19th Jul 2019
Telstra ‘seeking to position’ itself for NBN purchase, unions claim
The unions at the centre of Telstra bargaining talks have fuelled speculation that the telco is priming itself to buy the National Broadband Network (NBN).
Source: ARN
Encryption laws to run up against CLOUD Act and GDPR: Law Council
Australia's encryption laws are unlikely to be compatible with the United States' CLOUD Act, as well as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, the Law Council of Australia has said.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Thu, 18th Jul 2019
NBN Sky Muster Plus satellite trial averages 43Mbps
Trial users of NBN Co’s Sky Muster Plus service had a quarter of their data use unmetered and averaged 43Mbps speeds, according to retail service provider SkyMesh.
Source: iTnews Australia
'Australia can trust Huawei': executive says 5G mobile ban is the 'wrong decision'
One of Huawei's top global executives says the Federal Government got it wrong a year ago when it banned the Chinese telco giant from supplying equipment to Australia's new 5G mobile network.
Source: ABC News
Wed, 17th Jul 2019
Chorus has over 50% of NZ broadband on fibre
Peak data usage on its network now above 2Tbps, a 77% increase on June 2017 numbers.
Source: ZDNet Australia
NSW Police smash fake telco technician scam syndicate
NSW Police has dismantled a Sydney-based syndicate whose members posed as telecoms technicians and convinced victims to enable remote access on their computers to fix a “security flaw in their internet”.
Source: iTnews Australia
NBN HFC field test hits 994Mbps download speeds
The National Broadband Network (NBN) has conducted a DOCSIS 3.1 test on a customer's hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) line at Templestowe, Victoria that has clocked in at 994Mbps.
Source: ZDNet Australia
NBN Co hits gigabit HFC downloads with in-field DOCSIS 3.1 trial
NBN Co says it hit speeds of up to 994 megabits per second over a hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) connection during an in-field trial of DOCSIS 3.1 technology.
Source: Computerworld
Home Affairs could tap telcos for MAC and IP addresses, port numbers
The Department of Home Affairs has raised the prospect of forcing Australian telcos to capture an expanded range of user data including MAC addresses, IP addresses and port numbers under mandatory data retention laws.
Source: iTnews Australia
Tue, 16th Jul 2019
Home Affairs floats making telcos retain MAC addresses and port numbers
Soon it might just be easier for Australia's telcos to keep a copy of every TCP or UDP header for the cops to poke through.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Optus fears storage cost blowout to retain 5G metadata
Optus is concerned its data storage costs could blow out if Australia’s data retention regime is not “reviewed and calibrated” to deal with the arrival of 5G networks.
Source: iTnews Australia
Optus gained exemption to store metadata unencrypted
Optus has confessed it received an exemption to keep its legacy systems free from encryption when complying with Australia's data retention scheme.
Source: ZDNet Australia
Vodafone to refund customers over direct carrier billing charges
Vodafone has become the latest telco to offer refunds for their so-called ‘direct carrier billing’ service after customers were unknowingly charged for third-party apps and games.
Source: ARN
Fri, 12th Jul 2019
Retailers demand Telstra pay for massive payments outage
Key leaders in Australia’s retail industry say Telstra should be on the hook for compensation for lost sales resulting from Thursday’s national outage that crippled payment systems for around half the trading day after all major banks, merchant EFTPOS terminals and ATMs were knocked offline.
Source: iTnews Australia
myGov system goes down; Telstra blames 'traffic' for yesterday's outage
The myGov system is experiencing technical problems, denying people online access to the ATO, Medicare and Centrelink. Meanwhile, Telstra has blamed "unusually large traffic" in NSW for yesterday's payments outage.
Source: ABC News
Telstra restores services after outage, blames unusual traffic volumes in NSW
Telstra says it completed the full restoration of services early this morning after a major outage that affected its enterprise customers.
Source: Computerworld
Thu, 11th Jul 2019
Govt now says 'premature' to cut Telstra from future NBN sale
Telstra may still have a chance at buying part or all of the National Broadband Network in an eventual sale after the new Communications Minister appeared to back away from earlier comments that the telco would be excluded.
Source: iTnews Australia
Telstra outage hits electronic payments, ATMs and EFTPOS
Woolworths has been left processing payments manually amid a Telstra network outage, with other retailers and major banks reporting problems with EFTPOS, ATMs and other electronic payments.
Source: ABC News
Aussie TV viewers still footing the bill for mobile interference
Frank found himself $390 out of pocket after his TV antenna needed a filter to deal with 4G interference, and some installers say the problem is growing.
Source: SMH
Vocus touts 60Tbps capacity on Australia Singapore Cable
Vocus says that end to end capacity on the Australian Singapore Cable (ASC) is now 60 terabits per second (Tbps), up from its September 2018 debut of 40Tbps.
Source: Computerworld
NBN Co to fix aerial cable run between two trees in Sydney
NBN Co is set to conduct “rectification works” on a cable it inherited from Telstra that was found strung up between two trees in Sydney’s south.
Source: iTnews Australia
'We should have gone back': Telstra apologises for stringing NBN cable between two trees
A social-media clip showing cabling suspended across two trees on a suburban Sydney street goes viral on social media — but the NBN says the gaffe was inherited from Telstra, and has likely been that way since 2015.
Source: ABC News
Judge rejects Foxtel push to avoid hearing for proxy blocking case
A suggestion by Foxtel that its latest application for an anti-piracy injunction be heard ‘on the papers’ has been rejected by a Federal Court judge. Instead a hearing of the application, which if granted will block access to a number of web proxy services, has been scheduled for late August.
Source: Computerworld
Wed, 10th Jul 2019
NBN Co's most complained-about access tech is FTTC
NBN Co might claim fibre-to-the-curb users are among its biggest advocates, but users connected with that access technology also lodge more complaints than others.
Source: iTnews Australia
400 buildings hooked up to Adelaide’s 10-gig network
By the end of this month 400 buildings will be connected to an Adelaide fibre network offering symmetrical speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second. By the end of the year, that number is expected to reach 700.
Source: Computerworld