In an Election ’07 debate held last week on the Sky channel, both major Political Parties went head to head over Australia’s Telecommunication issues, namely Broadband. Labor Communication’s spokesman ‘Stephen Conroy’ accused Coalition Communication’s Minister ‘Helen Coonan’ of not only lying, but rewriting the laws of physics.

Although there are no official regulations and reports that support or condem these figures, it appears that most WiMax enthusiasts tend to agree that Coonan’s WiMax Speeds figures fall way short of actual speeds attainable, unless we’re living in a ‘perfect world’.

“There are so many things that are technically wrong with what Helen has just said. Internode is not suggesting that it can get 12Mbps at 25km. That is just a lie. Internode can’t get 12Mbps to 20km. The Minister continues to rewrite the laws of physics,” he said.

“If she was a business, Graham Samuel [head of the ACCC] would fine her for false and misleading advertising. He requires Internode, he requires every wireless provider to use the words ‘up to’ 12Mbps,” continued Conroy

Unfortunately for Coonan, and for rural Australians, we’re still far from a perfect world.

Read the entire article at ZDNet.com.au

Access to popular sites such as Facebook and MySpace could be blocked if the federal Government introduce legislation which they say is ‘not really’ about censorship, moreover criminals that defraud people. Industry experts warn that policing the Internet could prove to be a very difficult task considering the complications involved when trying to close down a specific site that is linked to non-prohibited sites by the same IP address. This type of total control approach is used by the Chinese which basically block everything in that IP range. Other areas of concern revolve around the ramifications that such a law might have that could be deemed unconstitutional.

A spokesman for Communications Minister Helen Coonan said the amendment would address “a gap” in the present legislation. “This is not really about censorship,” he said. “We’re talking about sites that are established by criminals to defraud people.

Electronic Frontiers Australia chair Dale Clapperton said the proposal had nothing to do with terrorism.

“These laws will be open to massive abuses by the police,” he said. “They could, for example, be used to prevent access to websites organising protest marches or rallies against the government, or advocating the legalisation of euthanasia.

“But, as a technologist, I have to point out that blocking content from overseas is horrifically hard, if not impossible.”

“Unfortunately, filtering will not make the internet safe for children. If parents are deceived into thinking a filtered service is safe they will be less likely to supervise their children while they use the internet.”

Read the entire article at AustralianIT.com.au

Communications minister Helen Coonan has transferred the Telstra CDMA network decision making over to the Attorney-General ‘Phillip Ruddock’. Collectively, it’s difficult to pin point exactly why Senator Coonan has handed over the CDMA closure at this point of the process, although she has publicly stated that it was to ensure unbias judgement and to spare any further burden on the Australian taxpayer along with Telstra shareholders.

Coonan handed over the decision — on how and when the CDMA network will be closed — to Ruddock on Friday, charging him with deciding whether a recent draft amendment to Telstra’s carrier licence, which prevents the telco from switching off the network without government permission, will go ahead.

“So as to ensure that there is no suggestion of prejudgement regarding this decision and to ensure that Australian taxpayers and Telstra shareholders are spared unnecessary delay and expense, the Attorney-General will take on the role of decision maker,” she said in a statement.

Read the entire article at Australian IT.

Telstra has elevated it’s legal proceedings on ‘Senator Helen Coonan’ by asking the corporate watchdog to investigate claims that the Communications Minister misled members of the public on Telstra services availability. This is yet another claim toward the accusation that she unfairly awarded OPEL the tender rights for the Broadband for the Bush initiative.

Mr Irving accused Senator Coonan of having “misled members of the public to believe they are unable to acquire services from Telstra and that they can only acquire those services from Telstra’s availability competitors”.

Telstra believes the documents may help it pursue further legal action against the senator for alleged procedural unfairness in awarding the tender to OPEL. Telstra believes OPEL was the only bidder to be told it could receive funding above $600 million, and that it was given the opportunity to change its bid, contravening the rules of the tender.

Read the entire article at Australia IT.

Will this country ever get the Broadband infrastructure it so throughly requires without continuous delays? In another setback for major Australian Broadband development, the Federal Government has placed a ‘freeze’ on a Broadband Connect deal that it recently struck with Opel consortium (Optus/Elders). This latest hindrance has been brought about from direct legal action placed against Senator Coonan by Telstra. At the end of the day there’s no doubting that the public ,namely the rural sector of which, will be disadvantaged by the legal proceedings.

Telstra began the legal action against the minister early this month after the Government awarded Opel $958 million to build a broadband network. The company alleges the Government did not follow proper procedures in selecting a bidder.

Opel consortium were due to sign the funding deed for Broadband Connect on Wednesday night, but pulled out after receiving advice from the Government’s lawyers

Read the entire article at The Age.com.au

The reality is that the minister is misleading the Australian public. Under the Government’s broadband plan Australians can expect speeds up to 20 times today’s average.

Meanwhile, it appears that Labor’s policy on the Broadband Network is going from strength to strength in wake of the governments handling of the project and is being adopted as a ‘more realistical’ approach by the public.

That is why Labor has proposed a national broadband plan that extends the superior technology, fibre-to-the-node, into rural and regional areas, to offer not just city comparable pricing but parity of service. The fibre-to-the-node service will deliver to 98 per cent of Australians guaranteed minimum connection speeds that are 40 times faster than today’s average.

Read the entire article here at The Australian

Controversial Telecommunications giant ‘Telstra’ is poised to take government communication minister Helen Coonan to court over the ‘topped up’ Broadband Connect Program funding decision. The Optus and Elders consortium (OPEL)  were awarded funding to the amount of $1 billion to develop Broadband in rural and regional areas, however Telstra wants to know exactly why they weren’t given the opportunity to tender for that amount when the initial funding offered was supposed to be set at $600 million.

According to Telstra, “The Broadband Connect Program Guidelines offered ‘up to $600 million’ of taxpayers’ money to provide broadband to ‘underserved’ rural and regional areas. Telstra submitted its proposal on that basis.” However, instead, almost $1 billion was ultimately awarded to the SingTel Optus and Elders consortium (Opel) to, according to Telstra “largely duplicate existing services with little net benefit to rural Australians.”

Read the entire article here at ITWire