Posts Tagged ‘telecommunications’
news The Federal Government today revealed a standardised approach to sharing computing workloads between agencies, in a so-called ‘community cloud’ strategy that will attempt to leverage existing infrastructure operated by major departments such as the Department of Human Services to provide services to smaller agencies.
The community cloud model is one of several cloud computing approaches which the Federal Government is currently exploring, under a collaborative approach between centralised IT strategy agency the Australian Government Information Management Office and a number of other major and minor departments and agencies.
The model is different from both the public cloud (where various unrelated organisations share public IT infrastructure) and private cloud (where a single organisation provides a common private pool of infrastructure to its own workers and internal departments) models, in that it envisions IT infrastructure being provided by large departments within the Federal Government being somewhat standardised so that smaller departments and agencies can also gain access to IT infrastructure.
In doing so, it recognises the fact that in Australia’s Federal Government, large departments such as the Australian Taxation Office, Department of Human Services (including Centrelink), and Department of Immigration and Citizenship already operate large amounts of IT infrastructure and maintain standardised processes for accessing that infrastructure, and that it might make sense for smaller agencies to be able to take advantage of it.
In a blog post on AGIMO’s blog today, AGIMO first assistant secretary Glenn Archer, who leads cloud computing work for the agency, published a draft of a better practice guide for community cloud governance.
“The purpose of this guide is to provide agencies with guidance on providing a governance structure around Community Clouds,” wrote Archer. “It is based around related frameworks using formal agreements that are managed by well-defined governance structures with clear roles and responsibilities. It is important that agencies providing cloud services and those agencies consuming those cloud services have a common understanding of the features and how the service is managed.”
The guide calls for formal agreements to be put in place between agencies that are interested in sharing their clouds, as well as setting up a governance committee and model to manage the use of the IT platforms concerned.
Some of the issues to be considered by agencies considering being involved in cloud sharing include security classifications (for example, a community cloud may operate at various security classification levels which may not be appropriate for the storage of all data sets), the need for standards around interoperability and data portability, and the need to comply with appropriate legislative and regulatory requirements.
It gives examples of governance structures that could be used for community clouds, including the establishment of a community cloud management committee composed of representatives from the lead agency concerned, participating agencies, and involved service providers. Such committees would be overseen by the Federal Government’s existing Cloud Information Community group, as well as the Chief Information Officers’ Committee and Secretaries’ ICT Governance Board groups.
The publication of the guide comes some 18 months after the issue of shared government cloud computing resources was first raised in public by then-Human Services deputy secretary of IT infrastructure John Wadeson (since retired), who told iTNews at the time that departmental CIOs were informally investigating the ability to share computing capacity.
The New South Wales State Government is also investigating the area. Its wide-ranging IT strategy published several weeks ago called for the implementation of virtualisation technology in all government agencies, and the development of a trusted Government private cloud.
opinion/analysis
I think the idea of community cloud computing is a fantastic one, and a very wise way to unify the two strands of agency-centric IT decision-making in the Federal Government with the need for greater provision and use of common resources across government.
It has long been the case in governments that virtually all of the decision-making ability when it comes to IT infrastructure has been concentrated in agencies rather than in centralised whole of government chief information officer roles. The CIO of the Australian Taxation Office, for example, or of DHS, is hardly going to just hand over control of their IT resources to a central government CIO, when they have their own departmental secretary or chief executive to answer to. And yet, this siloed approach has also meant that the opportunity to set IT policy and use common resources across the whole public sector has often been lost.
The community cloud represents the best of both scenarios. Major centres of IT excellence within the Federal Government can maintain control over their own destinies, while also sharing some of their resources and learnings with what I would call ‘satellite’ agencies; smaller groups which don’t have the same scale but can benefit from it by being a little closer to the centre of things.
I would love to see this principle extended further in governments right around Australia. Perhaps a little of this same approach would help state governments out of the IT shared services mess which they currently find themselves in.
Image credit: Fred Fokkelman, royalty free.
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news Labor’s flagship National Broadband Network project is here to stay in one form or another and won’t be discontinued as a whole, telecommunications analyst Paul Budde said this week, even if the Coalition was to take power in the next Federal Election.
When Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull was appointed to the role in September 2010, the ABC reported that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott had ordered the Member for Wentworth to “demolish” the NBN. At the time, Abbott said he believed the NBN would “turn out to be a white elephant on a massive scale … school halls on steroids”.
Despite denials from Turnbull several weeks later that he would seek to “wreck” the project, the comments were seized upon by various figures in the Labor Party. Prime Minister Julia Gillard, has repeatedly claimed that a Coalition government would “rip up the fibre out of the ground” if it won power. In general, many Australians believe that the Coalition remains stalwartly against the NBN on philosophical grounds and would cancel the project if it won government — at a cost, according to the recent Federal Budget, of at least $1.8 billion.
However, that’s not the case, according to one leading telecommunications analyst. Writing on his blog this week, Paul Budde noted that while changes would definitely be made to the NBN if the Coalition wins the next Federal Election, he stated that the Coalition “also agrees that in some way the NBN is here to stay.
In separate posts over the past few months, Budde used a speech given by Turnbull to the CommsDay conference in April 2012 as well as other communications made by the Liberal MP to make his argument that the Opposition would retain key features of the NBN.
“The Coalition’s policy is, as you know focussed on achieving a comparable outcome (ubiquitious very fast broadband) but achieving it sooner in terms of rollout, cheaper in terms of cost to taxpayers, and more affordably in terms of consumers,” said Turnbull in the speech. “All of that follows from taking a pragmatic and technological neautral approach. But above all, at the front of our priorities is reducing risks for taxpayers and risks for consumers.”
“Very important and very positive was his statement that the Coalition’s aim is to achieve a comparable outcome for the NBN, sooner and cheaper,” said Budde in a post several weeks ago. “This confirms BuddeComm’s earlier claim that some form of a National Broadband Network is here to stay.” And then in April: “There is a lot of chest-beating going on, but in reality the Coalition’s views have been moving closer to the NBN as it is currently being rolled out,” wrote Budde.
The key plank of Budde’s argument regarding the Coalition appears to be that several components of the Coalition’s gradually evolving NBN policy are the same as the Government’s. For instance, the analyst noted in April that there was currently “more or less” bipartisan support for the structural separation of Telstra and the need to service rural areas with wireless and satellite broadband solutions, as opposed to fixed-line telecommunications.
One of the key differences between the two sides of politics’ policies, according to Budde, was that Labor is focusing on fibre to the home solutions, while the Coalition is focusing on fibre to the node, which would see fibre rolled out to streetside cabinets. However, he said, a FTTN solution would eventually “also need to be upgraded to FTTH”.
Perhaps the main key difference between the pair, Budde wrote, was actually not in the area of infrastructure investment at all, but the question of how to incentivise activity taking place on top of that infrastructure.
” … regardless of what the parties agree and don’t agree on, any technology solution will need to be based on a clear vision of the future for Australia in relation to the digital economy, e-health, tele-education, M2M, digital media and so on; and on the role of ICT in all of this,” the analyst wrote. ” … it is very clear that the current NBN is not there simply to deliver fast internet access.”
“The problem we have about the suggestions, comments and criticism from the Coalition is that so far we have no idea what their vision is on these matters. Do they see the need for a transformation towards a digital economy, e-health, tele-education, energy efficiency, etc? Do they believe that ICT has a role to play in this process? And, if so, what does that role have to be? If they were to present a vision on this we could debate what would be the best way to technically enable this transformation.”
opinion/analysis
I also believe that the Coalition’s telecommunications policy has shifted ever closed to the Government’s, and that the NBN project is broadly here to stay.
As Budde mentioned, both parties agree on the need to structurally separate Telstra and upgrade most of Australia’s broadband infrastructure using fibre, either to the premise or to neighbourhood nodes, and both parties agree on the need to provide rural broadband with wireless and satellite links.
Perhaps the areas where the Coalition most radically diverges from the Government’s view on the NBN are the issues of how this should be carried out, and what should be done with existing infrastructure. Clearly the Coalition wants to continue to use existing infrastructure such as the HFC cable networks operated by Telstra and Optus, as well as some portions of Telstra’s copper network — and just as clearly, the Government wants to shut such platforms down. However, in both cases, the aim is to keep on providing better broadband to Australians — so at a high level the policies are not dissimilar.
One other area is really quite unclear with respect to the Coalition’s telecommunications policy. That is the issue of how its policy would be carried out. Will NBN Co continue to exist as a corporate entity, owning telecommunications infrastructure — potentially even Telstra’s entire copper network? How will the Coalition incentivise Telstra and Optus to further upgrade their HFC cable networks and convince Telstra to help with the upgrade of its copper network?
Will the Coalition continue with NBN Co’s plan to launch its own satellites, instead of leasing capacity from existing satellites? And how and by whom will fixed wireless broadband be rolled out in rural areas? These are all questions which Australians currently have with regard to the Coalition’s telecommunications policy.
Personally, I don’t see how the Coalition could possibly get away without some form of a company like NBN Co to manage all of these issues. And with — at the very least — hundreds of thousands of Australians already having access to the NBN by the time the next Federal Election rolls around, likely in 2013, it seems that a strategy of transitioning NBN Co itself to a new model is going to pretty necessary for a Coalition Government, rather than simply abolishing the company wholesale.
In any case, I think at this stage we need to start counting our blessings with regard to telecommunications policy in Australia. While there is still a great deal of uncertainty in the political climate, the truth is that on both sides of politics we have very capable and senior leaders in the telecommunications portfolio, with deep understanding of the sector and a commitment to improving it. Whatever happens at the next election, that can only bode well for the nation’s telecommunications development as a whole.
Related posts:
- NBN helped Coalition lose 2010 election
- NBN policy should integrate FTTN, HFC: Budde
- New Coalition NBN policy: Splitting Telstra, using HFC
- Coalition reveals new FTTN broadband policy
- Strong NBN support amongst Coalition voters
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news In the realisation of one of the worst-kept secrets in Australia’s new media and technology sectors, Swedish music streaming Spotify has launched locally, joining a throng of streaming rivals aiming to capture the Australian market for digital music consumption.
Spotify was founded in Sweden by co-founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, but is headquartered in the UK. The company offers a selection of streamed music through a variety of major labels — with names such as Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group and Universal having signed on to its roster. In the US, the organisation has recently launched through a partnership with Facebook and spearheaded by maverick dot com mogul Sean Parker. The lack of a global service has caused a number of guides to spring up online to accessing Spotify outside of the US through technologies such as virtual private networks.
However, Spotify has been publicly hinting at an Australian launch for some time. In November last year, the company hired former Google Australia chief Kate Vale (pictured, above) as its local sales director — now managing director. Vale’s appointment — outed on her LinkedIn profile was at the time believed to signal an imminent Australian launch even though the company has been non-committal as to specifics. Spotify’s local hiring spree started in October, with its website listing the position of a Sydney-based Account Manager to liaise with the company’s label partners.
This morning Spotify issued a media release making its Australian launch official. “We’re unbelievably excited to be here,” said co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek. “Australians are massive music fans and we’ve created a service that we know they’ll love. Spotify offers everything you could possibly want from a music service: it’s free, it’s fast, it’s easy to share and with more than 16 million songs we have one of the biggest on-demand music libraries in the world.”
“Spotify is a game changer,” said Vale. “This is a revolutionary new music service that’s free, simple, and provides lightning-fast access to one of the world’s biggest music libraries. We hope Australian music fans will love Spotify as much as they do across Europe and the US.”
Spotify offers users three pricing models. The first is free, but features advertising. The second, ‘Unlimited’, will cost Australians $6.99 a month and removes the ads from Spotify’s broadcast, but can only be used on users’ computers. And the third model, ‘Premium’, allows users to listen to ad-free music on any of their devices for $11.99 a month.
Spotify’s Australian prices are roughly similar to the prices it is charging US and UK users, although Australians will pay a small premium compared with the US. For the Unlimited model, UK users pay £4.99 a month and US users US$4.99 a month, and for the Premium model, US users pay £9.99 a month and US users US$9.99 a month.
In Australia, Spotify has launched “with deals in place with all four major labels, APRA and a raft of independent labels”, the company said today, as well as a specific plugin app for the ABC’s Triple J station. “The app, which has been specially created for Spotify users, will showcase new tracks on Triple J Hitlist, featured albums, and include past Hottest 100 countdowns,” said Spotify this morning. “The app will also feature all the latest music news.”
Virgin Mobile has also independently announced a partnership with Spotify in Australia that will see the Optus subsidiary offer Spotify users specially designed guides explaining how to use the service, and Sonos, which makes wireless music systems for music playback, has also announced that its systems are compatible with Spotify in Australia.
A number of other music streaming services have also recently launched in Australia: Research in Motion’s BBM Music service (only available on its BlackBerry handsets), Samsung’s Music Hub for its Galaxy line of devices, Songl from Sony and Universal, Microsoft’s Zune Pass, Sony’s Music Unlimited and Rdio. It is unclear which platform is so far enjoying the most traction.
opinion/analysis
Spotify looks pretty damn good, but of course Australia already had a decent existing service, Rdio. Either of those look a lot better than the lock-in options from the various handset manufacturers. I’ll be signing up to Spotify today and trying it out to see if it’s worth being a permanent addition to the Delimiter HQ.
Image credit: Spotify
Related posts:
- Music service Rdio launches in Australia
- Kate Vale to head sales as Spotify plans Aussie launch
- Spotify hiring Australian staff
- Spotify: Saviour of the music industry?
- 2012 debut for JB Hi-Fi music streaming service
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news International technology companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon may not be paying their fair share of Australian tax, Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said this week, with local tax laws not having caught up yet with the challenges of the digital environment.
In early May, Google Australia revealed that it expected to pay just $74,000 in corporate income tax for the 2011 calendar year in Australia, off claimed local revenues of $201 million, despite the fact that industry estimates have continually pegged the search giant’s Australian income at closer to $1 billion. The remainder of the company’s incoming is believed to be funnelled through its Irish subsidiary. Ireland is believed to offer Google a more favourable tax environment for its global revenues than countries such as Australia or the US.
In an article published on his website late yesterday, Turnbull said an important long-term issue in terms of Australian public policy was “the erosion of our tax base due to the growing significant of online commerce and offshore-domiciled service providers in many sectors and markets”. “Many transactions which previously generated economic activity and tax revenue in Australia no longer do so,” the Liberal MP wrote.
“An advertisement on a Google search page may be hosted by a server located overseas, and the advertisement may be sold by a company located in Ireland – but nonetheless from the Australian user’s point of view it is as “present” on his device as an advertisement on The Australian or the Sydney Morning Herald website. Equally the largest seller of books to Australians is Amazon – yet there is no GST levied on those sales, and no Australian tax is paid on the profits earned from them, as opposed to the taxes once paid by the Australian-based book sellers Amazon has, in many cases, put out of business.”
Turnbull said debate currently underway in Europe over the issue illustrated that there was “no quick fix” to the issue, or “indeed any broadly agreed consensus as yet that a fix is necessary”. Also, the Liberal MP added, he wasn’t as yet proposing any specific change to existing tax laws, flagging a shift in Coalition policy or even suggesting that Google’s activities were illegal. However, Turnbull said, there was a question about whether current taxation law was adequate in the new, converging digital world — and broader issues were at play.
“In the case of advertising dollars once spent at Australian media outlets but now increasingly diverted abroad, a diminished local tax base is only part of the challenge created by this shift,” he said. “It also reduces the resources available for gathering and publishing news, which reduces the media’s ability to hold political, corporate or institutional interests to account. And it adds to pressure for consolidation. Scrutiny of powerful interests by a robust, fearless, professional and diverse media is fundamental to the operation of any democracy.”
“All of this is entangled with free trade issues and Australia is by no means unique,” the MP added. “Just about every country in the world, or at least those with open access to the Internet, is facing challenges and questions of this kind.” Turnbull linked the issue to several inquiries which the Federal Labor Government has recently held into the future of the media, stating that neither inquiry had bothered to examine these sorts of taxation issues in any depth, “despite their critical importance to the financial viability of our publishers and broadcasters of news, and the threat to Australia’s tax base”.
The way that Google Australia accounts for its revenue does not appear to be consistent with the way other major technology companies account for their revenue in Australia.
In January, Apple, a major rival of Google, published its own financial statements for its 2011 financial year, noting that it made $4.88 billion from its Australian division in the year to 24 September 2011. The company made $190 million in local profits, and paid $94 million in tax in Australia. IBM Australia also filed its financial results over the past several weeks. The company made local revenues of $4.5 billion, with Australian profits being $428 million, and taxation taking a $119 million chunk out of IBM’s pocket.
In January this year, Mashable reported that Apple maintained much of its profits in so-called “offshore tax havens” which allowed it to stop the US Government from taxing it to the full extent possible in its home country.
In 2010, The Huffington Post wrote about IBM’s taxation purposes: “In December 2008, the Government Accounting Office reported that 83 of the 100 largest publicly-traded companies in the country — including ATT, Chevron, IBM, American Express, GE, Boeing, Dow, and AIG — had subsidiaries in tax havens — or, as the corporate class comically calls them, “financial privacy jurisdictions.’”
However, in Australia, neither Apple nor IBM appear to use the same technique as Google with respect to tax accounting. The pair’s financial statements do not contain references to similar international subsidiaries in locations such as Ireland that Google Australia’s do, and both pay significantly more corporate income tax in Australia.
opinion/analysis
Turnbull’s approach here is characteristic of his much wider approach to policy formation. In short, he reads widely about international affairs in his portfolio, consults with key Australian stakeholders, and attempts to discern how the global experience can be translated into solid Australian policy, with local expertise and knowledge. In theory, this is the right approach, and I wish more Australian politicians would take it. However, in this sort of situation, I would have to say that it’s clear that Turnbull is taking the wrong approach on this issue. Why do I think this?
Firstly, it’s important to understand that the Federal political and media arena is currently a nightmarish, populist bullpen, where supposedly mature figures from both sides of politics are constantly backstabbing each other and feverishly checking the daily opinion polls in order to ascertain whether their latest weasel moves have had any impact on moving the needle of political opinion. Turnbull’s attempts to interject rational, reasoned debate into this raucous cacophony come across as a relic of a bygone era. Sure, many of us in the media and political spheres would dearly love to see that era come back, but frankly it doesn’t look like that will happen any time soon. In short, Turnbull’s intellectual consideration of this debate needs to get a bit more emotional oomph to make any headway.
If Turnbull really wants to tackle the issue of Australian taxes going offshore (as they very clearly are), he needs to make this a populist issue. Instead of conducting calm interviews with the Financial Review and issuing rational statements raising questions on the issue, he should be standing up in the House of Representatives and lambasting Google, Facebook and Amazon for their ridiculously transparent attempts at avoiding their Australian tax obligations. He should be dragging these companies before parliamentary inquiries on the matter. And he should be raising these issues with populist media outlets such as the Daily Telegraph and commercial radio stations.
Only then will it become the sort of national issue it could be.
Why do I know that Turnbull should be doing these things? Because we’ve seen these tactics succeed spectacularly with Labor backbencher Ed Husic, who for six months has been pushing a very similar popular bandwagon: Local pricing markups on technology goods and services in Australia.
While Turnbull is beating around the bush on transfer pricing and being featured in calm editorials in the AFR, Husic already has his parliamentary inquiry being set up on the matter; he already has national press coverage; and he already has local technology vendors running scared. If Turnbull is at all serious about the taxation issue, he should be aiming for the same outcome and using every weapon at his disposal. To do anything less is to reveal that he wasn’t truly serious about it at all. Right now, light touches get nowhere in Australia’s tragically dumbed down political discourse. Those who wish to enact serious change need to apply the sledgehammer every chance they get.
Image credit: Office of Malcolm Turnbull
Related posts:
- Turnbull confronts Google over NBN support
- Malcolm Turnbull and the great Google conspiracy
- Turnbull secretly “loves” the NBN, claims Internode
- Turnbull just opposes everything, claims Conroy
- Fibre broadband speeds pointless, claims Turnbull
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news Australia is the nation which most pirates the popular HBO television series Game of Thrones, new analysis released this week has shown, with time delays and cable TV lock-in being the primary culprits believed to be behind the nation’s copyright infringing habits.
Earlier this week, global BitTorrent-focused website TorrentFreak published a new analysis of piracy activities surrounding Game of Thrones, the popular TV show based on George R. R. Martin’s hit fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. The aim of the analysis was to provide some background to why pirating activity around the show, which is produced by US network HBO, is so strong, with an estimated three million downloads per episode globally.
According to TorrentFreak’s analysis, currently more illegal downloads of Game of Thrones take place in Australia than in any other country of the world — including the US, which has a population of 313 million, compared with just 23 million in Australia. Currently, some 10.1 percent of Game of Thrones downloads originate in Australia, the website wrote, compared with 9.7 percent in the US, 7.7 percent in Canada and 7.6 percent in the United Kingdom. Some 3 percent — or 90,000 — downloads take place in Sydney alone, with an additional 2.9 percent taking place in Melbourne.
In Australia, Game of Thrones is currently released through several legal avenues — on Foxtel’s Showcase channel, several times daily, and through Apple’s iTunes platform. However on both platforms, the show’s latest episodes show at least a week after they do in the US, meaning Australians are forced to wait for a week or more before being able to watch the same content which US HBO subscribers have access to. The current schedule for episode 10 of the show, for example, has it airing on the 3rd of June in the US, but only showing through Foxtel starting from the 12th of June in Australia — nine days later.
“One of the prime reasons for the popularity among pirates is the international delay in airing,” wrote Torrentfreak. “In Australia, for example, fans of the show have to wait a week before they can see the latest episode. So it’s hardly a surprise that some people are turning to BitTorrent instead.”
The issue of the availability of Game of Thrones in Australia has been an enduring topic of popular debate associated with the issue of Internet piracy locally. In late April, Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull specifically mentioned the availability of Game of Thrones as he called for the content industry to start releasing all of its content globally through on- and offline platforms simultaneously upon launch, in an effort to meet the demands of consumers and make piracy irrelevant.
“Basically you’ve got to recognise that the minute Game of Thrones or any other show is put to air, it will be available globally,” said Turnbull. “So the owners of that copyright have got to be in a position where it can be released simultaneously theatrically, or in the case of something like that on Pay TV everywhere. But also, it should be for sale through the iTunes store or various other platforms at the same time.”
“Because if it’s not for sale — because what’s happening is, Game of Thrones, episode three I think goes on air this week in Australia. I think it went to air a couple of weeks ago in the States. It’s been tweeted and written up and Facebooked endlessly – and if they can download, they will. Now we’re just kidding ourselves — all they are doing is throwing money away by not making it available instantly.”
iiNet chief executive Michael Malone wrote on iiNet’s blog around the same time that he was a big of a “tragic” for Game of Thrones and it was “killing” him to know that he would have to wait several weeks before he could legally watch new episodes in Australia — even though Internet pirates had already made the content available on BitTorrent.
opinion/analysis
There’s not a lot to say here. It seems obvious that Australians really want to watch Game of Thrones in a timely and costly manner, and the people who make the show seem determined to stop us at all costs. I like to think Game of Thrones is so popular in Australia because as a nation, we either have really good taste, or are a nation of bloodthirsty savages who like to watch people’s heads getting chopped off and dragons breathing fire at people. Either or both is fine 
Image credit: HBO (promotional shot from Game of Thrones TV show)
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news iiNet has taken several key milestone actions over the past week as it continues its ongoing efforts to integrate the operations of fellow national broadband provider Internode into its own, following its acquisition of the company in late December last year.
When iiNet announced it would buy Internode in late December last year, the two companies were careful to highlight their plans for the South Australian ISP led by well-known industry figure Simon Hackett to remain independent from its new parent. “This is another iiNet acquisition and Internode will just disappear, right?” stated a question posted as part of Internode’s frequently asked questions document for the transaction. “No, it isn’t,” came the answer from Hackett. “Internode will be remaining as a separate operating company within the group, with its own identity and its own staff. I am staying at the helm of Internode as is the rest of the management structure of the Internode Agile company group.”
At the time, Hackett emphasised that his new status as a major shareholder of iiNet itself would mean that Internode would not “just disappear into iiNet without trace”, and that there was little reason for the company to harmonise its broadband plans and offerings with those of iiNet, as other companies subsumed into iiNet — such as Netspace, Westnet and AAPT — had in the past.
However, over the months since the acquisition, iiNet and Internode have increasingly tied their operations together.
Late last week, iiNet confirmed that one of Internode’s most high-profile executives, current chief technology officer John Lindsay, would take up a position as CTO of iiNet, replacing Greg Bader, who left the CTO position recently to become iiNet’s head of its growing business division. Lindsay was seen as one of Hackett’s main lieutenants and had succeeded Hackett himself in the Internode CTO position earlier this year. He previously acted as Internode’s carrier relations manager for a decade to March 2010, when he achieved a higher profile as the company’s general manager of regulatory and corporate affairs.
With the departure of high-profile executives Matthew Moyle-Croft and network engineer Mark Newton from Internode’s ranks in September, the only remaining executive at Internode who has a high public profile as a commentator in the telecommunications industry is Hackett himself.
iiNet chief executive Michael Malone noted in a brief comment on the appointment by email that it was the third time that Lindsay had been iiNet’s chief technology officer, having served in the position twice throughout the mid to late 1990′s. “I’m now delighted he’s moving to take over tech for the group, a role that’s been vacant since Greg took over Business in July,” Malone said. “Being iiNet’s CTO is the most exciting technology job in Australia,” added Lindsay.
The news came after iiNet last week also announced the merger of the 3FL and games.on.net Internet gaming platforms which had separately been operated by iiNet and Internode respectively. The new merged platform will combine “the best features” of both and will retain the games.on.net brand name, according to an iiNet media release issued last week. “By combining iiNet and Internode resources and staff, we can offer the latest news, reviews and interviews plus more than eight terabytes of files, trailers, mods and patches and a 10,000 player capacity,” iiNet chief product officer Stephen Harley said last week. “The best bit is that all servers, files and content will remain in place so it’ll be an easy transition for our customers.”
Internode content manager, Heidi Angove, said the combined forces of iiNet and Internode would change the Australian gaming landscape for the better. “Premium titles, a plethora of servers with a choice of rulesets, fast gameplay and excellent editorial. Together we’re committed to be the best possible ISP for gamers in Australia,” Angove said. The merge is expected to be complete by July 2012.
iiNet and Internode have also integrated a number of other areas of their businesses since the acquisition was finalised earlier this year.
In March iiNet introduced Internode’s data blocks feature to its own broadband plan structure, and then several weeks later iiNet also dumped the on-peak/off-peak split of its broadband plans, offering customers the same base system as Internode has long promoted for its own plans. Both moves came after Internode announced its intention in February to migrate customers using wholesale offerings from rival companies like Optus and Telstra to iiNet’s ADSL infrastructure where possible. With similar moves occurring on iiNet’s end, the move effectively integrates the ADSL infrastructure owned by the two broadband companies.
However, iiNet and Internode do retain separate operations in a number of areas. The pair’s wider plan structures remain separate, and each has a slightly different product offering set.
opinion/analysis
When reading of and considering the latest actions taken by iiNet in its integration of Internode, I felt continually reminded of the overall philosophy which iiNet has with regard to competition in Australia’s telecommunications sector.
As best highlighted through this recent omnibus feature I produced on the subject, iiNet’s view in general appears to be that real competition in Australian telecommunications will only be provided once industry giant Telstra is substantially attacked by rivals, with the sector’s available market share split up more evenly between its players. Right now, Telstra still has a huge market share in Australian fixed telecommunications, with the remaining portion being largely owned by iiNet, TPG and Optus.
Secondly, iiNet has always appeared to feel that competition in Australia’s telecommunications sector is best served by better customer outcomes. In this sense, iiNet has never viewed its acquisitions of rivals such as Westnet, Netspace, OzEmail, Internode, AAPT’s consumer arm and so on as harming competition in the sector, because, it has argued, those customers will get a better overall deal as part of the broader iiNet group than they would have with the companies remaining separate.
I agree that Telstra’s market share is an issue in the sector, but I do not agree with iiNet’s view that better outcomes for customers through acquisitions is the same thing as increasing overall competition in the sector.
My view of competition is that this ideal is best served by having a multitude of strong, innovative companies in the marketplace, offering a variety of different solutions to customers. What we’re seeing right now with iiNet’s integration of Internode is a weakening of competition. Previously, amongst my peer group, most people really only chose between iiNet and Internode when it came to their broadband connection, eschewing companies such as Optus, TPG and Telstra because of their lack of innovation and often lesser customer service levels compared with iiNet and Internode.
iiNet may not have harmonised Internode’s broadband plans with its own. But increasingly, it is harmonising lots of other areas of its former rivals’ offering with its own. First came the integration of ADSL infrastructure, then iiNet adopted some of the best aspects of Internode’s broadband plans, and now the two will share a gaming platform, a value-added service which, I would argue, Internode has always done better. The shift of John Lindsay to the iiNet group will also radically diminish Internode’s public profile in the regulatory space. Overall … I think in a year or so there will be very little competitive difference between iiNet and Internode for customers.
Now, I don’t want this article to be all doom and gloom. After all, customers of both iiNet and Internode are still getting a great broadband service, and the quality of that service is likely even increasing, following the Internode acquisition.
But I do want to highlight the fact here that iiNet is not leaving Internode as a separate company, as both said it would during the acquisition. Slowly but surely, Internode is being subsumed into iiNet as all of iiNet’s previous acquisitions were. And with that action, dies a strong competitor in Australia’s telecommunications market, and one of the only companies which was keeping iiNet (itself, one of the only decent mid-range players in the market) honest in the first place.
Related posts:
- iiNet completes Internode buyout a month early
- Simon Hackett should “cash out”, sell Internode,
says iiNet CEO Malone - iiNet to buy Internode
- Internode to migrate customers to iiNet DSLAMs
- BigPond price cuts anger Internode, iiNet
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Delimiter/~3/Bx3cPHRCpug/
news iiNet has taken several key milestone actions over the past week as it continues its ongoing efforts to integrate the operations of fellow national broadband provider Internode into its own, following its acquisition of the company in late December last year.
When iiNet announced it would buy Internode in late December last year, the two companies were careful to highlight their plans for the South Australian ISP led by well-known industry figure Simon Hackett to remain independent from its new parent. “This is another iiNet acquisition and Internode will just disappear, right?” stated a question posted as part of Internode’s frequently asked questions document for the transaction. “No, it isn’t,” came the answer from Hackett. “Internode will be remaining as a separate operating company within the group, with its own identity and its own staff. I am staying at the helm of Internode as is the rest of the management structure of the Internode Agile company group.”
At the time, Hackett emphasised that his new status as a major shareholder of iiNet itself would mean that Internode would not “just disappear into iiNet without trace”, and that there was little reason for the company to harmonise its broadband plans and offerings with those of iiNet, as other companies subsumed into iiNet — such as Netspace, Westnet and AAPT — had in the past.
However, over the months since the acquisition, iiNet and Internode have increasingly tied their operations together.
Late last week, iiNet confirmed that one of Internode’s most high-profile executives, current chief technology officer John Lindsay, would take up a position as CTO of iiNet, replacing Greg Bader, who left the CTO position recently to become iiNet’s head of its growing business division. Lindsay was seen as one of Hackett’s main lieutenants and had succeeded Hackett himself in the Internode CTO position earlier this year. He previously acted as Internode’s carrier relations manager for a decade to March 2010, when he achieved a higher profile as the company’s general manager of regulatory and corporate affairs.
With the departure of high-profile executives Matthew Moyle-Croft and network engineer Mark Newton from Internode’s ranks in September, the only remaining executive at Internode who has a high public profile as a commentator in the telecommunications industry is Hackett himself.
iiNet chief executive Michael Malone noted in a brief comment on the appointment by email that it was the third time that Lindsay had been iiNet’s chief technology officer, having served in the position twice throughout the mid to late 1990′s. “I’m now delighted he’s moving to take over tech for the group, a role that’s been vacant since Greg took over Business in July,” Malone said. “Being iiNet’s CTO is the most exciting technology job in Australia,” added Lindsay.
The news came after iiNet last week also announced the merger of the 3FL and games.on.net Internet gaming platforms which had separately been operated by iiNet and Internode respectively. The new merged platform will combine “the best features” of both and will retain the games.on.net brand name, according to an iiNet media release issued last week. “By combining iiNet and Internode resources and staff, we can offer the latest news, reviews and interviews plus more than eight terabytes of files, trailers, mods and patches and a 10,000 player capacity,” iiNet chief product officer Stephen Harley said last week. “The best bit is that all servers, files and content will remain in place so it’ll be an easy transition for our customers.”
Internode content manager, Heidi Angove, said the combined forces of iiNet and Internode would change the Australian gaming landscape for the better. “Premium titles, a plethora of servers with a choice of rulesets, fast gameplay and excellent editorial. Together we’re committed to be the best possible ISP for gamers in Australia,” Angove said. The merge is expected to be complete by July 2012.
iiNet and Internode have also integrated a number of other areas of their businesses since the acquisition was finalised earlier this year.
In March iiNet introduced Internode’s data blocks feature to its own broadband plan structure, and then several weeks later iiNet also dumped the on-peak/off-peak split of its broadband plans, offering customers the same base system as Internode has long promoted for its own plans. Both moves came after Internode announced its intention in February to migrate customers using wholesale offerings from rival companies like Optus and Telstra to iiNet’s ADSL infrastructure where possible. With similar moves occurring on iiNet’s end, the move effectively integrates the ADSL infrastructure owned by the two broadband companies.
However, iiNet and Internode do retain separate operations in a number of areas. The pair’s wider plan structures remain separate, and each has a slightly different product offering set.
opinion/analysis
When reading of and considering the latest actions taken by iiNet in its integration of Internode, I felt continually reminded of the overall philosophy which iiNet has with regard to competition in Australia’s telecommunications sector.
As best highlighted through this recent omnibus feature I produced on the subject, iiNet’s view in general appears to be that real competition in Australian telecommunications will only be provided once industry giant Telstra is substantially attacked by rivals, with the sector’s available market share split up more evenly between its players. Right now, Telstra still has a huge market share in Australian fixed telecommunications, with the remaining portion being largely owned by iiNet, TPG and Optus.
Secondly, iiNet has always appeared to feel that competition in Australia’s telecommunications sector is best served by better customer outcomes. In this sense, iiNet has never viewed its acquisitions of rivals such as Westnet, Netspace, OzEmail, Internode, AAPT’s consumer arm and so on as harming competition in the sector, because, it has argued, those customers will get a better overall deal as part of the broader iiNet group than they would have with the companies remaining separate.
I agree that Telstra’s market share is an issue in the sector, but I do not agree with iiNet’s view that better outcomes for customers through acquisitions is the same thing as increasing overall competition in the sector.
My view of competition is that this ideal is best served by having a multitude of strong, innovative companies in the marketplace, offering a variety of different solutions to customers. What we’re seeing right now with iiNet’s integration of Internode is a weakening of competition. Previously, amongst my peer group, most people really only chose between iiNet and Internode when it came to their broadband connection, eschewing companies such as Optus, TPG and Telstra because of their lack of innovation and often lesser customer service levels compared with iiNet and Internode.
iiNet may not have harmonised Internode’s broadband plans with its own. But increasingly, it is harmonising lots of other areas of its former rivals’ offering with its own. First came the integration of ADSL infrastructure, then iiNet adopted some of the best aspects of Internode’s broadband plans, and now the two will share a gaming platform, a value-added service which, I would argue, Internode has always done better. The shift of John Lindsay to the iiNet group will also radically diminish Internode’s public profile in the regulatory space. Overall … I think in a year or so there will be very little competitive difference between iiNet and Internode for customers.
Now, I don’t want this article to be all doom and gloom. After all, customers of both iiNet and Internode are still getting a great broadband service, and the quality of that service is likely even increasing, following the Internode acquisition.
But I do want to highlight the fact here that iiNet is not leaving Internode as a separate company, as both said it would during the acquisition. Slowly but surely, Internode is being subsumed into iiNet as all of iiNet’s previous acquisitions were. And with that action, dies a strong competitor in Australia’s telecommunications market, and one of the only companies which was keeping iiNet (itself, one of the only decent mid-range players in the market) honest in the first place.
Related posts:
- iiNet completes Internode buyout a month early
- Simon Hackett should “cash out”, sell Internode,
says iiNet CEO Malone - iiNet to buy Internode
- Internode to migrate customers to iiNet DSLAMs
- BigPond price cuts anger Internode, iiNet
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Delimiter/~3/Bx3cPHRCpug/
news The Victorian State Government has reportedly decided to walk away from its troubled central electronic health project HealthSMART, which has reached only a limited number of its goals over the past decade since it was initiated, despite soaking up several hundred million dollars worth of government funding.
The HealthSMART project was initiated under the Bracks Labor government back in 2003 with a pricetag of $323 million and a due date of 2007. In July 2010 it was reported that it had since had another $37 million pumped into it, with the due date gradually extending, and in November last year the Victorian Ombudsman reported that the project would cost another $243 million to complete.
The initiative was slated to replace the complex patchwork of e-health records systems used across Victoria’s public health sector with a series of more modern and standardised clinical IT applications, with major contracts having been signed with e-health vendors iSOFT (now part of CSC) and TrakHealth. However, as early as 2008, the Victorian Auditor-General had expressed significant concerns about whether HealthSMART could deliver as a project.
“The original HealthSMART budget, involving health agency co-funding capacity, was not realistic. Lack of certainty across health agencies about costs and funding sources have inevitably led to delays in implementation,” Victorian Auditor-General Des Pearson wrote in a media release in April 2008, following an audit of the project.
Pearson also found that targets for implementation were too ambitious. “Had there been more realistic estimates of the capability of the sector to implement technological change in a compressed period and a better appreciation of the poor state of information technology assets in health services, the Department of Human Services would have more effectively managed expectations around the timing of the roll-out of the strategy,” he said. At the time, Pearson said: “Despite these issues, HealthSMART still has the potential to fulfil the original vision of a patient-centric model of healthcare, supporting public sector health clinicians with knowledge and technology. However, to date, that vision has yet to be fully realised.”
Late last week a number of media outlets quoted Victorian Health Minister David Davis as stating that the State Government had now scrapped the project. The ABC quoted David as stating that it would now be up to individual hospitals to determine what their IT needs were in future. “We will no longer mandate particular health ICT projects,” he reportedly said. “There will be targeted approaches and we will work with health services in the forthcoming period.”
Similar e-health records problems have also been experienced in other states, with few government health departments in Australia having successfully tackling the issue so far. However, despite the problems, the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association, which represents doctors, last year called for the State Government to continue to invest in e-health initiatives. “Improved ICT will not solve all the problems in our health system, but these problems cannot be solved without improved ICT,” the AMA said at the time.
The AMA wanted the funding spent on an Apple iPad tablet for every doctor, which could display electronic drug charts, medication management systems and patient records, as well as funding specifically allocated to roll out medication management systems, build better interfaces between hospitals, general practitioners and aged care providers, and build wireless support in hospitals.
In addition, the group advised steady, recurrent funding could be spent on up to date computers for use by medical staff, remedying a lack of standardised software between hospital networks and providing for the replacement of “sub-standard hardware and software systems”. “To build these missing links in Victoria’s ICT systems, we need to ensure that there is adequate ongoing investment,” the AMA wrote. “AMA Victoria recommends recurrent funding of $60 million per annum to ensure an adequate level of ongoing investment.”
The news comes as the Victorian Government continues to suffer wide-ranging problems relating to ICT governance. In November last year, Victoria’s Ombudsman handed down one of the most damning assessments of public sector IT project governance in Australia’s history, noting total cost over-runs of $1.44 billion, extensive delays and a general failure to actually deliver on stated aims in 10 major IT projects carried out by the state over the past half-decade.
opinion/analysis
Firstly, let me say that it has been expected for some time that the Victorian Government would walk away from HealthSMART. With a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars to deliver the project and only a handful of implementations to show for it, this is truly a project which needs to be canned or at least substantially modified, and I think most people will applaud the move. I’ve been getting inside leaks and reading audit reports on HealthSMART for half a decade now and I’ve never been of the belief that it was really getting anywhere.
However, setting that aside, I think the following phrase, published by the ABC last week, should strike horror into the hearts of every public sector IT worker in Victoria (quoting Health Minister David Davis):
“He says it will be up to individual hospitals to work out what suits their own computer needs in future.”
It is clear that HealthSMART’s centralised approach was the wrong one. But let me say this in the strongest possible terms: An approach which simply lets every hospital decide how to run its own IT systems is also the wrong one, and represents the opposite end of two bad extremes.
If every Victorian hospital is literally left, over the next half-decade and beyond, completely to its own devices, with no oversight, to implement their own IT systems and upgrades, what will result is a colossal spaghetti mess of gargantuan proportions which will prove a nightmare to untangle when the state eventually seeks (again) to standardise its e-health platforms statewide.
In an organisation as large as Victoria’s Department of Health, you simply cannot leave individual units such as hospitals to their own devices when it comes to IT. This will result in long-term disaster. Hospitals will be unable to share records between each other’s systems. Every time a medical professional of any stripe joins a new hospital, they will need to be trained in new systems — different from their old workplace. Standardised reporting of the whole sector to the upper reaches of government will become a bad joke. And as various hospital-specific IT initiatives fail, there will be no overarching strategy and resources to fall back on.
I say again: It turned out that a completely centralised e-health strategy was not the answer to health IT problems in Victoria’s health public sector. But neither is stepping away from those problems entirely and letting each hospital solve their own problems. That will result in an even greater tragedy down the track — mark my words.
I think much of the difficulty in e-health at the moment is related to the relative immaturity of the technology platforms available in this area, coupled with a similar immaturity when it comes to the integration of those platforms in clinical environments.
Hospitals are complex environments with complicated, highly-specific business processes, and the feedback I have received repeatedly over time from many in the health IT sector is that often the available software platforms (iSOFT, TrakHEALTH, Cerner and so on, to name a few) are not quite mature and flexible enough yet for the task at hand. And when you try and implement these platforms in hospital environments, the medical workers are often highly reluctant to change their work practices to accommodate the new systems. So you often get a worse of both worlds scenario — where the technology can’t quite adapt right to the needs of its users, and where the users themselves won’t quite adapt right to the needs of the system.
These are problems which every government health jurisdiction in Australia is grappling with, right now — and, no doubt, many private sector health organisations. And these are tough problems. But walking away from them entirely, as Victoria’s State Government appears to be doing, is simply not the right answer. That represents an abrogation of responsibility which Victorians will pay a high price for in the long term. I would say I’m glad that I don’t live in Victoria — but then, NSW isn’t doing much better in this area.
Image credit: Cathy Kaplan, royalty free
Related posts:
- Troubled iSOFT claims HealthSMART win
- Vic doctors want $328m for e-health
- Qld Health dumps GroupWise for Exchange … 2007?
- Qld Health payroll fix may cost $440m
- Qld’s email project stuck in low gear
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Delimiter/~3/xLKLx2RrQdI/
news The Victorian State Government has reportedly decided to walk away from its troubled central electronic health project HealthSMART, which has reached only a limited number of its goals over the past decade since it was initiated, despite soaking up several hundred million dollars worth of government funding.
The HealthSMART project was initiated under the Bracks Labor government back in 2003 with a pricetag of $323 million and a due date of 2007. In July 2010 it was reported that it had since had another $37 million pumped into it, with the due date gradually extending, and in November last year the Victorian Ombudsman reported that the project would cost another $243 million to complete.
The initiative was slated to replace the complex patchwork of e-health records systems used across Victoria’s public health sector with a series of more modern and standardised clinical IT applications, with major contracts having been signed with e-health vendors iSOFT (now part of CSC) and TrakHealth. However, as early as 2008, the Victorian Auditor-General had expressed significant concerns about whether HealthSMART could deliver as a project.
“The original HealthSMART budget, involving health agency co-funding capacity, was not realistic. Lack of certainty across health agencies about costs and funding sources have inevitably led to delays in implementation,” Victorian Auditor-General Des Pearson wrote in a media release in April 2008, following an audit of the project.
Pearson also found that targets for implementation were too ambitious. “Had there been more realistic estimates of the capability of the sector to implement technological change in a compressed period and a better appreciation of the poor state of information technology assets in health services, the Department of Human Services would have more effectively managed expectations around the timing of the roll-out of the strategy,” he said. At the time, Pearson said: “Despite these issues, HealthSMART still has the potential to fulfil the original vision of a patient-centric model of healthcare, supporting public sector health clinicians with knowledge and technology. However, to date, that vision has yet to be fully realised.”
Late last week a number of media outlets quoted Victorian Health Minister David Davis as stating that the State Government had now scrapped the project. The ABC quoted David as stating that it would now be up to individual hospitals to determine what their IT needs were in future. “We will no longer mandate particular health ICT projects,” he reportedly said. “There will be targeted approaches and we will work with health services in the forthcoming period.”
Similar e-health records problems have also been experienced in other states, with few government health departments in Australia having successfully tackling the issue so far. However, despite the problems, the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association, which represents doctors, last year called for the State Government to continue to invest in e-health initiatives. “Improved ICT will not solve all the problems in our health system, but these problems cannot be solved without improved ICT,” the AMA said at the time.
The AMA wanted the funding spent on an Apple iPad tablet for every doctor, which could display electronic drug charts, medication management systems and patient records, as well as funding specifically allocated to roll out medication management systems, build better interfaces between hospitals, general practitioners and aged care providers, and build wireless support in hospitals.
In addition, the group advised steady, recurrent funding could be spent on up to date computers for use by medical staff, remedying a lack of standardised software between hospital networks and providing for the replacement of “sub-standard hardware and software systems”. “To build these missing links in Victoria’s ICT systems, we need to ensure that there is adequate ongoing investment,” the AMA wrote. “AMA Victoria recommends recurrent funding of $60 million per annum to ensure an adequate level of ongoing investment.”
The news comes as the Victorian Government continues to suffer wide-ranging problems relating to ICT governance. In November last year, Victoria’s Ombudsman handed down one of the most damning assessments of public sector IT project governance in Australia’s history, noting total cost over-runs of $1.44 billion, extensive delays and a general failure to actually deliver on stated aims in 10 major IT projects carried out by the state over the past half-decade.
opinion/analysis
Firstly, let me say that it has been expected for some time that the Victorian Government would walk away from HealthSMART. With a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars to deliver the project and only a handful of implementations to show for it, this is truly a project which needs to be canned or at least substantially modified, and I think most people will applaud the move. I’ve been getting inside leaks and reading audit reports on HealthSMART for half a decade now and I’ve never been of the belief that it was really getting anywhere.
However, setting that aside, I think the following phrase, published by the ABC last week, should strike horror into the hearts of every public sector IT worker in Victoria (quoting Health Minister David Davis):
“He says it will be up to individual hospitals to work out what suits their own computer needs in future.”
It is clear that HealthSMART’s centralised approach was the wrong one. But let me say this in the strongest possible terms: An approach which simply lets every hospital decide how to run its own IT systems is also the wrong one, and represents the opposite end of two bad extremes.
If every Victorian hospital is literally left, over the next half-decade and beyond, completely to its own devices, with no oversight, to implement their own IT systems and upgrades, what will result is a colossal spaghetti mess of gargantuan proportions which will prove a nightmare to untangle when the state eventually seeks (again) to standardise its e-health platforms statewide.
In an organisation as large as Victoria’s Department of Health, you simply cannot leave individual units such as hospitals to their own devices when it comes to IT. This will result in long-term disaster. Hospitals will be unable to share records between each other’s systems. Every time a medical professional of any stripe joins a new hospital, they will need to be trained in new systems — different from their old workplace. Standardised reporting of the whole sector to the upper reaches of government will become a bad joke. And as various hospital-specific IT initiatives fail, there will be no overarching strategy and resources to fall back on.
I say again: It turned out that a completely centralised e-health strategy was not the answer to health IT problems in Victoria’s health public sector. But neither is stepping away from those problems entirely and letting each hospital solve their own problems. That will result in an even greater tragedy down the track — mark my words.
I think much of the difficulty in e-health at the moment is related to the relative immaturity of the technology platforms available in this area, coupled with a similar immaturity when it comes to the integration of those platforms in clinical environments.
Hospitals are complex environments with complicated, highly-specific business processes, and the feedback I have received repeatedly over time from many in the health IT sector is that often the available software platforms (iSOFT, TrakHEALTH, Cerner and so on, to name a few) are not quite mature and flexible enough yet for the task at hand. And when you try and implement these platforms in hospital environments, the medical workers are often highly reluctant to change their work practices to accommodate the new systems. So you often get a worse of both worlds scenario — where the technology can’t quite adapt right to the needs of its users, and where the users themselves won’t quite adapt right to the needs of the system.
These are problems which every government health jurisdiction in Australia is grappling with, right now — and, no doubt, many private sector health organisations. And these are tough problems. But walking away from them entirely, as Victoria’s State Government appears to be doing, is simply not the right answer. That represents an abrogation of responsibility which Victorians will pay a high price for in the long term. I would say I’m glad that I don’t live in Victoria — but then, NSW isn’t doing much better in this area.
Image credit: Cathy Kaplan, royalty free
Related posts:
- Troubled iSOFT claims HealthSMART win
- Vic doctors want $328m for e-health
- Qld Health dumps GroupWise for Exchange … 2007?
- Qld Health payroll fix may cost $440m
- Qld’s email project stuck in low gear
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Delimiter/~3/xLKLx2RrQdI/
news Telstra, Optus and Vodafone are all listed on Samsung Australia’s support site as launch partners for the company’s upcoming Galaxy S III smartphone, it was revealed last week, including a potential 4G version for Telstra’s rapidly expanding LTE network.
Several weeks ago Samsung unveiled the phone which many expect to be the most popular smartphone globally in 2012 — the Galaxy S III, Samsung’s successor to the Galaxy S II model which continues to be one of the most popular smartphones sold in Australia. At the time, Samsung didn’t confirm an Australian launch window for the phone. However, there are increasing indications that the phone may shortly launch locally through all three of the nation’s major mobile carriers — Telstra, Optus and Vodafone, as its predecessor did.
In an invitation issued last week, Samsung invited Australian journalists to a launch event in Sydney on 31 May, where “guests will experience first-hand a product that is set to change the way we interact with technology”. With no other major Samsung product launches having occurred recently internationally, it is expected that the launch will see Samsung debut the Galaxy S III in Australia.
In addition, late last week dedicated Android media outlet Ausdroid revealed that Samsung’s Australian support site lists versions of the Galaxy S III supported by Vodafone and Optus, as wella number of separate versions for Telstra. The key, Ausdroid revealed, is to examine the model numbers for the Galaxy S III, which is “GT-i9300″, and then to examine the suffixes of the various models listed. Optus and Vodafone both have entries, and Telstra has a number of entries, leading to widespread speculation (see also Gizmodo’s article on the subject) that Telstra will launch a 4G version of the Galaxy S III, as it has the Galaxy S II.
A key issue for many buyers will be whether the Galaxy S III supports 4G in Australia. Telstra has a well-established 4G network covering the CBDs of capital cities throughout Australia, as well as a number of other areas, and Optus is also developing its 4G network in Newcastle, with a view to rolling out the infrastructure around Australia over the next several years. Both are using the 1800MHz spectrum to do so.
However, the likely delay of HTC’s One XL handset launch in Australia, and the lack of a 4G version of the Galaxy S III so far has left the nation without a really high-end handset supporting Telstra’s new 4G network for some time. The current 4G handsets available through Telstra — notably the HTC Velocity 4G and the Samsung Galaxy S II 4G — are largely seen as re-workings of existing handset offerings in Australia rather than examples of the next-generation of handsets available internationally.
For many buyers, the best 4G handset so far available in Australia will be the HTC One XL, but not from Telstra — as the telco is not yet selling the handset — but from independent retailer Mobicity, which is selling the handset outright.
Like HTC’s One line-up, the Galaxy S III runs the latest version of Google’s Android platform (Ice Cream Sandwich). Its screen resolution is very sharp at 1280×720 in a 4.8″ size, and is based on Super AMOLED technology. The phone comes comes with an eight megapixel rear camera and a 1.9 megapixel camera on its front, it has an accelerometer, a gyrometer, GPS, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, a digital compass, a microSD slot and it runs a 1.4GHz quad-core CPU, as well as a specialised graphics chip.
The phone’s battery is removable and rated at 2,100mAh battery, and it can be bought with 16GB, 32GB or 64Gb of on-board storage space. A micro-USB port provides wired connectivity, and the touchscreen is actually covered with version 2 of Corning’s popular Gorilla Glass, for extra, well, toughness. In short, if you can name it, the Galaxy S III has it, as you’d expect from a brand new, top-end Android phone in mid-2012.
opinion/analysis
Samsung hasn’t shown as much carrier favouritism as rivals such as HTC in Australia, and I would expect the company to launch the Galaxy S III through at least Telstra and Optus, as well as likely Vodafone. If it is true that Telstra’s getting a 4G version of the handset, that model will likely be one of the best smartphones in 2012 to pick up in Australia — and it will be quite future-proof. I would expect the other two major models to compete with a 4G version of the Galaxy S III this year to be the HTC One XL and the next Apple iPhone, whatever that may be
Image credit: Samsung
Related posts:
- Vodafone releases Galaxy Nexus pricing
- Telstra releases Galaxy Nexus pricing
- Telstra wins Samsung Galaxy Ace
- Telstra launches Samsung Galaxy S II 4G
- Optus releases Galaxy Nexus pricing
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Delimiter/~3/T17W2p0WXLs/