Delimiter » trial

Australian Govt says hands tied on Assange

Renai LeMay — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 07:10:47 +0000

news The Australian Government’s hands are currently tied when it comes to the fate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said last night, with the maverick Internet publisher’s Australian citizenship mattering little in the scheme of Swedish legal process unless a formal extradition request was made to shift him out of the European Union.

Assange is currently being held in the UK under a mild form of house arrest relating to alleged sexual offences in Sweden, where he is likely to be extradited under common European law. However, there are concerns Assange, who achieved global notoriety through his founding of the libertarian Wikileaks organisation, could be extradited from Sweden to the US to face prosecution over his organisations’ publication of classified material such as US diplomatic cables.

Assange is being represented by Australian-born human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who took live questions on the matter flanked by Roxon and a number of other commentators on the ABC’s Q&A television program last night (click here to watch the full program — it made for fascinating viewing).

The Wikileaks activist, Robertson said, wanted to “come back to Australia”, to contest a Senate seat in the next Federal Election likely to be held in 2013. However, Robertson said, the problem was that Assange would be liable to be extradited from Sweden to the US, which has reportedly set up a grand jury to try Assange under charges secretly drawn up more than a year ago.

“Sweden has a terrible reputation of rendering people straight to the CIA and that is his concern,” Robertson told the audience. “There has been a grand jury sitting in Virginia for 18 months. A grand jury is a medieval American procedure … they say that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich. Well, they may well indict Julian, because, after all, Sarah Palin said “We have to hunt him down like Bin Laden”.”

Robertson said that if Assange was taken to Sweden, the Australian Government could intervene at that point from having the activist extradited to the US, echoing comments by the Greens, which has demanded that the Government intervene in Assange’s case. Greens Communications spokesperson Scott Ludlam (who has visited Assange in the UK) stated in the Senate in March this year that a series of Freedom of Information requests he had filed with the Government regarding Assange’s fate had been stonewalled and blocked. The Greens view Assange as a journalist, and have requested that the Government support Assange as such and protect his rights.

However, last night on Q&A, Roxon said that the Australian Government was already doing all it could with respect to the Wikileaks founder. She said the Australian Federal Police had investigated Assange, and determined he had not broken any Australian law.

“What that means is that he is treated in exactly the same way as every other Australian,” Roxon said. “If he commits an offence in another country, that country’s laws obviously will apply … I don’t think anyone can suggest the UK doesn’t have a strong legal system. What we do then is provide consular support. As soon as the courts make their decision, he is free to come back to Australia. He hasn’t had his passport cancelled or any of those sorts of things.”

According to Roxon, if an extradition request was filed to shift Assange to the US, Australia would be notified and have the opportunity to challenge the issue. However, the Attorney-General said she would not pre-make a decision on what the Government would do in that case, as the issue would include a variety of factors such as what the request was about, what penalties might apply and so on.

“But no request has been made to us,” Roxon said.

Roxon did say that the Australian Government had made representations in Assange’s case that the proper legal process had been followed, including to representatives of the US Government. And she denied that recent changes to the way Australia handles extradition requests would have any impact on Assange. “I just think people have to understand we have to step through each of the legal processes,” said Roxon. “So far, all we have is assertions.”

Despite Roxon’s statements, a vote taken during the program showed that 78 percent of several thousand respondents did not believe the Australian Government had done enough to support Assange. In addition, a series of protests in Australian capital cities in late 2010 saw thousands of Australians organise to demand the Federal Government do more to support Assange.

opinion/analysis
I do believe that the Australian Government has done for Assange what it would normally do for most normal Australians caught in the sort of legal situation in which he finds himself in Europe: Provide consular assistance (which Assange probably does not need) and make mild representations to the relevant governments about due legal process.

However, the issue here is that popular perception is that the Government has not done enough, as Assange is far from being a normal citizen, and the legal process in which he is ensnared is far from clear and transparent. The fact that his ongoing house arrest in the UK has now stretched far beyond a year should make that clear, as should the Stratfor email leaks which purported to show a secret tribunal being set up in the US to try Assange in that country.

Clearly, Roxon and other senior figures in the Australian Government need to come a few steps closer to popular opinion on this one and do more in public to support Assange, instead of acting as if it’s an unemotional legal issue which people aren’t passionate about. The truth is that many Australians are passionate about this home-grown ratbag Internet activist, and so our Government should get a bit more red-faced about his plight too.

In the process, the US Government will likely get a bit annoyed at the Australian Government. But that’s by the by. As Prime Minister Julia Gillard recently said about the Australian Government’s relationship with China, following the decision to block Chinese networking equipment vendor Huawei from participating in the National Broadband Network construction process:

“We are deeply engaged at every level, we have a strong economic relationship, increasing ties at every level, diplomatic ties, multilateral ties, people to people links, and you will continue to see our relationship with China strengthen and grow. Now does that mean there will never be a moment where we see things differently? Of course not. There will be moments where we see things differently. And I’m not surprised that this is a moment where we are seeing one thing differently.”

“But it would be a great error indeed to move from a moment where we are seeing one thing differently, and then extrapolate that to the full dimensions of the relationship, a very grave error indeed.”

These words, it would seem, can obviously also be applied to Australia’s relationship with the US.

One last thing: If Assange is able to come home, and one suspects he will be eventually, one does also have to wonder how long his memory will be, if he is successful, as some believe he will be, in his bid for a seat in the Australian Senate. At that stage, the currently unpopular Labor administration may just be in need of a few extra numbers in the Senate to help ends meet and keep what is looking like a Coalition Government in check. At that stage, a Labor-led intervention to rescue Assange from US extradition might start to look like a pretty decent investment indeed.

Image credit: Surian Soosay, Creative Commons

In-flight Internet: Qantas’ failure to launch

Navina Anand, Chillibreeze — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:20:41 +0000

news Qantas, Australia’s biggest airline, has announced a new trial run of in-flight Internet connectivity on its superjumbo A380 for passengers on intercontinental flights between Australia and the United States. But it’s not the airline’s first attempt to bring in-flight connectivity to its passengers; in fact, Qantas has repeatedly struggled with the issue over the past decade.

In a statement this week, Qantas said six flights have been equipped with Internet technology on the Sydney-Los Angeles, and Melbourne-Los Angeles routes. Alison Webster, executive manager customer experience of Qantas, said customers would be able to access the Internet through their Wi-Fi-enabled devices such as laptops, iPhones, ipads, and BlackBerrys for the very first time.

The eight-week trial would give customers the opportunity to access the Internet in exactly the same way as a terrestrial Wi-Fi hotspot in which customers paid with their credit card to use the email, and surf the Internet, Webster said. OnAir provides the connectivity service using Inmarsat’s SwiftBroadband and global satellite-based connections, to transfer data between airborne passengers and the ground.

This trial, initially open to customers travelling First Class and Business Class, would help Qantas determine its connectivity options, and evaluate the possibility of using next generation communication platforms. Webster said that Qantas was the first airline in the world to conduct a trial of Internet services on direct flights between the US and Australia. “Over the past week Qantas has conducted some preliminary testing and is pleased to now trial the service with customers flying between Australia and Los Angeles,” Webster said.

It is only towards the end of last year that United Airlines announced its intention to have the Internet on its intercontinental flights, though domestic flights in the US had been offering the Internet for a couple of years now. At the end of 2010, Lufthansa had launched Wi-Fi on select North Atlantic routes as a beginning, before expanding to all their intercontinental routes.

Qantas was the world’s first airline to offer in-flight iPads loaded with movies, shows and music to its passengers including those in economy class, on the 767-300. Qantas used a central server on board to stream content to specially configured iPads. Interestingly these would stop working once the aircraft touched down.

However, it’s not the first time Qantas has attempted to bring in-flight Internet to its passengers. As early as 2003, as aircraft manufacturer Boeing kicked off a trial of in-flight Internet, Qantas said it was investigating in-flight email and Internet connectivity on international flights. “Qantas will therefore be watching the trial with interest,” a spokesperson for the airline told ZDNet.com.au at the time.

For several years the idea went nowhere, but by 2006 the idea had been revived at Qantas, with the airline using its website at the time to announce that it would offer in-flight Internet when it started flying its new fleet of Airbus A380 planes. At the time, the timing for Qantas’ launch was to be mid-2007.

By 2007, however, that time frame had been pushed back again to August 2008. In July 2007 Qantas announced again that it would bring wireless Internet to customers flying on its A380s. In March 2008 — although International customers still hadn’t received in-flight Internet services at that point — customers flying on domestic routes with Qantas got some hope that the airline would implement the feature on in-country flights, with the airline announcing at the time that it would introduce in-flight Internet through a mobile base station, that would allow mobile phones to access the service.

It’s not clear what happened to those plans, but Qantas certainly doesn’t encourage customers in 2012 to use their mobile phones on its planes, domestic or international. And in September 2008, the airline abandoned long-held plans to bring Internet to its international routes using the A380 craft. No real reason was given by the airline at the time, and the issue has remained fairly dormant since that time, despite the continuing interest from passangers in in-flight Internet services and the availability of such services in countries such as the US.

opinion/analysis
I will be surprised if Qantas ever manages to get in-flight Internet off the ground. The airline has been struggling with the issue for the past decade, has conducted a clutch of trials in the area, but has never quite managed to get this apparently simple technology to work well.

I regularly hear from readers who have travelled in the US on in-country flights and who have been extremely surprised to learn that in-flight Internet “just works” on some carriers there. This experience suggests that Australia’s national airline simply hasn’t been trying hard enough to bring this in-demand feature to Australia. Isn’t about time Qantas got in-flight Internet off the ground?

Image credit: Qantas. Opinion/analysis and Qantas history lesson by Renai LeMay.

Internode offers free FetchTV trial

Nayantara Mallya, Chillibreeze — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 22:42:22 +0000

news In response to Australian customers’ interest in the FetchTV service, Internode has revealed a new offer for those hesitating to commit to a two-year subscription. The company has introduced a 30-day ‘no penalty’ return process to boost potential customers’ confidence.

Customers trying out this option can sign up for a 24-month contract for a full or lite FetchTV subscription. If unsatisfied after 30 days, they can choose to cancel the service without having to pay the usual penalties for early termination, and return to Internode the equipment supplied. Customers opting out of the contract would still have to pay the monthly fees for the period that they used the FetchTV service. The no-termination-fee offer excludes any other hardware bought from Internode, such as routers and power-over-ethernet boxes.

Internode has also invited customers who terminate their FetchTV subscription during the trial period to post their story about their decision at a forum set up for the purpose. The company intends to use this feedback to improve the service and their interaction with future customers.

The trial offer applies for all new two-year subscriptions that customers opt for from the current week until Christmas 2011. It has also been backdated to include subscriptions taken from November 21st, 2011. The offer requires customers to ensure that returned hardware reaches Internode before the end of the second month of the contract term, in original packaging, with all cables together, and in resalable condition.

This free trial offer comes after Internode announced a slash in rates for the FetchTV service, in an effort to boost subscriptions. The company has also indicated that the trial might be extended if it goes well. Internode’s proposal is similar to rival Internet Service Provider iiNet’s scheme announced in July, offering a three-month trial option for existing customers.

In general, the FetchTV service offers a range of content to customers — with its basic TV channels featuring brands such as Discovery and National Geographic, BBC World News, CNBC Australia, Al Jazeera English and more, as well as a large range of add-on packages. Movies from major studios are delivered on a pay per view basis, and the service also auto-downloads a number of movies weekly for free consumption. It also functions as a set-top box for viewing and recording free to air digital TV.

opinion/analysis
I’m currently trialling a FetchTV service myself, as a review unit that I’ve borrowed this week from iiNet. While some aspects of the service work well, others are pretty … rudimentary, would be my word. I’ll have a review up probably early next week on the service, with a view to examining how it has evolved over the past year.

Image credit: FetchTV. Opinion/analysis by Renai LeMay

UK piracy ruling will affect Australia

External Contributor — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:15:09 +0000

This article is by Mark Gregory, a senior lecturer in electrical and computer engineering at RMIT University. It originally appeared on The Conversation.

opinion Last week, the English High Court ordered British Telecom (BT) to block access to a members-only website that offers links to pirated films. NewzBin2, the site in question, offers links to pirated films on what’s been described as a “grand scale”.

The ruling – which gives BT just 14 days to act – follows legal action by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) earlier this year. It’s the first copyright infringement case of its kind, legally requiring an internet service provider (ISPs) to deal with the thorny issue of illegal downloads.

The High Court outcome is already being hailed as a major win for movie studio bosses in their ongoing copyright protection battles. Chris Marchich, managing director of the Motion Picture Association in Europe stated: “Securing the intervention of the ISPs was the only way to put the commercial pirates out of reach for the majority of consumers. This move means we can invest more in our own digital offerings delivering higher quality and more variety of products to the consumer.”

BT, which has for some years employed an internet filtering system called Cleanfeed to block access to child pornography, welcomed the High Court outcome. That same system – created in 2003 and live since June 2004 – will now be used to filter NewzBin2.

A spokesperson for BT said it was “helpful to have the order now and the clarity that it brings”.

The ruling may also gives the company an avenue for dealing with an anticipated backlash from rights groups and groups sponsoring freedom online: BT, the company can rightly claim, has been forced to implement filtering, and has no choice in the matter. The MPA has already stated it will likely request other ISPs to block NewzBin2. With or without that, the judgement is likely to have an impact elsewhere in the world, including Australia.

In 2008, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) took action against iiNet – a prominent ISP – claiming that iiNet had allowed its users to illegally download copyrighted movies. The Australian Federal Court ruled in February this year that iiNet did not authorise the acts of infringement that occurred on its internet service.

The Australian High Court granted AFACT special leave to appeal the Full Court of the Federal Court in August and it’s likely the matter will return to the High Court later this year. It’s perfectly possible the Australian High Court will take notice of the latest international developments relating to this matter.

In the US, the six largest ISPs have agreed to a voluntary “six strikes” system of copyright notices and mitigation measures, including offender download speed reductions, mandatory copyright education and an appeals process. In New Zealand, a copyright protection system has been in place since 1998, which includes warnings, detection and enforcement notices that ultimately may lead to offenders being fined up to NZ$15,000.

In the UK a similar system was announced last year – it includes detection, infringement notices, a frequent offender register and an appeals body. The English High Court has effectively added to the copyright protection available to movie studios by requiring ISPs to block access to identified websites that permit customers to download copyright material.

Internet filters were introduced in Australia this year by major ISPs including Telstra, Optus and several smaller ISPs. The providers announced they would voluntarily block more than 500 websites. This step has drawn criticism from groups such as Electronic Frontiers Australia and other groups supporting online freedom and no censorship of the internet.

Should we be worried or relieved? That comes down to opinion and personal choice. It’s only a matter of time before the internet is fully regulated in Australia. The English High Court decision brings this reality one step closer.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.

Govt piracy move “completely unjustified”: Pirate Party

Renai LeMay — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 04:56:56 +0000

news The Australian division of digital rights political party the Pirate Party has condemned as “completely injustified” a proposal by the Federal Government to streamline the legal process whereby copyright holders can request details of alleged Internet pirates from Australian Internet service providers.

The proposal was revealed by Federal Attorney-General Robert McCLelland in a speech this morning to a conference organised by the Australian Copyright Council, an association of copyright holders. If it goes ahead, the modified process will make it easier for anti-piracy organisations such as Movie Rights Group and the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft to secure the details of individuals allegedly illegally downloading content online.

Cases in the US have shown that, once those details have been obtained, copyright owners will often issue a letter to the alleged infringers, requesting they settle the copyright owner’s legal claim on the matter, or face legal action. This is the approach being introduced in Australia by Movie Rights Group, a new organisation representing film studios.

In the speech, McClelland highlighted two recent reports published by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, and the newly formed Australian Content Industry Group, to illustrate the issue. In a statement in response, representatives of the Pirate Party Australia noted it would submit a response to the consultative process around the proposal.

“However, the Attorney-General’s war on sharing is completely unjustified and relies on extremely questionable research commissioned by the copyright lobby,” said the party’s president, Rodney Serkowski.

“File sharing is a legitimate form of cultural participation, and the move to criminalise and repress it by governments all over the world whilst sacrificing privacy and turning carriage service providers into de facto copyright cops is simply a ploy by the copyright monopoly to sacrifice our privacy in pursuit of financial gain. What they are looking for is a streamlined system for the invasion of privacy.”

McClelland’s department has recently been hosting talks between the content and ISP industries on the matter of file-sharing, with the aim of coming to an industry resolution on the issue. The issue is also slated to hit the High Court, courtesy of AFACT’s ongoing lawsuit against ISP iiNet. However, the departmental talks have been held behind closed doors.

In early October, the Department of the Attorney-General declined a Freedom of Information request for the minutes of the first meeting, stating that no such document existed.

“We have been highly critical of the process by which the Attorney General’s Department has conducted its consultations, which have largely excluded civil society and consumers,” said Serkowski. The most important stakeholders have not been able to participate.”

McClelland also noted today that in the US, an agreement had been reached between content owners and ISPs on the issue of file sharing. The agreement will see users disconnected from the Internet after they have allegedly breached copyright six times.

“Any system that seeks to limit, suspend or terminate access to the Internet, is completely disproportionate and violates fundamental rights and freedoms. We completely reject any move in this direction,” said Serkowski today.

The discussion paper also discusses a change to legislation that would widen so-called Safe Harbour rules protecting organisations such as ISPs from the actions of their users.

“We do however welcome steps to broaden safe harbour for service providers,” added acting Pirate Party secretary Brendan Molloy, “but this shouldn’t be limited to copyright infringement, nor should it sacrifice privacy in the process. Libellous statements posted to a moderated forum should [see the service host protected] under safe harbour regulations, for example.”

Telstra dumps Naked DSL proposal

Renai LeMay — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:42:30 +0000

news The nation’s largest telco Telstra has confirmed it will not launch naked DSL as a commercial offering, despite conducting a 15 month trial of the product and rivals like iiNet boasting more than 130,000 naked DSL customers.

The company kicked off a trial of naked DSL services in early June 2010, stating that it would conduct a two-year pilot of the services. Although naked DSL, in which broadband is sold without a bundled analogue telephone line, has been offered by rivals like iiNet, Internode and TPG for years – iiNet had some 131,000 naked DSL customers as at the end of June this year – Telstra has so far avoided offering such a service, continuing its practice of requiring customers to bundle telephony with their broadband. The trial marked Telstra’s first move to dip its toe in the naked DSL market.

In a post on Telstra’s customer support forums this week, one Telstra customer, ‘Paul’, wrote that he had been involved in the trial since July 2010, but had not been contacted by Telstra for his feedback on the experience. He enquired whether Telstra would offer a commercial naked DSL service after the trial was completed in July 2012. The response from Telstra employee Gareth (labelled online as a ‘thought leader’ for the telco) was swift.

“… there are no plans currently to extend the pure dsl trial to a commercial offering,” Gareth wrote. “Once the trial expires, the credit will no longer be applied. I do thank you all however for your participation. I could go into detailed reasons why we won’t be progressing to commercial launch but I think this thread adequately covers nearly all of the reasons for the cessation of the trial.”

Another Telstra employee, Ben (although not an official Telstra spokesperson on the forum), had noted earlier in the forum thread that it appeared as if the difference between incorporating the cost of a landline into a naked DSL service versus simply charging for it alongside normal ADSL broadband would be negligible on Telstra’s plans, and that having a PSTN service made troubleshooting line faults much easier for Telstra. Others on the thread noted it made sense for Telstra to include a PSTN service in its bundled plans, which see telephony, broadband and other services such as mobile broadband or Foxtel pay television combined into a single plan.

It is believed that unlike the systems of rival providers Telstra’s current billing system does not easily accommodate broadband being allocated to a customer’s account without an associated phone line for reference (that phone line does not have to be with Telstra), with the problem having come about due to the historical nature of Telstra’s systems being based around telephone services on its copper network. Gareth wrote that the naked DSL trial had been carried out through Telstra applying credits to the list of customer accounts on the trial.

He noted that the transition for Telstra customers off the naked DSL trial and onto normal plans could consequently be “messy”, and encouraged customers on the trial to message him directly through Telstra’s support forums to assist with the transition.

“In terms of gathering feedback … I think the optimal method is to private message me here (given the points noted above) and I will digest, read and respond (if I don’t get flooded) and make sure its accounted/mentioned in the review internally once the exit is complete,” he wrote. “My strong recommendation still is however to jump the gun prior to the trial’s end, and switch to one of our great value in-market plans which is fully supported by the business.”

Gareth’s comments come in stark contrast to a statement made by a Telstra spokesperson in response to a media enquiry on the issue over the weekend. “Like with any trial we’ll make a decision at the conclusion and advise customers accordingly,” they said. “[The] trial is only half-way through.”

opinion/analysis
What a total cop-out by Telstra. To be honest, it sounds as if the company was never really serious about its naked DSL trial. It doesn’t appear as though it contacted all of the customers on the trial to get feedback on the initiative, and now, nine months before the whole thing is due to wrap up, Telstra is already encouraging those on the trial to switch back to ‘normal’ broadband.

Meanwhile, rivals like iiNet continue to bolt on naked DSL customers like nobody’s business. What does Telstra find hard to understand about the fact that some 131,000 Australian households/businesses have already signed up for a naked DSL service – and that’s iiNet alone? Presumably there are several hundred thousand more naked DSL customers signed up through TPG, Internode, Primus and so on.

This decision by Telstra – and its ongoing failure to follow iiNet and Internode and launch internet telephony options, which are also increasingly popular in the Australian telecommunications market — stinks of an attempt to continue to lock customers in to its fixed-line telephone world, with high rates and value-added bundles. Frankly, we think it’s not serving customers – and Telstra could do better. The company should be looking to the future and leading the market — not holding its customers back.

NBN Co kicks off Brunswick trial this week

Brenton Currie, iTech report — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 03:50:47 +0000

NBN Co will this week begin trials at the third mainland Australia National Broadband Network (NBN) site situated in Brunswick, Victoria. The Brunswick trial site will be the third NBN site to come online on the Australian mainland, and the first official launch to be situated outside of New South Wales.

A spokesperson for NBN Co this morning confirmed an event will be held later this week to launch the Brunswick site that will see some residents in the area given the opportunity to test the NBN during the trial phase. However most Brunswick residents won’t be able to connect to the network until at least October when the trials are expected to be complete.

NBN Co says 52 percent of Brunswick residents in the NBN’s fibre footprint have opted to have the line to the network connected to their premises, however they won’t be able to begin using the network — unless they’re invited to the trial — until they can subscribe in October through one of the NBN’s retail providers.

Following the event this week, more than half of the five initial trial sites will have come online with the remaining two — one in the Townsville, Queensland suburbs of Aitkenvale and Mundingburra and the other in Willunga, South Australia — the last to be completed. The Brunswick unveiling will also come less than a week after the second mainland site in the region of Kiama Downs and Minnamurra went live last Friday.

Once the remaining two sites are complete, focus then moves to the 14 second release sites designated by NBN Co, which include Gungahlin in the ACT, Riverstone and Coffs Harbour in New South Wales, Casuarina situated in the Northern Territory and inner north Brisbane, Springfield Lakes and Toowoomba in Queensland.

Modbury and Prospect in South Australia are also on the list, as is Bacchus Marsh and South Morang in Victoria and finally Geraldton, Mandurah and Victoria Park in Western Australia.

Image credit: Sambo9, used with permission

NBN Co kicks off fibre extension trial

Renai LeMay — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 07:26:35 +0000

The National Broadband Network Company has started contacting a number of Tasmanian residents on the edges of the planned fibre coverage area, inviting them to request a quote to have the NBN fibre extended to their premises at their own cost.

The project is a trial initiative first flagged in April, which could see the NBN fibre extended to additional premises beyond the 93 percent of premises promised as part of the NBN policy. It arose as a result of concerns from residents and businesses on the edge of the fibre rollout zones that they would just miss out on the fibre and instead be served by lesser capacity wireless and satellite technologies, as they are in the remainder 7 percent of the population.

In a post on broadband forum Whirlpool, user ‘bart1111′ claimed he had received a letter from NBN Co head of construction Dan Flemming, notifying him that his property would be covered by either a wireless or satellite service. NBN Co spokesperson Scott Rhodie posted on Whirlpool that the letter was legitimate.

“It may be possible for you to connect to the National Broadband Network using fibre optic technology, if you agree to pay NBN Co to extend the fibre optic network to your property,” wrote Flemming. “Over the coming months, NBN Co is performing a trial of the fibre optic network extension process with selected properties that border the Tasmania Second Release sites of Triabunna, Sorell, Deloraine, St Helens and South Hobart.”

To take part in the trial, those invited to do so must request a no-obligation quote from NBN Co by telephone by 24 June to have the fibre extended to their property. NBN Co will then determine how much the extension will cost, and then if the property owner wishes to accept the amount, they must pay the relevant amount within several weeks.

“Your property will then be connected to the fibre optic network as part of the planned roll out in your area in the coming months,” wrote Fleming.

However, a number of factors with respect to the program are currently unclear.

To begin with, NBN Co has not yet disclosed how much it will cost residents to have fibre rolled out to their premises, with Rhodie noting only that it would cost a different amount to reach each premise, based on “a range of factors such as geology, distance, available network” and so on.

“There is no one magic number,” he wrote. “Each property will be different, [kilometres] is only one fact that will be taken into consideration. Determining how much the process will cost residents will be part of the trial.

In addition, there is debate about which properties are actually included as part of the fibre rollout. ‘bart1111′ pointed out that his property was actually inside the fibre footprint, according to NBN Co’s own estimated coverage maps — a factor which might be mitigated by the fact that he acknowledged his house was about 150m away from his front gate.

The news comes as regional councils and other groups continue to progress plans to avoid being left out of the national fibre footprint. iTNews reported this week, for example, that six remote Queensland towns, for example, had proposed building their own 1,350 fibre link to bring fibre to their region.

Image credit: NBN Co

iiNet’s piracy authority is only half a solution

Renai LeMay — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 21:37:03 +0000

opinion I have a confession to make: Like most outwardly normal middle class Australians, I have a dirty little secret that I can’t seem to expunge, despite my best intentions and numerous attempts at breaking its filthy addictive hold.

It’s a hidden problem which I have only admitted to my closest friends and family, something which keeps me up at night, moaning about ‘my precious’, wondering whether I will ever get free of its vice-like grip, or whether I will remain slave to its dominating power for ever, locked in thrall and unable to escape.

Yes, it’s true. I am absolutely addicted to cruising Valve’s Steam service looking for bargains on games which I will probably never have enough time to play.

As I’m sure many of you fellow addicts out there well know, Steam is a digital platform which lets you download video games to play on your computer. But it’s not just any digital platform. In fact, it is nothing less than a massive repository of almost every sort of PC video game that has ever been created, and publisher Valve is constantly adding both new and old titles to its library.

There are two reasons the service is so addictive.

Firstly, it appeals to the pack rat in me. Valve has an immense back catalogue of games listed in Steam — if you loved a PC game in your childhood, odds are the company has already added it to its list, or is talking with the game’s publisher to do so. And many of these titles regularly go on sale, especially around Christmas time, when, like a cackling evil Santa Claus, Valve conducts a massive series of sales designed to bankrupt every PC gamer and fill its pockets with fat stacks of diamond-encrusted thousand dollar bills.

Because you know the games on Steam will only be on sale for a brief period, there is a huge incentive to pay for it right then and there and keep it installed on your computer … even if you will never actually play it.

The second factor is just as dangerous for the addictive personality.

Valve regularly lists upcoming titles on the front page of its disgustingly attractive online store. What this means is that for months before a game actually goes on sale, you will log in every day to see screenshots of that game staring at you in the face, glistening like a vision of honey-coated perfection. You don’t want to pre-order them, because you don’t even know if they’ll be that good. But you still will — often for a paltry 5 percent off their cover price — because after staring at a game promotion every day for months on end, you always end buying it.

I narrate this story to demonstrate why iiNet’s compromise proposal yesterday on the issue of internet content piracy is only a halfway solution.

On paper, iiNet’s solution makes sense; by setting up an independent authority to handle copyright infringement disputes and dole out minor punishments the same way traffic police dish out speeding fines, both ISPs and film, movie and music studios get a more reliable way to tackle internet content piracy — an activity which is, after all, against the law — despite the fact that that law is completely unenforceable.

And the actual customers won’t have their internet disconnected for offences which are, after all, relatively minor in modern Australian society, earning themselves mere slaps on the wrist instead.

However, the problem with iiNet’s scheme is that its ‘traffic police’ analogy is far from apt for the situation which Australians find themselves in with respect to watching TV and movie content.

Motorists who speed, cross double white lines or commit any other traffic offence don’t have to do so. If they want to avoid fines or even losing their licence, they can simply obey the law — drive safely, within the speed limits, signal correctly and don’t talk on their mobile phone while simultaneously eating a Big Mac and overtaking a semi-trailer.

But what legal option do Australians currently have if they want to get the latest TV shows and movies as soon as they are released overseas? Very few.

As iiNet notes in its own paper, film and TV studios use “staggered release dates and queuing distribution channels” to make sure that Australians always get the latest content later — sometimes six months or more later — than our US or European cousins.

In addition, when the content does arrive, often it’s only broadcast through certain TV channels at certain times; times when you may — imagine! — have to work or carry out some other responsibility, and thus be prohibited from consuming it. Sure, you might be able to digitally record the broadcast, if you knew it was on, but I’m not sure whether even that common practice is completely legal.

As iiNet noted in its paper, this approach creates “a frustrated and unsatisfied market” — and one that is often resigned to simply bulk-renting DVDs six months after their favourite TV show has hit the US, if they want to keep within the boundaries of the law. Online DVD rental service Quickflix is thriving for a reason.

The same frustration is currently felt by other content sectors … as the scores of Australians who cannot quite get the eBooks they want will attest.

If a piracy authority is established, but the gates of content are not opened and geographical restrictions erased, this frustration will exponentially increase. Australians will be unable to get the content they want in a timely manner — legally or illegally — and will make that frustration known. The current safety valve which exists in the BitTorrent peer to peer file distribution system will cease to let off the nation’s steam.

The Baby Boomers, Generation X and other older generations may put up with this, more or less. But the simple reality is that Generation Y will not. The younger generation (well, I say younger, but some of them are almost 30) will howl with rage if they cannot get what they want, when they want it.

This war will not be unlike the constant series of running battles the video game industry is fighting with the Federal Government over the need for an R18+ rating, or the seething discontent that Communications Minister Stephen Conroy created with his internet content filter project.

Going back to where we began, the irony is that the TV and film industry has a way to get around this potential public relations and political nightmare. It can simply create a platform like Steam, where new and old content is constantly added to an easily accessible online library instantly accessible by anyone in the world from any device.

It can even charge a premium for such a service. Packrats like me would pay to collect all of the episodes in dozens of series, and many directors’ complete cinematic back catalogue … just in case we might watch it one day.

Especially during those demonic Christmas specials.

Image credit: Andronicus Riyono, royalty free

Telstra LTE trial hits 149Mbps with Huawei

Marina Freri — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 02:33:38 +0000

Telstra and Huawei have achieved downlink and uplink speeds significantly exceeding the throughputs seen on current Australian mobile networks, in a local trial of the Chinese vendor’s Long-Term Evolution hardware.

The results come after the pair conducted a six-month trial of the LTE standard, which is viewed as the long-term upgrade path for Australia’s mobile networks. Telstra registered peak speeds of 149.4Mbps using the 1800MHz spectrum during the effort. The trial involved testing the performance of Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna configurations, while managing the network interference to improve its speed.

Telstra executive director for Networks & Access Technologies, Mike Wright, said in a statement that the trial had been important in testing the limits of the technology and exploring its performance.

“As a technology, LTE has some unique characteristics that result in improved radio network capability and efficiency such as improved capacity and speed,” Wright said.

Telstra and Huawei confirmed plans for the trial in March 2010 and began testing the new technology in May in two different environments. The first trial was conducted in a controlled laboratory using 20MHz of bandwidth in the 1800MHz band, while the second was in the field using 10MHz of spectrum, also in the 1800MHz band.

149.9Mbps peak downlink speeds and 59Mbps peak uplink speeds were achieved in the controlled environment. Field trials, which used 10MHz, reached peak downlink speeds of 69.3Mbps and uplink speeds of 24Mbps.

Huawei Australia CTO Peter Rossi said the results were impressive and showed the feasibility of using 1800MHz spectrum to rollout LTE in future.

“As mobile customers move away from 2G services and onto 3G and LTE, 1800MHz spectrum will increasingly become available to be re-farmed by operators,” he said. “The overwhelming success of these trials shows that 1800MHz can be an attractive option for deploying LTE, where access to other spectrum bands is constrained,” he said.

The trial was conducted in the Box Hill area, near Melbourne. Huawei provided a 1800MHz LTE-SAE (System Architecture Evolution) network and facilities. The pair said the trial had proved the LTE technology against several criteria, including cell-handover, propagation and latency performance.

Both of Telstra’s major Australian rivals, Optus and VHA, are also conducting LTE trials, also using Huawei hardware. Neither telco has explicitly stated in recent months what the current peak speeds of their existing networks are, but Telstra’s Next G network is known to support peak theoretical speeds of up to 42Mbps in some areas, and the telco is planning an upgrade to 84Mbps in 2011.

Image credit: Adam Jakubiak, royalty free