Archive for the ‘Telstra’ Category

National Broadband Network’s future awaits Australian election outcome

Wednesday, July 24th, 2013

The fate of Australia’s National Broadband Network, which aims to bring internet access to the country’s farthest flung outposts, will not be known until the outcome of the country’s federal election is known.

The Labor government and conservative Liberal-led opposition have vastly different plans for the A$37.4 billion for the network (NBN).

A Liberal-led coalition election victory would drastically alter the way the NBN is rolled out, says Melbourne-based RMIT University electrical engineering expert Mark Gregory.

“There will still be activity, but there will definitely be winners and losers,” Gregory says.

While Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Labor government initially promised to deliver Internet speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps) to 93% of premises by 2021 using fiber-optic cables, with the remaining remote locations served by satellite and fixed wireless, those goals have been steadily scaled back.

The project has also been plagued with problems and in-fighting among the companies tasked with building the network.

Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott, on the other hand, promises a A$30 billion fiber-to-the-node network. Under this plan, high-speed fiber would be laid to streetside “nodes” but the final connection to homes and businesses would rely on Telstra Corp Ltd’s ageing copper wires, with much slower download speeds than fiber.

The Liberal Party says this would provide 25 Mbps minimum by 2016 and 50 Mbps for the “vast majority of households” by 2019.

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Australian businesses rapidly adopting 4G technology

Friday, July 19th, 2013

Australian businesses are quickly jumping on the 4G train as, Vodafone became the final of the big three telecommunications companies to launch an LTE network last month. The latest generation mobile technology provides faster speeds and makes more efficient use of wireless spectrum capacity.

Telsyte analyst Foad Fadaghi said 13 per cent of all mobile connections in Australia — including consumer, business and M2M — are 4G, and the percentage specific to business penetration is likely consistent.

While 13 per cent may not appear large at first, it shows rapid adoption considering that Telstra has only had a 4G network for 18 months, Optus for only 12 months, and Vodafone has just launched, Fadaghi said.

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National Broadband Network one step closer

Friday, February 11th, 2011

SMH reports today that Telstra and the NBN Co have hammered through another part of the national broadband network deal today.

The “key commercial terms” have been announced, so Telstra now has the green light to shut down the copper network and share its infrastructure with the NBN Co.

Now, the Telstra shareholders will need to vote on whether to proceed with the deal, with the vote to take place earlier than July.

Telstra itself will be hoping for a ‘yes’ vote, given that its recently released half year financials showed a 36% profit decline.