Pacnet deploys SDN to deliver international bandwidth on demand

Pacnet has unveiled its version of what will undoubtedly be the network of the future: international bandwidth between data centres that can be called up on demand for an hour, a week or year either via a web portal or, via application program interfaces, by an application which needs access to that bandwidth.

Telework needs structure and training

The results of what is perhaps the largest study into teleworking undertaken in Australia and New Zealand have just been released. Its findings on the benefits of teleworking for both employees and employers are pretty positive.

Evolved MBMS: Making Broadcasters Mighty Scared?

“Telstra just became a video broadcaster - for a short spell at least.” That was how GigaOM reported Telstra’s trial of Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS), announced by Telstra yesterday in a blog post, and undertaken with network supplier Ericsson and chip maker Qualcomm.

What CIOs needs: Contrariness, courage and compassion

Spare a thought for CIOs. Depending on whose views your read they are an endangered or embattled species, or both, or they are in pole position to advance their influence in the corporate pecking order.

Pedalling the 5G hype cycle

Remember all the hype around 4G that preceded its implementation? In retrospect it all seems to have been justified. 4G - or to give its correct terminology, Long Term Evolution (LTE) -has been a stunning success. The increased bandwidth and lower latency it offers are ideally suited to the demands of a burgeoning population of super-smart phones, tablets and dongle-connected laptop computers.

In search of Turnbull’s NBN cost/benefit analysis

Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull was quick to refute accusations from his predecessor, Stephen Conroy, that the Coalition had backed off on its commitment to commission a cost-benefit study on the NBN, but I’m with Conroy on this one.

GSMA miffed that Apple won’t join joyn

Heard of joyn? No? I’m not surprised. It’s not exactly a household name, although the global cellular network operator community would like it to be.

How to cater for a 1000x increase in mobile data traffic

Earlier this month speaking at a Communications Alliance Forum, Telstra CEO, Hugh Bradlow, fired the opening salvo in what is likely to ramp up to be major battle for spectrum presently allocated to Australian Defence Forces. 

Copper loop length revealed

Cliff Gibson of GQI Consultancy made a stunning revelation at the CommsDay conference in Melbourne yesterday: that 80 percent of premises in Australia are with 500 metres of one of the existing pillars in Telstra’s telephone network.

When big data meets bio data

I was invited to spend a few days last week at the users conference of data analytics company Splunk. Here’s my thoughts on that event.

How Vodafone, and Optus, 3G are faster than Telstra 3G

There’s been a most unseemly stoush between Telstra and Vodafone in recent days over who has the fastest LTE (aka 4G) network. Pity, then, that Telstra and its MVNO partners are not upfront about the third rate 3G offering Telstra makes available to MVNOs.

Eagerly awaiting a Coalition NBN cost/benefit study

The Federal Opposition has been demanding for years that a cost-benefit study to be undertaken for the National Broadband Network. So if it wins power at the upcoming election we can rightfully expect it to initiate such a study post-haste. In which case it might find a new report from the OECD useful.

ICT graduates should not have to be fully ‘job ready’

There’s a strange contradiction in the ‘key messages’ coming out of the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency’s just released ICT Workforce Study. It says that the supply of ICT skills has not kept pace with demand, and it also says that ICT graduates have trouble finding jobs in ICT.

The next generation of mobile technology has been cancelled

Despite the wide use, and abuse, of the term 5G for future mobile broadband technologies, there is a growing consensus that the quantum leaps in technology that have characterised generations one to four of cellular mobile telephony over the last 40 years won’t continue.

Optus: customer experience is not a cartoon character

Optus announced its new look last week. It has abandoned its menagerie of wild animals in favour of a cute cartoon character and insists that the changes are more than skin deep, that they reflect a new customer-focussed Optus.

Interpersonal communications skills key to IT security

We’ve all seen those notices at airports, railway stations, on buses and elsewhere: “If you see something, say something.” It’s the government’s attempt to get every single Australian involved in - and personally responsible for - the nation’s security. Thankfully the threat level is very low and most of us, I suspect, have little concern and little expectation of finding anything untoward.

In search of patent trolls

The recent intellectual property suit filed against ZTE in Australia by ‘patent troll’ Vringo has brought the contentious issue of patent trolls to our shores from the US where feral trolls are such a pest that the Obama Administration is trying to get legislation through Congress that will curb their actions, but that is not going to be easy. Patent trolls are protean creatures. One man’s patent troll is another man’s legitimate licensor of intellectual property.

And the next biggest Net-enabled disruptor will be…

MOOCs: massive, open online courses. And that’s according to no lesser personage than Bob Metcalfe, widely recognised as the co-inventor of ethernet and the formulator of the prediction on networking now known as Metcalfe’s Law.

How Telstra will leverage its LTE lead

Australians’ love affair with smartphone and tablets and their insatiable appetite for content and applications have been good to Telstra. They have boosted its first mover advantage with LTE significantly, but that advantage will be magnified even further when Telstra introduces joyn.

How to ignite demand for NBN bandwidth, and more

For many, the question of what will drive demand for the NBN’s bandwidth remains unanswered and while the there are multiple initiatives seeking to provide answers, Australia would do well to emulate the USA where a new body, US Ignite, has been created to do just that, but with very broad membership and hugely ambitious goals.

5G breakthrough? 5G baloney more like

Here we go again. News of another wireless ‘breakthrough’ has become mainstream news and sent press and commentators into a flurry of speculation as to whether or not it spells doom for the NBN.

Docking the deskphone market

Watching ShoreTel demonstrate its iPhone/iPad telephone handset dock last week I decided I was witnessing the beginning of the end for the deskphone as we know it.

How long’s a piece of copper?

The answer to that question is important. The bandwidth that the Coalition will be able to deliver to customers over its proposed fibre to the node network is highly dependent on the length of copper from the node to the customer, but neither it nor anybody outside Telstra seems to know what the average distance from nodes in the current network is.

Glitzy Galaxy launch: it’s not about the phone

Surrounded by the glitz, the glamour and the sheer extravagance of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 launch at the Sydney Opera House last week I had to keep reminding myself that this was not an event of even minor historic importance, such as the launch of a new company or the opening of a major building: mobile phone models these days generally survive for two years at most before the being superseded by the next greatest thing.

Starting point for Coalition NBN? Anywhere but here

It’s not often I agree with Malcolm Turnbull on broadband policy, but one of his comments at the press conference launching the Coalition’s alternative to Labor’s NBN was spot on.

After 40 years of cellphones, what's next?

There's a scene in the 1985 British TV mini series 'Edge of Darkness' - rated as one of the best and most influential pieces of British television drama ever made (and streets ahead of the 2010 Hollywood remake starring Mel Gibson) - that really dates it.

Big data, big bucks and big ideas

The embattled European Union appears to be looking to big data to contribute to much needed economic salvation, but like the cloud wherein big data lives, the ideas seem rather nebulous.

Optus makes surprise strategic shift to focus on fixed

Optus has announced a significant refocussing on its fixed network business with the loss of almost 300 staff, but Mobile accounts for 66% of revenues and almost 70% of EBITDA.

Storms in the channel as cloud based collaboration gathers momentum

Last October following an informal 'getting to know you' press briefing from the recently appointed head of Cisco for Australia and New Zealand, Richard Kitts, I reported him saying that Cisco was realigning its internal organisation to match the changes impacting its partners, namely providing fewer on-premises solutions and instead moving applications into the cloud.

NBN committee paralysed by party politics

The Joint Committee on the National Broadband Network (JCNBN) has produced its fourth and penultimate report with scathing criticism of the committee from chairman Rob Oakeshott.

So what's wrong with the NBN being unique?

Say what you like about Malcolm Turnbull, his grasp of facts on NBN-like (I use the term loosely) broadband networks and related policies in other countries puts that of most journalists covering the area to shame.

The Internet of Things…to come

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Global telecoms vendors are enthusiastically talking up the benefits that will flow a future where almost everything - inanimate and animate objects alike - has embedded communications functionality, but curiously this scenario does not feature prominently in the Australian mobile industry’s latest bid to sell the benefits of mobile to the wider community.

The new CIO: visionary of the postdigital age

Deloitte has identified “five postdigital forces” disrupting business: cloud, mobile, social, analytics and cyber and says that CIOs must become visionaries guiding enterprises into the postdigital age, but it’s a rather odd umbrella term for forces that are themselves manifestations of the power of digital technology.

Kogan’s credit card check slows sales

Online retailer Kogan has introduced a new security feature to protect against fraudulent use of credit cards. Trouble is it can stall your order for several days.

Deloitte’s predictions for 2013: cause for concern

Predictions for the year ahead are two a penny in the IT industry. I’ve collected two dozen of them this year. They range in quality from almost off-the-cuff comments by this or that analyst to thoroughly researched projections arrived at through the consensus of many participants. Deloitte’s annual Telecommunications, Media and Technology predictions belong to the latter category. So what are they telling us and what should be do with this information?

Digital economy policy development by stealth

The government has expanded the scope of a very public process to develop cyber security policy into one for the development of long term policy for the digital economy as a whole, but at the same time closed the door to public participation.