Category: telstra

I work online. I live online.

I am a customer of Internode (home ADSL, VoIP, via Telstra copper-wire) and Telstra NextG (USB card for remote working). There are two Foxtel digital units in my house. Hosting for this web site is somewhere in the US with Dreamhost. My superannuation fund is a minor Telstra round 3 shareholder. My corporate mobile phone is Telstra NextG; both voice and data services. 

The current arguments back and forth between Telstra and the “group-of-9“, the politicians who have “solved the bandwidth” problem, ACCC and everyone else who is involved in this high-asset, high-customer-volume, highly competitive business; are starting to really piss me off. 

There I said it. Piss me off. Really piss me off. I am almost postal.

Today, I spent 4 hours uploading a video into the corporate cloud. I am attempting to save some carbon atoms from escaping into the atmosphere by doing what was once a potential panacea: tele-commuting. Working online. Earning tax dollars by living in Australia.

Really, it shouldn’t take that long.

What is this FTTN (Fibre to the Node) thing anyway? I see no benefit to the end customer as noone is actually putting a piece of fibre into each house. It seems to be a large charade to divert attention.

Where is the competition? Where is my choice? Do any politicians actually use the internet apart from watching Youtubes of our little Prime Minister? Less regulation, more competition.

I once wanted politicians involved in ICT. Having spoken to some in the Liberal Party on this matter a few years ago, their response was “join the line of issues regarding policy”

Now that they have become involved; only as there is a balancing act between the votes in the bush vs. the investors in Telstra: recent policies and investments seem to have slowed innovation and competition rather than improve services.

So, I regret my thoughts on wanting politicians involved. Stay out of it. Let the market decide. Do something useful and fix the hospitals. KTHXBAI.

In the 19th and 20th Century railways moved our gold, silver, lead, wool and wheat from the productive farms and mines to our overseas markets.

In the 21st Century, the two lines are not the iron lines 5ft 3in apart: they are the twisted copper pairs that connect our brains to the world. Brains, politicians. Not atoms. What is in our head is already more important than atoms.

Instead of our brightest minds taking their brains and ideas to other parts of the world, we need to harness them here – and connect them to the world.

I don’t really care too much about the to-and-fro and political shenangians anymore.

Just open it up. Be brave. Let us all rise, including those rebadged PMGs, to a new world where the tyranny of distance is slain.

Personal Rant Over.