Recent Articles
Telstra to be split
Aug 17, 2005 Telco, Telstra 1 Comment
Telstra to be split (Australian IT / Michael Sainsbury)
From the article: “TELSTRA will be split in two in an effort to boost competition in the $30billion telecommunications industry as part of a package of reforms ahead of its full privatisation.
The package, believed to have been approved by cabinet last night, will force a furious Telstra to create distinct network and retail divisions, with separate premises and management but under the same company structure.
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Under the Government’s proposed changes, Telstra’s wholesale division, which runs its copper, cable and mobile networks, would be separated from its retail division.
The wholesale division would have to sell services – namely access to networks – to the retail division on the same terms it sells services to Telstra’s competitors. Those companies then on-sell services to their own customers.
The terms would be available to regulators, ensuring Telstra was not hurting competition by charging competitors too much.”
This is great news for competition, but not for Telstra shareholders. Being forced to complete on a more level playing field will almost certainly reduce Telstra’s massive profits seen over the past couple of years. Regardless of this; I still don’t think they’re any any sort of a position to be asking for government handouts to build up their infrastructure. It seems Sol Trujillo still has a lot to learn about the local Telco environment.
Software to improve train scheduling
Aug 10, 2005 Current Events, Misc Comments Off
Test time for timetables ( Australian IT / Kelly Mills )
From the article: “STATE railways are testing revolutionary, locally developed software that may help the trains run on time.
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Developed by the Co-operative Research Centre for Railway Engineering and Technologies (Rail CRC) and the University of South Australia in collaboration with consultants TMG International, the ScheduleMiser technology generates thousands of viable train plans in a matter of minutes.”
I wonder if this would help Melbourne’s train network run on time?
Morgan Freeman, not just a great actor
Jul 7, 2005 Internet, Music & Entertainment Comments Off
Freeman Bringing Films to Net ( Wired News / Katie Dean )
From the article: “Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman is teaming up with Intel to launch an online movie-download site that aims to pull users away from illegal downloads of first-run films.
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“We’re going to bypass what the music industry had to come up with, and that’s to get ahead of the whole piracy thing,” Freeman told reporters at Sun Valley after making his presentation, which was closed to the press.”
Apparently Morgan Freeman has been busy setting up ClickStar, a company which aims to make new release movies available for download while they are still showing at the cinema. He wants to make it easier to buy a download of the movie than to pirate one. I think the determining factor on whether this will work or not is how much the movie will cost relative to the quality of the video.
DVD sales slowing down
Jul 6, 2005 Media & Advertising Comments Off
End of the DVD Party? ( Business Week / Ronald Grover )
From the article: “Now small but troubling signs are emerging that the DVD market’s growth could be trailing off faster than Hollywood expected. On June 30, Pixar Animation Studios cut its earnings-per-share estimate for the second quarter to 10 cents from 15 cents, due to slower-than-expected DVD sales of its blockbuster The Incredibles. The stock of Dreamworks Animation dropped sharply in mid-May, after the studio reported that returns of its own blockbuster Shrek 2 left sales 5 million short of its forecasts.”
Although the article is from the US, I noticed a lot of unsold Shrek 2 and Incredibles DVD when strolling through shops in Melbourne as well. With the number of cinema goers declining it will be interesting to see how the movie execs will react to this. No doubt they will want to blame piracy, and this would certainly be a factor, but probably not as big as the studios would have you believe.
Net TV on the way
Jul 5, 2005 Internet, Media & Advertising Comments Off
Net TV poised to make the switch ( The Age / Graeme Philipson)
From the article: “When TV stations start to broadcast over the internet there will be no need for pay TV. Pay TV succeeds because it uses a proprietary broadcast network, based on satellite or cable, as its transmission medium. It controls who can receive the signal by controlling the technology.
When any TV station can broadcast over the internet and anybody with a high enough bandwidth Internet connection can receive it, pay TV will cease to exist. Like the BBC black box, it is an interim technology. I give it 10 years, which means Foxtel might become profitable at about the same time its technology becomes redundant.”
There are some limited forms of internet tv around currently but the quality is too low for regular consumers to bother with. The rollout of ADSL2+ and other high bandwidth tail connections will encourage people to experiment more with streaming video, which should in turn drive further developments in that area. As the article hints at, pay tv only works because the provider has exclusive access to the delivery medium. Once high quality content is available over the internet the pay tv operator’s current infrastructure advantage will turn into a liability.
Melbourne’s public transport lobbdy responds
Jun 2, 2005 Current Events, Melbourne Comments Off
Transport lobby shows roads rage (The Age / Lorna Edwards)
From the article: “Railway lines to Doncaster and Rowville and an extension of tram lines to Knox and Doncaster would ease the city’s growing traffic congestion more than huge road projects, public transport advocates said yesterday.
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Public Transport Users Association president Daniel Bowen said “The Committee for Melbourne appears to have fallen for the myth that more roads relieve traffic congestion. They don’t,””
The Age are also carrying an article about The Connex Whinger, a frustrated train network user who believes Connex’s published punctuality figures are not entirely accurate.
The Age takes a look at some of Melbourne’s road transport issues
Jun 1, 2005 Melbourne Comments Off
Plan to overhaul city’s transport network (The Age / Dan Silkstone)
The article describes a plan by a lobby group wishing to extend the road network and road-based public transport. There is no mention of tram or train network improvements.
Mark Webber third in Monaco GP
May 23, 2005 Motorsport Comments Off
Webber third in Monaco (The Age / Reuters)
Mark Webber scored his career best result of third place in the Monaco F1 Grand Prix yesterday. It was a good result the Williams team too with Nick Heidfeld finishing second behind Kimi Raikkonen who led from start to finish.
Metcard or Muttcard?
May 13, 2005 Current Events, Melbourne Comments Off
A reasonable man, pushed far too far (The Age / Jim Schembri)
A humorous tale about Ernie, a man who has had enough of the ticketing shenanigans of Melbourne’s public transport ticketing system.
VoIP article in The Age
May 12, 2005 Internet, VoIP Comments Off
VoIP starts to talk the talk (The Age / Penelope Debelle)
This morning The Age has an article about the growing use of VoIP within Australia, and the world in general. As noted in the article VoIP is more widely deployed than most people would realise. There are a lot of large businesses and some telecommunications companies who use VoIP transport between locations instead of traditional ISDN or PSTN lines. Just because you are using a regular phone handset on your desk or kitchen bench doesn’t mean that your call isn’t using VoIP somewhere in the switching path.