The NBN must have a cost/benefit analysis (October 2010 re-print)
This article by Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull first appeared on Delimiter in October 2010, shortly after Turnbull was appointed Shadow Communications Minister. Delimiter re-prints this article today for the edification of readers, in light of the news that Turnbull has approved NBN Co to go ahead with the controversial ‘Multi-Technology Mix’ option for its broadband rollout, despite the fact that the cost/benefit analysis being conducted into the project will not be completed until the middle of 2014.
Who’s open sourcing in Australian government?
Unfortunately though in Australia we don't seem to have any comprehensive list of which governments and councils are creating and releasing open source materials. So e-government expert Craig Thomler has created a spreadsheet, which he'll add to over time, of open sourcing going on across the Australian public sector.
Oh dear: Mark Newton’s epic government rant
Mark Newton's submission to the Cyber-Safety Committee is one of the most epic rants we have ever had the pleasure to read.
A prince in his prime: Why Simon Hackett should be on the NBN board
If Malcolm Turnbull is serious about making sure all Australians quickly get access to affordable, high-speed broadband, there is one man he must consider appointing to the board of NBN Co: The entrepreneur who was instrumental in bringing Australians broadband in the first place. Internode founder Simon Hackett.
Big Red Button: How NBN Co’s launch events are unfairly fuelling Labor’s election campaign
NBN Co's constant stream of launch events is providing Labor with a massively uneven platform to promote its broadband policy and very likely breaches the Government's Caretaker Conventions.
Apple and the enterprise – Are you ready?
Apple isn't ready for the enterprise. Apple has been ready for years. Now, the enterprise is ready for Apple.
After just six weeks, Turnbull has Conroy on the run
Why the hell should Turnbull let Conroy have his way now? He's got the Senator on the run. All he needs to achieve is some modest concessions from the Government on the NBN -- which he appears close to -- and six weeks after the Coalition lost the election (in a manner of speaking), he's got a claim to being the most successful member of the Shadow Cabinet, on a national issue which Tony Abbott clearly knows nothing about.
As laptop scheme ends, what next for families and learning?
The computers for schools program, which involved federal funding for the supply of laptops to high school students, is set to end in June. The program was a central piece of the former government’s “digital revolution” but is being discontinued by the current government. The end of the program is already having consequences for schools and for families.
It’s on: Foxtel to meet IPTV challenge head-on
Most of Australia's younger generation of Internet-focused media consumers probably think Pay TV giant Foxtel is merely a blast from the past; a mouldering old dinosaur with no tricks left up its sleeve. But if revelations by the company last week are any indication, Foxtel 'gets' the Internet and has exactly the right moves planned to tackle it.
Reality check: The Coalition’s fibre on demand plan is a pipe dream
Those broadband speed freaks holding out hope that the Coalition's pledge to provide 'fibre on demand' services will save them from life in the slow lane in a fibre to the node future need to take a cold shower and wake up to reality. 'Fibre on demand' is nothing but an fluffy ephemeral dream which has no chance of becoming reality in the short- to medium-term under the Coalition's National Broadband Network vision.
Our NBN debate: Where everyone is partly wrong
Like a blade out of the dark, this week ex-ACCC chief Graeme Samuel came from nowhere to drive a stake into the heart of the Coalition’s rival NBN policy, arguing that the FTTN technology it’s based on is “obsolete”. And just as viciously, Malcolm Turnbull fired back. But who is objectively on the side of truth in this storm in a teacup? As is so often in our flawed NBN debate, the answer is: ‘Nobody’.
Oh dear: The iAbbott cometh
Ah, YouTube. We love you so.
Fiery telco expert with a fibre passion: Michelle Rowland gets a licence to terminate...
With a lengthy history as a telco regulatory lawyer and a passion for the National Broadband Network bordering on an obsession, Labor MP Michelle Rowland is well-qualified indeed to be Labor's Shadow Assistant Communications Minister. But it's the Member for Greenway's penchant for taking Malcolm Turnbull down a notch or five on the floor of the House of Representatives that will have pro-fibre NBN fanbois falling in love with her.
Building a financial system for a cashless age
If the Financial System Inquiry is to achieve its aim of helping to promote growth and productivity in the Australian economy it will need to focus strongly on electronic payments.
Goddamnit, just make Malcolm Turnbull Comms Minister already
For all the sweet love of Jesus that everyone knows you hold in your godfearing soul, Mr Abbott, forgive Malcolm Turnbull just enough to make him Communications Minister.
Is the Govt’s missed e-health target meaningful?
We could question whether there are not better things within the health system that the nearly AUS$1 billion spent so far on PCEHR could have been spent on.
Five reasons Australian email belongs in the cloud
If your company or organisation is not currently considering migrating its email systems onto a cloud computing platform, then you're in danger of being left behind.
Innovation is key in the Asian Century
If we are to fully capitalise on the benefits of the Asian Century, we need to fully embrace Chinese innovation and R&D in exactly the same way we would with any other country. To do anything else would risk Australia not being ‘on the right side of history’.
Premises passed the only useful NBN measurement
The National Broadband Network Company and the Federal Government should standardise on the "premises passed" statistic to measure the network's progress and stop using the confusing and amorphous "premises commenced or completed" measurement to provide concrete detail on how well it is progressing against its network rollout targets.
First impressions of the new Realestate.com.au
Certainly they could have done more, and I am not a fan of everything that they have changed but with the number one site in the space you have to be mindful of the "If it ain't broke don’t fix it" rule.
Has the Coalition concluded its Quigley witch-hunt?
If Malcolm Turnbull or anyone else in the Coalition wants to be effective in setting telecommunications policy in future, they had better start to demonstrate a little more respect for those who will be implementing it.
Is Australia facing another ICS-style IT disaster?
As I have watched the Australian Taxation Office's troubled IT Change Program sink to new and disturbing lows over the past few months, I can't help but be reminded of that other Federal Government IT initiative that cost the nation so much -- both financially and in others' confidence in our ability to drive major IT projects.
The road to public sector IT hell may not be paved with intentions at...
Something that scares me enormously is the house of cards that many (if not most) governments have built with their IT systems.
In defence of an honourable man
It is completely legitimate to debate the merits of the NBN; like many others, I myself have been a long-term critic of the project, particularly its economic model. But it is not legitimate to link an innocent man with bribery and corruption simply to serve those ends.
‘Justice’ isn’t a ‘right’ in NSW …
We have another issue, involving 'incorrect' billing that we will be pursuing over the next week or so and doubtless Telstra will display the same attitude and tactics as they have done in the issue just concluded. We are also pursuing a similar issue against the TIO, an organisation that displays identical attitudes and tactics as Telstra does.
Hockey’s IP inquiry another opportunity likely to be missed
Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey has asked the Productivity Commission to undertake a wide-ranging review of Australia’s intellectual property regime. The review is an opportunity for an increasingly distracted government to set its stamp on the Australian economy for the next 20 years. It is an opportunity that will almost certainly be missed.
Hoist by his own petard: How Labor can take on Turnbull
To a Federal Labor Party exhausted from several bitter years of internal struggle and a vicious election campaign, it must seem like slipping into Opposition might be a good chance for a hard-earned rest. But the truth is that the long fight to keep one of its key policies intact has just begun. Here’s some ideas for how Labor can take on Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull on the National Broadband Network issue — and win.
It will take more than being ‘bouncy’ to fix Australia’s innovation system
It is a good sign that Turnbull is upbeat about innovation; but he appears not to understand that innovation is not a matter of pressing the right button and expecting that change will happen.
Turnbull: NBN is a business, not a public good
Dealing as they are with other people’s money, trustees as they are for the financial security of generations to come, Governments must be rigorously transparent and accountable in their investment decisions.
The ACCC has killed off Australia’s broadband competition
The ACCC’s move to allow TPG’s buyout of iiNet is an appalling decision which will finally complete the long-running, gradual death of actual competition in Australia’s broadband market. The tragedy of the situation is that the well-meaning regulator has nevertheless contributed to the process at several key points along the way.
Microsoft wants to win you back with Windows 10
The latest version of Microsoft’s Windows operating system will begin rolling out from Wednesday (July 29). And remarkably, Windows 10 will be offered as a free upgrade to those users who already have Windows 7 and 8.1 installed.
Vodafone should buy iiNet before TPG can
The exit of Michael Malone from the company he founded 20 years ago has re-opened long-running speculation that top-tier broadband player iiNet could be acquired, and it's a valid idea. But the telco most suited to buying the powerhouse from Perth is not hostile rival TPG; it's ailing mobile telco Vodafone, which still has plenty of cash up its sleeves.
Five reasons to block Woz’s Australian citizenship
A number of media outlets have reported this week that Apple co-founder and global technology sector luminary Steve Wozniak is attempting to become an Australian citizen. But is this really a good idea? Here’s five reasons why we should stop the Woz at the border and send him packing back to his home country of the United States.
How the NBN will change education: Australia’s “Last Spike” moment
The NBN is all about people; not about technology. It is about being able to train, inspire and educate students of whatever age to work together as never before. And it is about devising solutions to real challenges in an interdisciplinary way.
How long can Atlassian stay Australian?
We're not going to build a great Australian technology sector if we constantly have our eyes tuned towards the Silicon Valley stars and our hearts tuned towards the pages of the Wall St Journal and TechCrunch. That can only be done if we reinvest constantly in the Australian market, base our companies here, refuse to be acquired by US multinationals and maintain the Australian rage.
House Foxtel: Unbowed, Unbent and Unreasonable
The argument by pay television giant Foxtel that the launch of its new Play IPTV streaming video service will cause Australians' objections about the lack of legitimate access to popular shows such as Game of Thrones to "vanish" is nothing short of ridiculous and strongly indicates that the company still has no idea why the nation is so frustrated with it.
Where’s the NBN policy?
All of this leads to interesting questions about just how vertically integrated a company has to be in order to be considered in the same basket of market power as Telstra. If such a vertically integrated TPG existed, would the government then need to structurally separate them as well?
Google Books wins ‘fair use’ but Australian copyright lags
Australia wants to foster innovation in a digital economy, but our copyright laws discourage businesses from investing in new technologies and make it harder for individuals to access the knowledge upon which innovation is based. Yesterday’s US decision in the Google Books case shows why US copyright law is much more supportive of innovation than ours.
It’s just plain wrong: A full refutation of the Coalition’s $94 billion Labor NBN...
Malcolm Turnbull has claimed on a number of occasions that nobody has stepped forward to refute the Coalition's $94 billion NBN costings. Well, Mr Turnbull: Challenge accepted. This article is that refutation.
Sit tight for Australia’s tablet price war
If you're considering buying any form of tablet device in the next month or so Australia, stop right where you are, put your wallet and your hard-earned cash back in your pocket and go and take a cold shower for ten minutes until you calm down and your lust for loot has vanished from your feverish brain.
Australia’s desktop PC paradigm is under siege
Right now chief information officers and IT managers right around Australia are facing a difficult decision regarding one of the most critical but also trouble-plagued segments of their IT infrastructure -- their desktop fleets.
Cheaper hardware, software and digital downloads? Here’s how.
Australians are paying about twice as much as they should for a range of tech products including computers, software and digital downloads. It’s time for the government to act to bring this shameful situation to an end, to stop foreign multinationals from ripping us off. But until then, people should take steps to lower the cost of buying tech products. How? Read on.
Buying Pipe … a good decision?
I read a couple of speculation pieces in the Australian financial press over the last two days as to whether the required 75 percent of Pipe shareholders would approve the $6.30 per share offer made by TPG to buy the company.
A change in Australia’s web rules would open up the .au space
If you want to register an Australian web address, your options may be about to change due to a review of domain name policy that is currently underway.
Praise the Sun
In the critically acclaimed video game Dark Souls, there is a mysterious character known as Solaire of Astora who has developed something of a global cult following which may give us some insight into this human existence.
Gershon funds must remain quarantined
The Australian ICT Policy Reform online petition is seeking support from the Australian ICT industry to call on both the Gillard Government and the Opposition to maintain quarantining of the agreed savings identified as a result of the Gershon review. These funds should remain available for re-investment by the Australian Public Service to enhance existing service delivery for all Australians and provide an opportunity for ICT driven innovation within the public sector.
Double standards: When filtering is not always mandatory
Two completely separate policies, both designed to protect children from "bad stuff", but with completely different implications.
Memo to Minister Turnbull: NBN dissent is “democracy”
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull needs to stop engaging in attacks on those who support a Fibre to the Premises model for the NBN and commit to an open and transparent review process for the network, according to telecommunications blogger and IT technician James Archer.
Malcolm Turnbull and the great Huawei farce
It doesn’t matter at all whether Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull was or was not briefed about the Federal Government’s security concerns about Huawei. What matters is whether those concerns are actually objectively grounded in hard evidence. Because all indications so far support the argument that they are not.
Making Don Malone an offer he can’t refuse
This week we're running a series of articles looking at why it's unlikely that iiNet will be acquired anytime soon, despite Amcom's decision to divest its 23 percent stake in the ISP. Yesterday we looked at potential buyers; today we're looking at iiNet's executive team.
NBN: Who will be connected last?
Now that Labor's ambitious National Broadband Network project has finally cleared all of the regulatory, commercial and political hurdles that have stood in the way of its path to universal bandwidth nirvana, it's time to ask the most important question of all about the project. Who will be connected last?
NBN Senate Committee politicised from start
The Senate's move to force senior executives from the National Broadband Network Company to appear before its new NBN committee starkly demonstrates the extreme degree of politicisation which the NBN project as a whole is subject to.
Get it right, Twitter: Conroy’s not the ACTA minister
To what extent should Senator Conroy should be aware of the ACTA negotiations? Only partially.
How does fibre over powerlines stack up against other potential NBN technologies?
Tasmania’s assertive push to keep up deployment of optical fibre, and make it cost effective by using overhead rollout, makes a lot of sense. In urban areas, no other technology has a feasible lifetime beyond 2025, and many of the existing broadband technologies are already obsolete with no hope of evolution. It will work for the vast majority of urban areas.
Lack of NBN detail now outrageous
The Rudd Government's 'trust me' approach to spending on its $43 billion National Broadband Network is starting to appear genuinely ridiculous.
I WANT MY IPAD! Are our kids getting addicted to technology?
Are toddlers really becoming addicted to technology? There’s certainly a lot of media hype to suggest that they are. And there’s no question the footage of small children breaking down when their tablet is taken away is unsettling.
Oh dear: Victorian town worships the god of USB
According to Wikipedia, the town of Waubra in Victoria has just 500-odd residents and was previously known as The Springs. Its Post Office opened...
Turnbull’s right: ‘Under construction’ NBN stats are worthless
Malcolm Turnbull is absolutely correct in his claim that NBN Co’s focus on nebulous statistics regarding the number of premises where it has commenced or completed construction are “complete nonsense”. The company should stop using this figure as a measure of its progress, and focus only on areas where it has actually finished building the NBN.
The NBN is in a regulatory hole: Time to stop digging
As the saying goes, when you are in a hole, stop digging. The NBN is looking like a large pit, and at present, everyone is digging in deeper.
Election rant 4: Labor’s three NBN strikes
The Coalition might not have an entirely workable broadband policy of its own. But Tony Abbott's camp is right to state that Labor's NBN is a "dog's breakfast" and that the Government's performance in this area is not to be trusted.
Firemint – success or sell-out?
But I can’t help feel the way I have always felt when seeing something amazing that Australians have built with their own blood, sweat and tears being snatched up by a massive, impersonal, multinational. Like so many Australian companies before it, Firemint has now missed its chance to become something truly great – it has cashed in its chips and joined the mothership.
Correction: Cutting the NBN won’t save money
Yesterday Opposition Leader Tony Abbott stated in a high-profile speech at the National Press Club in Canberra that cutting Labor's National Broadband Network project would free up Federal Government money to be spent in other areas such as transport. It was a nice political soundbite. However, unfortunately, this statement was factually incorrect.
When will Labor get serious about supporting its NBN policy?
The independent pro-fibre National Broadband Network movement is doing a far better job of promoting Labor's Fibre to the Premises-based NBN policy than Labor itself. When is Labor going to wake from its slumber and start supporting this scrappy but energetic grassroots network of activists?
BitTorrent war: Will ‘six strikes’ policy come to Australia?
Forget 'three strikes and you're out'; Internet users in the US are about to have a total of six warnings about downloading pirated content before their ISPs get fed up with them and disconnect their broadband connection for good. But could such a scheme ever be implemented in Australia?
Obamacare web fiasco won’t be the last big IT fail
The uncomfortable reality is that no one really knows how to design or manage large, complex IT projects.
Mod chip or freedom to choose?
Sony’s legal case to stop a handful of tiny Australian retailers distributing a device – known as a ‘mod chip’ – which would allow consumers a much higher level of control of the PlayStation 3 hardware is only one example of the dominance which this approach is gaining.
Having your Exchange cake and Gmail too
For the past several years, many Australian chief information officers and IT managers have been hard-locked into choosing between just two options when it comes to evaluating the future of their email systems.
Are police drones just toys for the boys?
Military tactics and hardware can make policing more appealing to recruits and generate impressive media spectacles, but they do not prevent or solve crime. The underlying causes of social disorder go unaddressed while public funds are spent instead on expensive but ineffective and potentially dangerous toys.
Reality check: Piracy is not killing Australian film
Imagine a world where you can only consume culture from government-approved sources, months after its widely publicised release overseas, in low definition, with long term lease agreements where you can never purchase a copy to own, only to borrow and use within a specific set of technologically locked parameters. Where the freedom to share or own copies of cultural works has finally been stamped out and middlemen are free to charge what they like for mediocre services and innovation is locked in a box then dropped into an ocean abyss.
Tiny niche ISPs join the NBN market
When you think about competition on the National Broadband Network, you normally think about major telcos like Telstra, Optus and iiNet battling it out to win Australia's broadband spend. But the truth is that a large number of very small ISPs have already joined the NBN market and are also competing.
Has Gov 2.0 in Australia gotten too boring too fast?
So has Gov 2.0 become boring too fast in Australia? Shouldn't we see more conversation, more voices, more blogs, more tweets, more people packing out events seeking the latest information in what is one of the most rapidly changing environments in history - the internet?
‘Cloud first’ a circuit-breaker, says Ovum
Taking a “cloud-first” policy has the potential to act as game changer to allow departments and agencies to break out of their current restrictive ICT procurement practices, technology analyst firm Ovum said this week, as discussion continues to swirl about how Australian governments are handling the new cloud computing paradigm.
Oh dear: Conroy’s failure to launch
Today was finally the big day. After carefully making all the right arrangements, crossing every 't' and dotting every 'i', and most importantly, getting permission from Chairman Rudd, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy was finally ready to reveal to the world his big project.
Opening Pandora’s box: secret treaty threatens human rights
The Australian Parliament should reject ACTA because of its impact on human rights – particularly taking into account health care, access to medicines, and development.
Why the drop in illegal movie downloads in Australia?
This article is by Marc C-Scott, Lecturer in Screen Media, Victoria University. It originally appeared on The Conversation.
analysis There has been a decline in...
Sorry Mr Turnbull: We’re not convinced
Last week Malcolm Turnbull delivered a series of very strong, evidence-based answers to key questions about his rival NBN policy, demonstrating that he would be a safe pair of hands to steward the nation’s broadband future. But, despite his eloquence and depth of knowledge, the Liberal MP has still failed to convince Australia’s technical community that his policy is better than Labor’s.
Turnbull: Praising the mistakes of Alstons past
Malcolm Turnbull's knee-jerk rejection last week of proposed changes to local telco infrastructure planning laws starkly demonstrates how far the Coalition is right now from understanding the fundamental and underlying changes required to implement its own new telecommunications policy.
Online retailers yet to harness big social data
A large volume of social media data gets created on a daily basis from these customer service interactions. Companies need to be examining both the volumes of unstructured social media data created by their own processes as well as by their competitors for a better understanding of necessary process improvements.
Conroy’s time as Comms Minister is coming to an end
There are very good reasons to suspect that Stephen Conroy's reign of fire and blood as Australia's Communications Minister is rapidly coming to an end; with the nation to receive new talent in this crucial portfolio at the next Federal Election -- or even substantially before it.
Oh dear: Optus didn’t learn from Telstra’s mistake
If there’s one thing that Delimiter finds amusing, it’s when history repeats itself. As it so often does in Australia’s fickle telecommunications industry.
Turnbull’s NBN: Why it’s slow, expensive and obsolete
The Coalition sold the Australian public a product that was supposed to be fast, one-third the cost and arrive sooner than what Labor was offering us. Instead the Coalition’s NBN will be so slow that it is obsolete by the time it’s in place, it will cost about the same as Labor’s fibre-to-the-premises NBN, and it won’t arrive on our doorsteps much sooner.
Why a 4G iPhone will spell doom for Vodafone
The local launch of a new Apple iPhone supporting 4G mobile speeds will spell disaster for ailing mobile carrier Vodafone -- the only major mobile telco in Australia not to have launched or even started constructing a 4G network to deliver improved speeds to customers.
It’s time to future-proof Australia’s copyright laws for the 21st century
The proposed reforms will enhance consumer rights, competition policy, access to knowledge and Australia’s ambitious National Innovation and Science Agenda and “ideas boom”.
eHealth — Where is the duty of care?
After watching the failure of the Government Home Insulation Scheme and the Payroll issues with Queensland Health unfold its clear that the eHealth issues in Australia are part of a much bigger problem.
Have iiNet’s acquisitions helped or harmed competition?
Has iiNet's ongoing series of acquisitions harmed or helped the development of market competition in Australia's telecommunications sector? It's a difficult and complex question -- and one which we will attempt to answer in this in-depth analysis of the situation.
Dear Stephen, your site is broken again
You know how I wrote to you in February letting you know that your website is broken? Yup, it happened again.
Give Turnbull a break, he’s a funny bastard
This intelligent, responsive, charismatic, technologically savvy and ambitious politician is currently barking up the wrong tree with respect to the NBN and feeding the public a lot of crap about speeds -- even if his financial arguments are sound. But the last thing I want to say about Turnbull, is, let's give the poor man a break.
History repeating: Five ways data retention is like Conroy’s filter
Like history repeating, the Australian Government just keeps on coming up with disturbing new ways it wants to control and censor the Internet. Here's five ways the current controversial data retention proposal is similar to its predecessor in infamy: Senator Conroy's mandatory ISP-based Internet filter, which was shot down in flames in 2010.
Don’t sue us for search: Google’s unnecessary safe harbour appeal
A brief review of the history of Australian safe harbour legislation and recent ISP-related case laws in the US shows the best way to provide legal certainty for online intermediaries would be to introduce “fair use” exceptions alone. More safe harbour rules aren’t needed at this stage.
Why John Linton’s not (that) crazy
John Linton is one of the few people in Australia to honestly and loudly speak the truth about the nation’s telco industry’s business — or at least, the truth as he sees it.
Please accept my apologies: I was wrong about Malcolm Turnbull
I am here today to formally apologise. I was wrong to have faith in Malcolm Turnbull and the Coalition on this issue. You were all right. Turnbull does indeed appear to be attempting to "demolish" the NBN.
We like e-readers – but library users are still borrowing books
What place do e-readers – and in particular ebooks – hold in the reading behaviour of Australia’s 10 million public library borrowers? There are some 181 million items loaned every year by the nation’s 1,500 public libraries, branches, mobile libraries and other service points but, according to the latest survey-based report from the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), for the majority of these libraries, ebook loans represent less than 1% of the total.
Macquarie opens kimono on IT operations
One of Australia's largest but most secretive IT end user organisations has this week given industry observers a tantalising glimpse of its broad IT strategy, including staff restructuring across the board, back-office systems integrations and offshoring moves.
Despite bumps in the rollout, households show strong support for the NBN
The NBN is emerging as one of the key issues in the lead-up to this year’s federal election. But the project has been fraught with challenges: planning issues and a shortage of skilled labour have delayed the rollout process.Today it was reported that NBN Co is now set to downgrade rollout targets by up to half of those initially forecast.
NBN 2.6 million times too slow, says Alan Jones
Radio shock jock Alan Jones appears to have gotten his technologies a little confused, in an analysis this week of how a new data speed record set by scientists in Germany might affect the National Broadband Network.
Clueless Telstra iPhone buyers get what they deserve
Take some responsibility, people. It's only common sense to know what you're buying and what you're signing. It's not Telstra's fault that you're an idiot. So shut the frack up. OK?
So we have an NBN … where’s my television 2.0?
Righto. So. Now we're getting our 21st century internet (thank Messrs Oakshott, Windsor and Wilkie). Can we also get our 21st century television?
Why no consumer voices for Turnbull’s ministerial council?
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull's new Ministerial Advisory Council last week features representatives from virtually every major Australian telecommunications company of any note. But the group most important to the future of the Australian telco sector -- consumers -- appear not to have been invited.
US ‘choke-points’ for Australian telecoms data are no surprise
So, what can we conclude from the latest developments? There are no real surprises. We know that lawful interception has been a highly valued (if at times shockingly misused) tool of law enforcement and intelligence agencies for decades. Perhaps the most important conclusion we can draw is that the law enforcement and intelligence agencies will not surrender such access easily.
Reports of the filter’s death are premature
This is a temporary cessation of the filter policy, but the storm clouds of round two are gathering in the distance.
Breaking the rules: How NBN Co’s spat with Turnbull breaches all convention
Under extreme provocation by a hostile Opposition, the National Broadband Network Company appears to have broken convention and possibly regulations regarding the behaviour of government business enterprises. The question now is: How will its shareholder ministers deal with its clearly aberrant behaviour?
Five disturbing things about the Interpol filter
This month, Australia gets its first mandatory Internet filtering scheme, courtesy of a project which is seeing the nation’s largest ISPs Telstra and Optus block their users from visiting a ‘worst of the worst’ list of child pornography sites defined by international agency Interpol. But the project hasn’t exactly come up smelling like roses. Here’s five things we find disturbing about the whole thing.
Why Megan Fox should star in the NBN ads
Why the NBN is for porn and Megan Fox should star in the NBN commercials.
An overview of Officeworks’ eBook readers
My recommendation, if you don’t care about buying books through Australian eBook stores is that the Pico and Stash are very good value. If you do want to purchase commercial books in Australia, this is not the device to use with our DCMA-inspired Free Trade Agreement legislation.
Be sceptical of vague new ‘National Security’ powers
Any proposal by the government to increase its own power should be treated with scepticism. Double that scepticism when the government is vague about why it needs that extra power. Double again when those powers are in the area of law and order. And double again every time the words "national security" are used.
Deconstructing Australia’s wireless/NBN fetish
The uncertain future development roadmap for wireless technologies and their potential to plug the broadband gap between copper and fibre means wireless will continue to be at the centre of the National Broadband Network debate for the foreseeable future.
Telstra should build the NBN, under the Coalition or under Labor
A growing body of evidence is mounting that NBN Co should seriously consider contracting the nation's incumbent telco Telstra to build large sections of the National Broadband Network infrastructure.
Can David Thodey escape his Big Blue shadow?
One cannot help but feel that there was a certain irony to David Thodey's life yesterday which must have been impossible for the Telstra CEO to ignore.
Australia is at a digital crossroads
A love of freedom is likely what terrifies me about parts of Mr Conroy's agenda. But the thing about freedom is it must be exercised to be of value.
Election rant 2: NBN Co’s outrageous Labor favour
During an election, public servants had better keep their head down -- unless they want it to be chopped off.
Joe Hockey and Kate Lundy: A new Democrats
It is interesting that Hockey falls for one of the Conroy confusions. Refused Classification is not the same as illegal. It seems that Joe, in defence of liberty, thinks that it should be his job as a parent to decide what otherwise refused classification material his kids see.
Will nice guy Thodey finish last?
Telstra chief executive David Thodey charmed the pants off press and analysts at the telco's half-yearly financial results briefing last week.
Basic Govt IT needs a fundamental rethink
Government systems could be redesigned from the ground-up to make it easy to reorganise, merge and demerge departments, so that a person's email system can be rapidly and easily moved from one agency to another, or the HR information of two departments can be consolidated in a merger at low cost.
Oh dear: Microsoft Australia’s anti-piracy propaganda
Microsoft Australia creates an anti-piracy video.
How much did Gillard’s endorsement cost IBM?
This morning IBM achieved what can only be described as a sensational marketing coup: It convinced Australia's Prime Minister to get up on a stage and enthusiastically sing the praises of its corporate brand in front of a national audience.
Despite experts’ fears, Australia should be moving to electronic online voting
Australia’s current election proves that there has never been a greater need for online electronic voting. The country has come to a political standstill as the laborious process of manual counting of ballot papers is conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC).
Dear Stephen, your site is broken
Someone -- probably someone in your IT department that is left over from when Helen Coonan was the minister -- has put this bit of code that will remove the word "ISP filtering" from your list of most popular tags.
Telstra has finally sealed its own doom
Telstra's management will come to regret its $11 billion deal with NBN Co signed this afternoon as the most disastrous decision it has ever made in the telco's long and tortured history in Australia's telecommunications sector.
A couple of important NBN corrections
Over the past several weeks, several prominent newspaper commentators have published a number of factual inaccuracies with respect to the Federal Government's National Broadband Network project. With the aim of informing good public policy debate, it seems appropriate to try and correct the record.
Holy cow: The Frustrated State was funded in only a week and I’m still...
This book will be a major step taken by Australia's technology community as we reboot our politicians' understanding of technology policy. It will not be the only step, but it will be one of the first. I look forward to taking it together with all of you.
Asbestos: Let’s just fix it
Despite its bluff and bluster about the dangers of asbestos, the Coalition is proposing to just leave it in the ground – for someone else to fix another day. Their plans to kill the current NBN look more irresponsible as time goes by, and we deserve so much better than that. This is a chance to fix it, and to fix it now.
The lost cause of American political fact-checkers
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” — Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Welcome to NBN 17. It’s safer here.
For some people, mathematics and a crowbar are more than enough.
Telstra NBN negotiations nothing to worry about
Don't take too much notice of the waffle going on around Telstra and the NBN at the moment.
Vic Govt ICT strategy analysis: CenITex split, cloud adoption on the cards
The potential break-up of troubled IT shared services agency CenITex and the opening of the door to government adoption of the new cloud computing paradigm are two of the most important themes written between the lines of the Victorian Government's major new ICT strategy released yesterday.
Chrome OS, like Tux, will never fly
Chrome OS may be all shiny and new now, but Google is taking a lot for granted in hoping that it can turn Australia Chrome overnight. Without some killer apps that you can't get by loading the Chrome browser on the computer you already have, I suspect the world will quickly realise that a kilogram of Chrome OS carries exactly the same weight as a kilogram of penguin feathers -- which is to say, not very much at all.
Australia desperately needs a good technology policy think tank
The past decade or so of failed technology policy in Australia sharply demonstrates the need for an independent think tank that would focus on developing viable, sustainable and popular technology policy and feeding it into the political process.
The great NBN sell-off has already begun
NBN Co, we hardly knew ye. Make no mistake: Tony Abbott's new Coalition Government does not want to own a national broadband monopoly. The process of selling NBN Co to the private sector has already begun, and will be accelerated over the next several years.
Conduct unbecoming: How NBN spite has damaged the Turnbull brand
Many Australians believe the man dubbed the Earl of Wentworth will eventually be back to take the Prime Ministership, after being ousted from the Liberal leadership in December 2009; or possibly to become Australia's first President. But three years of dogged and at times spiteful opposition to one of Australia's most popular policies have taken their toll on Malcolm Turnbull in the view of some segments of the Australian population.
Neither AT&T nor Turnbull are telling the whole truth
The local debate over AT&T's plans to deploy gigabit fibre to 100 US cities starkly demonstrates that neither giant telcos nor the politicians regulating them can be trusted to give Australians 100 percent of the truth about how next-generation broadband infrastructure rollouts are being or should be deployed.
The NBN must have a cost/benefit analysis
The Gillard Government must urgently undertake a thorough cost-benefit analysis of the network. Its stubborn failure to do so can only lead us to conclude that it does not want to know what that analysis will reveal.
Oh dear: There is a StarCraft II truck driving around Brisbane
Title says it all, really. The game launches on Monday.
A code of ethics in IT: just lip service or something with bite?
The emissions scandal that has rocked the car maker Volkswagen has again raised the issue of ethical standards in the tech industry. Reports so far say the company is pointing finger at the “unlawful behaviour of engineers and technicians involved in engine development”. But that’s led to questions about the strength of any codes or practice or ethics that such operators are supposed to comply with. So are such codes any good or are they just words? Here two software experts present both sides of the argument.
Wardriving & surviving: Who’s using your Wi-Fi?
The Queensland Police wardriving effort is certainly not the first of its kind. In fact, wardriving has been occurring since the inception of Wi-Fi in the 1990s.
The FTTN truth the Coalition does not want known
ABC Technology & Games editor Nick Ross is the only journalist in Australia so far to have gone into the appropriate level of detail in analysing the Coalition's rival NBN policy. And the Coalition should be very afraid of this fact indeed: Because his most recent NBN opus reflects a knockout blow for its disastrously flawed fibre to the node plans.
Australia’s ICT industry is fierce and strong
Australia's second technology boom is upon us, and things will never be the same again.
Gmail vs Outlook/Exchange: Round Two
Yesterday I dipped my proverbial toe in the water of public opinion about the respective merits of different email platforms, and boy -- did I get burnt. That calm-looking summer pool was actually boiling hot with conviction.
Australians still overwhelmingly support the NBN
Research from the University of Melbourne shows that Australians still overwhelmingly support Labor's National Broadband Network project, despite the fact that the same research shows newspapers have been overwhelmingly negative about the project.
Australia Post digital delivery may yield few returns to spender
The big question is whether digital mail is a solution looking for a problem that hasn’t already been solved. Here, I am not convinced. The technology to achieve a digital mailbox using ordinary email with digital signatures and encryption has been around for a very long time.
Why Australia’s tablet market is still Apple’s bitch
The mobile device market in Australia – even more so than in many other markets – has become, if I may quote Ruslan Kogan, Apple’s bitch. Hoping to tap into an as-yet-untapped vein of anti-Apple sentiment, retailers are dutifully stocking alternatives as one contender after another launches heavily-marketed iPad alternatives – but I don’t get the impression many people are buying them.
Broadcast to Chromecast – is TV being recast or cast out?
I expect more from the biggest screen in my house and, once again, traditional mass media have failed to deliver.
Foxtel is becoming a content monopolist
The decline in power of Australia's free to air television networks and the failure of IPTV players to enter or grow substantially in the local market have left pay TV giant Foxtel with an incredibly strong position in the nation's content landscape. As some industry executives have feared for years, the company is now on the verge of becoming a content monopolist.
Scoping the NBN cost crater
NBN Co’s Mike Quigley has confirmed what most rational analysts have long taken for granted by telling a Senate committee yesterday that it would probably take decades for the new National Broadband Network to generate a satisfactory return on the capital invested by the Federal Government.
On Conroy’s information byway, there’s some roadkill
If you care about democracy, follow the worm. This worm has a name: Stephen Conroy. While Australians were distracted by another worm this week -- top of the screen for Rudd, bottom for Abbott – few bothered to watch the more insidious wormling, Conroy.
Biggest ever? Optus penalty just another “parking fine”
It’s possible to view the Optus penalty this week as nothing more than a cost of doing business, a slap on the wrist, a quick 10min in the corner of the room with its face to the wall. This isn’t a substantial fine — and it shouldn’t be treated as such.
Govt to upgrade filter to new SOPA version
The Federal Government today confirmed plans to upgrade its controversial mandatory Internet filtering scheme with the new Stop Online Piracy Act module released in the United States this week, with Communications Minister Stephen Conroy confirming the new functionality would be ready ahead of the next Federal Election.
I don’t know how to cover the NBN anymore
Australia's National Broadband Network project is now in uncharted territory. Beyond a joke, beyond a politicised mess, and even beyond farce, the incredibly inconsistent handling of the project by Liberal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has led it far outside the bounds of rational discourse or intelligent consideration.
The truth about politicians and technology policy
The recent adult rating for computer games debate has raised a concept that I’ve alluded to a few times in the media recently (and if you’re unlucky enough to be someone who knows me in a private sense, you’ll have had it there too), namely the dichotomy of what democracy means – how politicians view it and how everyone else does.
Oh dear: Conroy’s like a boss
It looks like some enterprising souls on YouTube have taken The Lonely Island’s already hilarious satirical video “Like a Boss” and applied it to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. We’re sure many people have already seen this video, as it aired on January 23rd this year. We recommend you watch both videos, the original first, to get the full effect.
The RBA state-sponsored hack attack (or phishing for a story)
You’ll have seen the fallout this week regarding a so-called “spearphishing” attack on the Reserve Bank of Australia in 2011. As with most media reports on cyber-attacks, this one appears to have been overhyped. So what really happened?
How to lose a cyber war without really trying
Australia is among at least 20 countries which are not just preparing to fight a cyber war, but are already at war, day in day out, defending against incursions by both foreign states and non-state actors, and preparing its own offensive capabilities to deploy against the power grids, telecommunications services, financial networks and the wider digital infrastructure of potential adversaries.
FactCheck: will regional internet users pay more under the Coalition’s NBN plan?
Both major parties are trying to convince voters that their plan is better than their competitor’s. So, is it true that the Coalition’s broadband plan will cost more for regional households and businesses?
Narrowband – it’s all we’re getting
I don’t want to be a pessimist, but it's becoming increasingly clear that the rollout of the National Broadband Network is never going to be completed. That grand vision of a fibre-to-the-home network providing high-bandwidth, cheap, accessible internet access is never going to reach the 90% of households the government said it would.
Optus and TV Now: Will copyright law catch up to the cloud?
A legal decision which forced Optus to shut down its time shifting service TV Now may eventually lead to reform of existing copyright law to cater for cloud technology.
Mental shift: The way Australians buy and upgrade smartphones is changing
The end of two year mobile contracts; the end of smartphones on contracts at all; the rise of phablets; domination of the market by just two vendors; domination by only a handful of models: All of these are constituent parts of a revolutionary shift sweeping the nation's smartphone market at the moment. Get ready to upgrade your thinking: The way Australians buy and use mobile devices is about to change massively, and it's a wonderful thing indeed.
Are online + eBook retailers killing small bookshops?
Are eBooks and cheap online imports killing small Australian bookshops?
Reality check: ISPs do not understand content
Australian ISPs, regulators and the Government need to take a step back and stop fooling themselves that future telecommunications competition will rest on ISPs' ability to provide bundled video content services to users. The reality is that ISPs aren't good at this task and customers don't want them to do it.
Introducing ‘The Cuba Replacement’: The Federal Govt’s newest major ICT project
The Federal Government has lived through half a dozen major ICT projects over the past decade. Customs had its Cargo Management Re-engineering overhaul, Immigration had Systems for People, Tax had the Change Program, and Defence is still wrangling with its desktop virtualisation and PMKeys undertakings. Now we can add one more to the list: The Department of Human Services' ambitious project to revamp the Child Support Agency's key ERP system, previously known as 'Cuba'.
Freelancer’s IPO and the new tech millionaires
Freelancer, the online freelance and labour market site has issued its prospectus ahead of a listing on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).
The Australian public cares about privacy: Do politicians?
Two documents released this week highlight divergent views among the community and politicians.
iiNet’s piracy authority is only half a solution
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.
Forget e-health, the NBN is a big, fat, entertainment machine
What the supporters of the NBN should be doing is heavily promoting the reasons that an average, wage-earning family would have for the NBN. And that argument, simply, is entertainment.
Why I didn’t expect AFACT to appeal
The plot of AFACT vs iiNet is very similar to that of gritty Baltimore drama The Wire -- only without so many guns.
Oh dear: Telstra’s cyber-safety quadrants
We think Australia's telcos might be taking cyber-safety a little too seriously, if this video by Telstra is any indication.
Curmudgeon: 3D smartphones have no depth of feel
3D smartphones won't succeed as gaming or content consumption devices, but that doesn't mean they won't find their niche.
Red underpants? Yes, Minister, says Hackett
It looks as if Internode founder Simon Hackett has taken Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s infamous “red underpants” comments a little seriously, if this photo from CommsDay’s Melbourne Congress this morning is any indication. Oh, dear.
Getting away with blue murder: How the NBN distraction is covering Telstra’s crimes
Under the cover of the NBN's madness and media hype, there's another high-wire act under way: The nation's other telco monopolist, Telstra, is successfully concentrating its market power; and that's not good news for anyone.
Save the NBN Kevin, you’re our only hope
The fate of the National Broadband Network now rests squarely in the hands of Kevin Rudd. If the former Prime Minister wins power back from Julia Gillard, Labor has a chance of retaining power at the next election and continuing the NBN rollout. If he fails to do so, most commentators agree, Gillard will be annihilated and Abbott will scrap the project wholesale.
Without civil liberties, government is just a criminal racket
Even if we choose to believe Senator Stephen Conroy's claim that this is only about protecting us from inadvertent access to child abuse material, once the system is in place, could a government resist the temptation not to extent the scope just a little bit? And a little bit more?
Devil in the details: Tasmania’s 12-year FTTP failure demonstrates political incompetence
Politicians in Tasmania and in Canberra have been promising residents of the Apple Isle fibre broadband for at least 12 years. The abject failure to deliver almost any improvement to the state's basic telecommunications infrastructure in that time starkly demonstrates the rank incompetence of Australia's political class in setting and deliverying broadband policy.
Why AGIMO’s open source policy will change nothing
Open source does not fit the framework which proprietary vendors have painstakingly installed in the minds of organisations like AGIMO over the decades. It's taken time, but Microsoft already won that war.
The Change Program is a failure … and that’s not all
There is absolutely no question that the Change Program is a failure. It's over budget by hundreds of millions of dollars, it's late, and by late I mean publicly announced "delayed" so many times that it's hard to remember what decade it's meant to be delivered. And now we hear that the first instalment of the software has miserably failed the very customers who paid for it.
Stop the personal attacks, now (by Mike Quigley)
The past week has seen the debate over the National Broadband Network take a disappointing turn. It has moved away from arguments over the pros and cons of building a ubiquitous network available to every premise in Australia to an unfounded attack on the integrity of myself as the chief executive of NBN Co and on my chief financial officer, Jean-Pascal Beaufret.
‘Google Schmoogle’ – how Yellow Pages got it so wrong
Yellow Pages directories have been appearing on doorsteps across Australia in recent weeks. As often as not, they go straight into the recycling bin. In the world of the internet and e-commerce, the very notion of a book the size of two bricks being the source of valuable purchasing information seems plain silly.
Australia’s blue collar ICT challenge
The bottom line is that Australia lacks call centres, cloud computing hubs, ICT hardware and software manufacturing capability not because we don't have high-speed broadband. Rather it is the lack of a definable understanding of how ICT services and their supporting labour force will take its place in the roll-out, development and economic benefit of the NBN that represents the real issue needing to be addressed.
Conroy’s R18+ decision
A feeble Delimiter Friday afternoon attempt at humour, based on the Rage Guy and other memes floating around at the moment online.
Server vendors’ days are numbered
This week I had a conversation with an Australian chief information officer which I considered both profoundly interesting -- but also extremely disturbing.
ISP: Secret anti-BitTorrent piracy talks failing
It’s perhaps understandable that the rightsholders and ISPs don’t want their personal arguments heard in public. But by not allowing the people whose habits they hope to change get involved, it leads away from greater cooperation and understanding and towards suspicion and isolation. Piracy reductions definitely won’t be found at the end of that road.
Internet control: Conroy’s not fooling anyone
Today, Senator Conroy has was asked about the crisis in Egypt, where a desperate government cut internet access in order to hinder protestors. The minister in response declared his undying love for an Internet free of government control and assured us that such a thing could never happen in Australia.
We must determine how the $15bn NBN cost blow-out occurred
The full resources of the Federal Parliament and other Government accountability mechanisms must be deployed to determine how a cost blowout of between $5 billion and $15 billion was allowed to occur in the National Broadband Network, and how to stop a similar situation from occurring again in future.
What makes a great Australian iPhone app?
On Thursday this week, Delimiter will publish its first eBook. Entitled The best Australian iPhone apps (under $5), this 40 page effort will list and review over 30 of the best iPhone apps focused on Australia, as well as featuring a introduction by well-known Australian iPhone developer Graham Dawson – creator of the popular Oz Weather app, among others.
Election rant 1: Who’s greediest?
As many pigs have discovered over time – heading straight for the feeding trough without keeping a watchful eye out for the farmer's axe can lead one to feeling that they're high on the hog when they're actually a pig in a poke.
Let’s face it, Gerry Harvey has a point
But in the meantime, let’s not simply tell Gerry Harvey to STFU because he has a dud website and is a rich old fatcat billionaire having a whinge in public. He didn’t get to where he is by being ignorant — unlike most of the people buying his products.
Verizon Wireless vs Telstra: The great mobile rip-off continues
Does the recent announcement by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) of a new code of practice to prevent bill shock for “long-suffering telco customers”, and improve product marketing practices, bring Australia up to par with its international cousins? In a word: no.
AFP questions Attorney-General for not switching off phone on plane
Oh, dear. It appears as though Australia's new Federal Attorney-General is at least as arrogant as the previous two. An article in the Daily Telegraph published late last week tells us that Mark Dreyfus, who replaced Nicola Roxon in the portfolio in February, refused to turn off his mobile phone in a recent flight and was subsequently met by the AFP when the plane landed.
NBN Co paying lobbyists to woo the Coalition? This madness must stop.
If NBN Co's board has indeed hired political lobbying firm Bespoke to represent itself to the Coalition ahead of the Federal Election ... then that represents an extraordinary move, and one which I, for one, and no doubt countless others, simply cannot approve of.
Is the party over for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks?
With just over two weeks to go in the campaign, Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks Party has experienced some unsettling events that suggest it may be unravelling.
4G comments taken out of context, says Hockey
Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey has described as "inaccurate and misleading" an article published by Delimiter which highlighted claims Hockey had made that 4G mobile broadband had the potential to be "far superior" than the NBN, claiming his comments were taken out of context.
Chaos: Coalition a total shambles on NBN policy
Up until now, I've been willing to give the Coalition the benefit of the doubt when it comes to national broadband policy, due primarily to the intelligence and experience of its Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull. But events last week starkly demonstrated the Coalition is currently a complete mess when it comes to this critical portfolio.
Cloud computing is the new green IT
If I hear the word "cloud computing" mentioned one more time in the next month I am going to petition Kevin Rudd to create an ombudsman to deal with the matter.
I tried to buy a Samsung Galaxy Tab … but failed
The scene: Deep in the dungeon of a Federal Government agency. Our protagonist, a mild mannered government worker by day, intrepid reporter at night, sees the Delimiter article on Vodafone releasing the Samsung Galaxy Tab on this date! Hallelujah!
Oh dear: The top ten funniest Conroy YouTube videos
Sometimes it's worth taking a lighter look at how some sections of the Internet -- notably, the denizens of YouTube -- have portrayed Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. So we've scoured the video sharing site for our favourite videos.
Deconstructing morality and Labor’s internet filter
What exactly is a moral question?
Conroy must apologise to Google for appalling attack
Stephen Conroy must immediately stop his vicious public attacks on Google and apologise for his clear lack of understanding of the technical details of the recent potential privacy breach in the collection of Wi-Fi data by the search giant’s Street View cars.
FTTN or FTTP? Both. The NBN should be hybrid.
It's time to get away from the Fibre to the Premises/Fibre to the Node debate, writes Progressive Democratic Party director and IT consultant Michael Berry, and acknowledge that Australia's National Broadband Network should include elements of both.
BigPond broadband is cheap as chips
I stumbled upon a shocking and unbelievable truth when casually browsing around the websites of several of Australia's top internet service providers this afternoon.
iiNet and Netspace? Hell, it’s about time
Having known the principals at both the ISPs -- iiNet chief Michael Malone and Netspace MD Stuart Marburg -- for some time, I would be surprised if the pair hadn't flirted occasionally with the idea of a merger on and off for the past decade.
Tense Telstra times
After last year's resignations of David Moffatt and Holly Kramer, who along with Milne were favourites within former chief executive Sol Trujillo’s regime, it would appear the stresses within the ‘new’ Telstra are starting to show.
Internode up shit creek? Bullcrap. Here’s why.
Those currently running around like Chicken Little with their heads cut off and proclaiming that the sky is going to fall on national broadband provider Internode need to take a swift injection of reality juice directly to the frontal lobe. The loss of four of Internode's most senior technical staff and a few other "difficulties" at the company are not evidence of a pending wider collapse.
Corporate highs: The US P-TECH model for schools in Australia?
Prime Minister Tony Abbott visited a P-TECH (Pathways in Technology Early Career High) school in New York last week, hinting it’s a model of education we should consider implementing in Australia. The school, partly funded by IBM and training students to suit the company’s needs, is different to anything we have in Australia. While the P-TECH model would be feasible here, the model risks confusing economic needs with educational ones.
Trade pact would make internet services more expensive
If the foreign music and movie industries are worried about piracy, they can decide to invest in improving their product’s security – like any other business does. It is neither fair nor right they should ask any other industry to pay what should rightly be their own expense.
Australia can’t stop multinational profit shifting in isolation
In a global economy it is logical that companies would want to structure their business to take advantage of beneficial rules in different countries. And equally each country will want a competitive corporate tax system to attract and retain economic activity. However, the policies of one country should not undermine the policies of another or cause them economic harm. Organisations such as the G20, EU and OECD must enable cooperation to make sure that countries are in agreement with each other’s policies and to pressure those countries whose policies are disadvantaging their neighbours.
Linux on Australia’s desktops: Are the stars aligning again?
The phrase "Linux desktop" has been anathema to Australian organisations for almost a decade, after a brief flurry of interest in the platform back in 2004. But a massive successful deployment at France's national police force and the growing popularity of Software as a Service applications could put Tux back on the corporate radar.
With Bradley Manning convicted, what now for Julian Assange?
Bradley Manning’s conviction for espionage marks the closing stages in the US Army private’s personal battle. Yet for Julian Assange, founder of whistleblower website WikiLeaks and Australian Senate candidate, Manning is but a casualty in a much grander mission.
Help us fact-check Conroy’s NBN comments
Delimiter invites readers to help us fact-check an important NBN media release by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and Finance Minister Penny Wong. Let's get to the truth of the matter, together.
WA shared services disaster a warning to others
The decision by the West Australian (WA) government to abandon its shared corporate services is a salutary reminder of the governance realities of the Westminster system of government. Portfolio and agency autonomy is the dominant force whatever the desires of central agencies and the grand plans cooked up for them by consultants. Just because benefits appear compelling in a spreadsheet does not mean that they can be realised in practice.
Wi-Fi patent has driven CSIRO money mad
The CSIRO should give up its pointless chase of global technology giants and telcos, and let sleeping laptops lie.
Oh dear: Mario gets jiggy with it
When Nintendo invited us to a harbour cruise to celebrate the launch of its flagship new game Super Mario Galaxy 2, we knew it was going to be big. After all, the Japanese gaming giant pulled out all the stops and organised Ministry of Sound's DJ Goodwill to "mash a mix of Mario tunes".
Pulling apart the NBN’s untenable pricing model (by Simon Hackett)
The National Broadband Network (NBN) is the subject of promises from the government that consumers will pay comparable prices to current day ADSL2+ and phone service bundles in order to access entry level NBN based services, and that NBN based retail pricing will be nationally uniform. Unfortunately, a number of pressure points in the wholesale pricing model exist which will make these promises (from the government) untenable in practice, unless serious issues with the underlying pricing model are addressed by NBN Co and the ACCC.
Kogan vs Harvey Norman: Welcome to Sitzkrieg
This article is by Darryl Adams, a government worker and internet tragic. A former IT worker, he still pines for the days of IBM...
Fact-checking NBN politics: Where reality defeats spin
Perhaps the most common complaint about the ongoing National Broadband Network debate is the extent to which it has become dominated by misleading political spin that may obscure the fundamental ideas being discussed. With this in mind, this article will attempt to fact-check a number of recent NBN-related statements from both sides of politics. Who's telling porkies? We'll find out.
Oh dear: How Lotus can win Qantas back
Delimiter is prepared to bet that the Lotus Notes camp wasn't happy to learn in February that Qantas had decided to switch sides and was now playing for the Exchange team. But not everyone took the decision lying down.
myGov has potential but is far from finished
MyGov – or something like it – is part of a 21st century government. It is the way of the future. But it needs careful development, testing, and selling.
Watching the detectives: the case for restricting access to your social media data
Let’s hasten slowly in considering calls to free the state from administrative inconveniences such as warrants and rules of evidence.
Oh dear: Tony Smith doesn’t really ‘get’ Twitter
Politicians tend to be a mixed bunch when it comes to interacting with Twitter. Some seem to really understand the social networking tool, like NSW Premier Kristina Keneally. And some, like Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, seem to ignore it altogether. And then there's Tony Smith.
Oh dear: Telstra exec banter and Yes, Minister
At Delimiter we're big fans of iTnews weekly video the Crunch. This week's episode refers to the bantering we reported on between Telstra chief information officer John McInerney and chief technology officer Hugh Bradlow, as well as some rather unusual footage of NSW Education Minister Verity Firth at an Adobe event.
Has Apple’s iPhone jumped the shark?
Apple only has a brief interval of time in which to attract our middle class attention with shiny new toys before we start to feel guilty for not joining the faster, broader and increasingly more innovative and open Android upgrade cycle.
Not the Twitter election you were expecting
Now that the phoney war has ended and the real Federal Election is in full swing, mainstream media and blogs are debating if this will be the 'Twitter election' or some other flavour of social media revolution. I argue that it will be, but not the way the pundits are postulating.
Why touchscreens matter for laptops (Or, review of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch)
Over the past several years I've had the somewhat unique experience of reviewing almost exactly the same laptop three times. What the process has taught me is that the new wave of touchscreens making their way into laptops aren't just a fad; they're part of a subtle revolution in the way we interact with out portable devices.
Burned by their own hubris: Every party to the Kogan Mobile fiasco brought their...
There are no victims in this complete debacle: Like the fated heroes of the Greek tragedies, every party involved in the Kogan Mobile catastrophe brought their own injury on themselves.
The sorry story of Finance’s Windows Vista fail
A month before Windows 7 is released, the Federal Department of Finance and Deregulation upgrades to Vista. Fail.
US Chinese military charges a smokescreen for its own spying
In a surprising move, a US District Court has charged five members of the Chinese military with hacking six US companies to obtain commercial secrets over the last eight years. The move has been denounced by the Chinese government and the US Ambassador has been called to Beijing as a result.
NAB’s Bitcoin ban a symptom of the digital currency threat
Virtual currency Bitcoin is not a subject that ever draws neutral reactions. Against those who see the radical possibilities of a frictionless payment system designed for the internet, there is a growing resistance to the currencies that threaten existing business models and the perceived traceability of our current currency systems.
How can small booksellers get ahead with eBooks?
If B&T and Blio can work out a format and DRM regime that won’t annoy the long-suffering consumers already overburdened with DRM, incompatible devices and numerous apps required to read a book, having friendly local sellers onside may be the secret ingredient in winning the format wars!
Dated Treasury advice does not invalidate the NBN
If there is one thing we can absolutely rely on with respect to the debate about the National Broadband Network, it is that every week, some minor interest group, technically illiterate Coalition politician or blow-in journalist will find some new and completely spurious reason why the project shouldn't go ahead.
Telstra’s David Thodey is on top of the world
Everything about Thodey's approach screams that he is enjoying his position in life to the absolute maximum. That he loves running Australia's great warhorse of a telco and wouldn't give it up for anything. That he really believes in his mission to take back the hearts and minds of Australians and stop them using the word "Telstra" as a swearword.
Facebook continues to stonewall Australia
When you hold unimaginable personal details about much of the civilised world, you need to be transparent about how you use that information. Any other approach will eventually see you relegated to the dustbin of corporate history.
Why Michael Harte is worth $4.2 million
Harte is paid millions of dollars each year not because they run IT infrastructure and make technology strategy decisions. The truth is the modern CIO role is evolving to become more akin to the head of operations in many organisations -- with broad responsibility for ensuring that all aspects of a company's systems meet operational outcomes.
Australia Post, Telstra and the ‘dying business’ dilemma
Who would run a former government-owned monopoly these days? In the last week, Australia Post’s Ahmed Fahour announced 900 administration jobs were to go from its Melbourne operations, while last week Telstra’s David Thodey recounted discussions from his recent trip to the US, where he was told his “business model is dead”.
The NBN will not kill your “way of life”
Some ideas are so bad that they deserve to be ignored and cast back into the wilderness from whence they came. The ideas that the National Broadband Network will somehow destroy someone's way of life is one of them.
Back off, AFACT: Changing the law is not the answer
The Federal Government should ignore the pathetic demands of the film and TV industry for new legislation to "exterminate" Internet piracy and fix the blatantly obvious problems with its commercial model, following its latest loss in Australia's High Court. Australia's copyright law works well as it stands, and does not need changing.
2014 will be the NBN’s first and last great year
With hundreds of thousands of new fibre premises scheduled to come on line and thousands of others opened to wholesale access, 2014 is slated to be the long-awaited first banner year that will see all of the National Broadband Network Company's hard work finally start to pay off in bulk. But unfortunately it'll also be the last, as the Coalition's plan to rip apart Labor's NBN vision starts to takes effect 12 months down the track.
‘War’ on tax avoidance overlooks some obvious legal fixes
This article is by Antony Ting, Associate Professor, University of Sydney. It originally appeared on The Conversation.
opinion/analysis The war on tax avoidance by multinational...
Budget 2014: No country for new games
Cutting off the Games Fund demonstrates that the Liberal government has no interest in supporting an existing vibrant and maturing creative industry. Attacking the younger and lower classes of the nation by gutting a wide range of social services demonstrates that the Liberal government has no interest in the creative and cultural future of the nation.
Cranky Telstra wants its champagne glass back
Telstra's response so far to concerns about its Structural Separation Undertaking has been conciliatory by its own standards; but has not yet come anywhere near to substantially addressing issues with the document expressed by its rivals and the competition regulator over the past several months.
NBN: Disastrous for the music industry … really?
The time has come for the music industry to find common ground with consumers, not do business in spite of them.
Google shouldn’t stop collecting Wi-Fi data
Google's decision to stop its Street View cars collecting harmless data on the location of Wi-Fi hotspots (including in Australia) is an over-reaction to the baseless concerns of a few privacy experts and should be reversed.
I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore. Let’s fix...
For far too long, Australia's political sector has gotten technology policy completely wrong. I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore. Let's take Delimiter into the Canberra Press Gallery and literally write the book on tech policy while we're there.
Help us fact-check Fletcher’s NBN comments
Delimiter invites readers to help us fact-check an important NBN-related article by Coalition MP Paul Fletcher. Let's get to the truth of the matter, together.
NBN competition will rest almost solely on price
Retail competition on the National Broadband Network will rest almost solely on price, in my opinion, as the importance of other differentiating factors between telcos like Telstra, Optus, TPG and iiNet will diminish almost to zero. And here's why.
‘Digital play’ is here to stay … but don’t let go of real Lego...
Ensuring access to both physical and digital methods of building block construction where children can move freely from one to another is crucial for their development in the early years.
Only at the movies? Home truths about cinema ticket pricing
In the last fortnight, senior executives from cinema operators in Australia, including Village Roadshow and Palace Cinemas, have come out defending their decision to raise movie ticket prices. But do their arguments hold water?
Coalition NBN notes: Some truth, mostly fiction
Last week Crikey leaked a confidential document which appeared to contain a large number of speaking tips for Coalition politicians to help them discuss policy areas in public, including with respect to the National Broadband Network. But to what extent is the document accurate when it comes to the NBN? Read on to find out.
Self-interest is ruling Australia’s piracy debate
Over the past few months, I have alternately been appalled, disgusted, saddened and ultimately bored at the degree to which naked self-interest is ruling the ongoing debate about how Australia will deal with the issue of online copyright infringement (Internet piracy).
Does the NBN even need a voice port?
If there is one thing which has always surprised me about the National Broadband Network project, it is the dogged insistence of the network's designers on building a legacy voice telephony port into what is supposed to be next-generation infrastructure.
TV Now: Why the AFL should be grateful
More eyeballs in front of live sport broadcasts are what matter. The AFL should be encouraging people to watch their product. Trying to stop them is just completely counter-productive.
No, Minister: The Tasmanian NBN rollout has not stopped
Amidst the ramping up of the new Australian government, and with reviews of just about everything under the sun underway, we see yet more incorrect statements from incoming federal Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull in regards to the rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN).
RTFM: How to keep CIOs under control
Chief information officers never seem to understand. It doesn't matter if the servers are up or down -- that's a user problem. The real issue is whether they are configured properly in the first place. The system must be perfect, pristine. Users pollute that nirvana.
The ABC must now deal with its NBN problem
Over the past month, the evidence has become overwhelming that the ABC is actively censoring coverage of the National Broadband Network issue in a way that runs counter to the public interest. The broadcaster must now face the issue squarely and deal with it head-on, or run the risk of losing credibility with its highly informed and vocal audience.
Optus’ NBN deal gives it an unfair advantage
Optus' $800 million National Broadband Network deal is an unnecessary and unsavoury sweetheart arrangement which smacks of favouritism and will deliver Optus a war chest with which to attack smaller rivals like iiNet, TPG and Internode; rivals which will not be paid to migrate their customers onto the NBN.
Huawei & the NBN: Beware the CCP’s long arm
Huawei Australia’s local company men appear to have little idea of how China’s political economy, the Chinese telecommunications sector, or the Shenzhen-based parent company operates.
Have journalists found the inventor of Bitcoin or simply been duped?
If taken on face value, the evidence was actually reasonably compelling. The problem was, as NY Times reporter Nathaniel Popper explained, Wright’s writing and personality didn’t match that of Nakamoto’s.
How do Labor and the Coalition differ on NBN policy?
The NBN has been a key issue in the past two elections, so will Labor’s new policy be a vote winner? The policy to move back to FTTP provides a clear differentiation from the Coalition’s FTTN-centric strategy.
Fact Check: Is ridesharing no safer than hitchhiking?
The claim that ridesharing is no safer than hitchhiking is not supported by empirical data. Much of the data used by critics of Uber rely on anecdotal data and media reports to support their view ridesharing puts passengers at personal risk.
The final leaked TPP text is all that we feared
Today's release by Wikileaks of what is believed to be the current and essentially final version of the intellectual property (IP) chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) confirms our worst fears about the agreement, and dashes the few hopes that we held out that its most onerous provisions wouldn't survive to the end of the negotiations.
Opinion: Internode must slash its horrible NBN pricing
The release of iiNet's highly affordable National Broadband Network pricing this morning makes it as crystal clear as the view from Simon Hackett's glider that fellow ISP Internode must drastically slash its own prices or be left out of the NBN race altogether.
Caption contest: Gillard and her Apple iPad
Gillard with iPad!
Turnbull’s new NBN policy is 90 percent win
Yesterday Malcolm Turnbull did exactly what a Liberal shadow minister should do: Present a credible, fiscally responsible and less disruptive alternative to a big-spending and over the top Labor project which since it was unveiled in 2009 has been the policy equivalent of using an elephant gun to kill a house fly.
Turnbull again misleads public on NBN
Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has this week made a number of misleading and factually inaccurate statements in a series of interviews and comments about the Government's National Broadband Network project, on topics ranging from the technology used in the project to its cost and retail broadband prices.
How to keep more girls in IT at schools if we’re to close the...
The world is increasingly embracing digital technology, and so too are our schools. But many girls are still missing out on developing IT and programming skills.
The iPhone 15 is (almost) unimaginable
With half the worlds population now connected by mobile phone and even short periods of time disconnected from the global network leaving many with withdrawal symptoms, the next stage of human evolution is approaching fast and if you're having trouble keeping up, look to nature.
Small business missing the mobile, social, cloud revolution
Most companies that live and breathe the online revolution are not tech startups, but smart smaller firms that use online tools to run their core business better: to cut costs, reach customers and suppliers, innovate and get more control. Many others, however, are falling behind, according to a new Grattan Institute discussion paper.
Delimiter’s curious response to UK Superfast report
Delimiter has published a curious response to a UK House of Lords report on broadband policy released this week. Strange days indeed. Perhaps Delimiter read a different report to everyone else.
New copyright laws not the answer to illegal downloads
New laws are not the answer. Rather, we need to look at education, technical mechanisms, licensing solutions and responsibility of ISPs and search engines to find a workable balance between the right to own and creative content and the ability of users (and intermediaries) to access and reuse such content.
Private cloud ball is now in IBM’s court
There is one factor which IBM's cloud computing strategy appears to be lacking at the moment.
Dreaming of the perfect NBN policy
In an ideal world, the perfect National Broadband Network policy would be a mix of the policies espoused by both Labor and the Coalition, taking the best ideas from both sides and ditching the bad ones. It would address Australia's short-term needs while still investing in the future. Here's how it would work.
Advancing a competition agenda
Regulatory assessments have not acknowledged that Telstra’s dominance in fixed telephony has significant impacts on the mobile industry, according to Vodafone chief executive Bill Morrow, who argues in this opinionated article that in a converging world, this siloed approach is no longer tenable.
CommBank’s deep innovation is redefining our notion of what a bank is
The remarkable wave of technological innovation emanating from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia is forcing Australians to redefine their fundamental concept of what a bank is, and reimagine what their basic relationship to such an institution should be.
Anti-piracy scheme throws users to the legal wolves
The anti-piracy scheme proposed by the ISP industry this afternoon as a response to online copyright infringement through platforms like BitTorrent opens the door for content owners to start taking hundreds of thousands of Australians to court for minor offences such as downloading a handful of films or TV episodes.
Decentralised NBN key to unlocking bush potential
Decentralisation is the key to unlocking the potential of our regions while making life in both "Sydney and the Bush" just that little more bearable.
It’s the internet, stupid: WikiLeaks and the modern state
Many have speculated that the internet, fully realised, would bring forward an era of global citizenship and the permanent fracturing of the nation-state. Whether this is folly or fact will only be understood in hindsight, but for now, we'll have to be content with watching the world's governments grappling with more immediate questions of what they have tried to hide, and what they now have to fear.
iiNet’s IPTV is three times the cost of Telstra’s
opinion Like any competitive industry, Australia’s broadband market has been characterised by a certain predictable dynamic for some time now.
First, customers become frustrated by...
Freelancer’s IPO: A billion reasons to care
For the Australian tech company market, the success of Freelancer would be a good thing and could possibly serve to boost the likelihood of other companies receiving investment. But because tech companies listing on the ASX are relatively uncommon, they are often treated as scarce events resulting in a general temptation to attach too much significance to a company that has yet to really prove it is worthy of the attention.
Progressive thinkers: Greens the best option for tech voters
The Greens generally have their major competitors beat when it comes to technology policy, and their parliamentary experience gives them an edge on minor party rivals.
“Destructive forces” unravelling NBN, says Budde
"Destructive forces" at work in a "highly polarised political environment" are starting to "unravel" Labor's National Broadband Network project, veteran analyst Paul Budde said yesterday, with the new Coalition Government having boxed itself into a corner on the issue and end users set to suffer from a nightmarish situation akin to a "Pandora's Box" of problems.
Commission of Audit: Digital disruption needed (business as usual not an option)
What does it take to deliver on a digital transformation agenda that the National Commission of Audit has explicitly described as “not business as usual”? As we transition from a 60 to 100 year old operating model of government, a fundamental re-imagining of what is meant by “public service” is needed.
Labor’s NBN is a natural monopoly, but the Coalition’s is not
The argument made by respected competition expert, academic and executive Fred Hilmer several weeks ago that the National Broadband Network is not a "natural monopoly" is somewhat convincing, but ultimately falls short by failing to acknowledge specific factors relevant to competition in the telecommunications sector.
Picking apart the Coalition’s NBN misinformation
Whether or not any of us is a supporter of the NBN, I think we as the Australian people would be much better served by some fair and reasonable debate based on facts, rather than the spewing out of inaccurate, and misinformed spin! Where do they get such dumb ideas?
Turnbull’s NBN hiring spree is pure election fodder
Like the fictional Frank Underwood’s ‘America Works’ program, the massive nbn hiring spree unveiled by Malcolm Turnbull in the wee hours of this morning is pure election fodder — a beguiling program designed to demonstrate to the electorate that the reigning Government is instantly responsible for thousands of new jobs.
Fact check: The NBN wasn’t a “media stunt”
Free market thinktank the Institute of Public Affairs recently claimed Labor’s flagship National Broadband Network project was drawn up purely as a “media stunt” to drum up publicity for the Government. Unfortunately, this is a factually inaccurate statement, and here’s the evidence to prove it.
The company you keep: Section 313 notices and IPv4 collateral damage
Internet Protocol researcher Geoff Huston analyses the Federal Government's usage of Section 313 notices to block certain websites, with reference to the ongoing issue of how IPv4 addresses are being used on the Internet.
ISP filtering policy is not evidence-based
The principle objection I have is that the policy mandates that ISPs spend a huge sum of money to deploy and maintain masses of new infrastructure. Whether this burden is passed onto Australians via taxes or via increased ISP fees, we will end up paying for it. We will end up paying, and it won't do anything.
Tasmania’s NBN tangle is a shocking mess
The ongoing stoush over how the Coalition's Broadband Network should be deployed in Tasmania shows Australia's broadband tangle at its worst: Construction contractors who don't deliver, overly optimistic promises and estimates, and politicians playing petty power games with a highly important national infrastructure project. No matter which way you look at it, it's a shocking mess.
Where’s My Jetpack? An awesomely epic rant by Australia’s new CTO
If you have even the slightest interest in government IT or technology project management, we recommend you sit down with a cup of tea and your tablet and read this epic rant by Australia's new chief technology officer John Sheridan. It's worth it.
Oh dear: Generation Y, meet Stephen Conroy
Oh dear. We're fairly sure this meeting would have been punctuated by long, uncomfortable silences.
Oh dear: “Unlimited” doesn’t mean “Unlimited”
The Delimiter office was a little surprised this afternoon when a courier appeared and handed us a copy of The Little Oxford English Ditcionary & Thesaurus. But what was inside?
Tasmanian NBN pricing so far is horrible
The proposed National Broadband Network prices released this week by iiNet are simply way too expensive for the promised 100Mbps speeds and will need to be reduced significantly to drive customer uptake.
Apple’s Samsung lawsuit raises wider patent questions
The mobile patent wars, it seems, have reached Australian shores.
Lotus fans: Show me the money or shut the hell up
If there is one thing I am absolutely sick to death of, it is the pathetic rantings of die-hard Lotus Notes fanboys about how technically superior their product is, and how everyone else who isn't drinking the IBM kool-aid are somehow "biased" and don't understand Notes' obvious superiority.
Oh dear: eBooks are for pr0n
Not all eBooks sold through Borders' new store are of a high-brow nature.
Battle royalty: Is this the end of online radio streaming?
Online streaming of radio broadcasts may be a thing of the past after the Full Federal Court yesterday handed down a ruling that will result in radio stations paying higher royalties to the recording industry.
Datacentre strategy a big downer
When I read the summary of the government's datacentre strategy for the next 15 years, the first thing I wondered was how it could have taken the government months to come up with this document.
Quigley was right: NBN Strategic Review shows FTTP still cost-effective, viable
A close reading of NBN Co's Strategic Review report published last week shows the former chief executive of the company was overwhelmingly correct: A predominantly Fibre to the Premises National Broadband Network can still be rolled out with only modest cost and timeframe implications. But that's a truth that nobody currently involved in the process seems to want to hear.
For whom the Whirlpool trolls? Stephen Conroy and the NBN
Is Whirlpool or the Financial Review more accurate when it comes to reporting on the National Broadband Network? Two Canberra journalism professors analyse the situation.
More blah blah blah: IT Advocate announced
The problems small and medium sized Australian companies face in winning Commonwealth IT contracts are as perennial as the grass. Two and a half years into a three year term and the Rudd Government solution is the appointment of a "respected industry figure" to "provide leadership."
Emperor Rupert’s not at war with the NBN: It’s democracy he has a problem...
Rupert Murdoch has not sent a political assassin Down Under specifically to kill Labor’s evil National Broadband Network project so it doesn’t wipe out Foxtel’s revenues. No, it’s the people’s right to choose which frustrates Murdoch, not Labor’s little side project.
How the NBN could boost Australia’s GDP by 2 percent
This article is by Leith Campbell, Honorary Fellow, Melbourne School of Engineering and Sascha Suessspeck, Economist and Ph.D. Electronic and Electrical Engineering student, both...
Election rant 6: NBN envy – or apathy?
In the end game, politically and economically, the NBN is a nice thing to have. But it's not an essential thing. And that's the other thing about the problem of the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence.
Don’t privatise the NBN
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy should do more than just remove from the NBN legislation the option for it to be a retailer – he should put in a clause that it will never raise equity or be privatised.
Warning: Telstra is killing off Australia’s mobile competition
In five years' time, just how much market share will Telstra have in Australia's mobile phone industry? If it keeps on adding 900,000 new mobile connections every six months while its rivals do diddly squat, I would have to say the answer will be: Most of it.