Australia Archive

  • Australia to pay Telstra A$11 billion for entire copper network

    Australia to pay Telstra A$11 billion for entire copper network

    Posted on June 20, 2010 | No Comments
    The Australian government just found the infrastructure for its A$43 billion national broadband project and eliminated its largest competitor in one fell swoop -- pending shareholder and regulator approval, Telstra will receive A$11 billion of that money in exchange for its entire landline network. Telstra will decommission its monopoly of copper cables to make room for the government's fiber and migrate its customers to the resulting 100Mbps National Broadband Network (NBN) as those light-bearing threads roll out. While Telstra might become a smaller player in the internet and cable business without a land network of its own, it may get even larger in the wireless space -- the company says it's received "written confirmation from the Prime Minister" that it can bid on a chunk of precious LTE spectrum should the deal go through. Press release after the break.

    Continue reading Australia to pay Telstra A$11 billion for entire copper network

    Australia to pay Telstra A$11 billion for entire copper network originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • CSIRO’s patent fight targets more victims: AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile

    CSIRO’s patent fight targets more victims: AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile

    Posted on May 21, 2010 | No Comments
    CSIRO's patent fight targets more victims: AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile
    Is anyone safe from the wrath of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization? It's looking unlikely, with the company expanding its patent lawsuit furor to cover three more major players: AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile. These three are the latest cherry-picked to be on the receiving end of CSIRO's mighty 802.11a/g patent hammer. Companies like Dell, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony all chose to settle rather than challenge this patent bully, giving it the encouragement (and cash) to bring the fight to these three new players, apparently named simply because they sold WiFi devices. Sadly, there are more to come according to Executive Director Niger Poole:
    I'm not going to be exposing what the legal strategy is to a journalist. There's a legal strategy here that has been thought through very carefully and to a lay person it looks like a pincer movement. You've got court action against upstream chip makers and you've got court action against downstream carriers.
    Ever pass on an old WiFi-equipped gadget on eBay or gave it to a friend in exchange for a case of beer? Lord Humongous is coming for you next.

    [Thanks, Chris]

    CSIRO's patent fight targets more victims: AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 May 2010 07:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Skype VP says company isn’t developing software for Windows Phone 7 (Update: it’s ‘on the roadmap’)

    Skype VP says company isn’t developing software for Windows Phone 7 (Update: it’s ‘on the roadmap’)

    Posted on May 13, 2010 | No Comments
    Consider the bombshell dropped. Skype, the godfather of VoIP apps and an increasingly ubiquitous piece of mobile as well as desktop software, has just let it be known that it's not planning on bringing its goodies to Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 OS. Dan Neary, the company's Vice President for the Asia Pacific region, said that it's "not developing software for the new Windows Mobile software due later this year," but seemed reluctant to expand on the reasons why. Perhaps, like Mozilla, the Skype devs felt they weren't getting access to the right tools. Whatever the reason, this would be a major competitive disadvantage for Microsoft's great new hope on the mobile front, which is already expected to launch with a few things missing. Then again, we shouldn't get too far ahead of ourselves as this isn't an official renouncement from Skype, merely a statement of the status quo -- and from a regional exec at that. All we can take away from it for now is that the road ahead looks a bit bumpier than before for WP7.

    Update: Looks like this quote might've been taken out of context. MobileTechWorld followed up and learned that while Dan Neary left out Windows Mobile and Windows Phone from a list of currently supported platforms (which makes sense, since one is dying and the other isn't out yet), he said Windows Phone 7 "is on the roadmap." The question seems to be more of a "when" than an "if" they'll start building it.

    Skype VP says company isn't developing software for Windows Phone 7 (Update: it's 'on the roadmap') originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 May 2010 03:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Australia runs into Ubisoft’s DRM: Does not pass go, does not collect $AU200

    Australia runs into Ubisoft’s DRM: Does not pass go, does not collect $AU200

    Posted on March 30, 2010 | No Comments
    I'll keep this short and to the point, if only because I'm sensing the "outrage" surrounding DRM has sorta died down. The movement ran out of fuel, I mean. Anyway, gamers in Australia have been unable to play Settlers 7, which uses that silly DRM nonsense that requires you be to constantly connected to the Internet, because Ubisoft's servers have been unreachable. Who saw this coming? Oh, right: everyone but the Ubisoft executives in Paris. /Le sigh.

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  • Will Australians finally be able to buy video games for a change?

    Will Australians finally be able to buy video games for a change?

    Posted on March 22, 2010 | No Comments
    What do I know about Australia? Not much—I know Jim Jeffries is from there. In recent years, Australia to me has always been associated with weird censorship and video games being banned left and right. Those days may soon be behind us, as Australia seems to be inching closer toward an R18+ rating for video games. That would mean that, instead of outright banning violent games, they could only be sold to adults. Pretty shocking that it has taken until 2010 for that to be the case, but what are you gonna do?

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  • What’s up with Australia’s planned Internet filter?

    What’s up with Australia’s planned Internet filter?

    Posted on February 16, 2010 | No Comments
    Man, what's up with Australia? I think we've touched on the country's plan to block all sorts of unwanted content from reaching the country's computers, but now Google and Yahoo have officially come out against it. Surely Google knows a thing or two about battling state-sponsored Internet censorship.

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  • Australian firm developing Doom-like 3D surveillance system

    Australian firm developing Doom-like 3D surveillance system

    Posted on December 17, 2009 | No Comments
    Pretty fascinating story coming out of Australia this fine day. (Well yesterday. Or time zones. I don't know.) A research outfit there has won a AUS$1.01 million grant from the government to develop a 3D surveillance system that has been described as “Doom-like.” Someone call Anthony Cumia, he could use something like that.

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  • Yet another game, CrimeCraft, refused classification in Australia

    Yet another game, CrimeCraft, refused classification in Australia

    Posted on December 1, 2009 | No Comments
    There's almost a comedy about this next story: Australia has banned another video game because it's too violent. (What is it with Australia and banning violent video games?) The game is CrimeCraft, and it has been refused classification by the ratings board down there.

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  • First iPhone worm rickrolls jailbroken phones

    First iPhone worm rickrolls jailbroken phones

    Posted on November 8, 2009 | No Comments

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    We sort of knew this would happen as soon as we heard about that iPhone wallpaper hack in the Netherlands -- a hacker named ikex has created what's apparently the first iPhone worm, and it's currently infecting jailbroken iPhones across Australia. The "ikee" worm, as it's being called, takes advantage of the fact that jailbroken iPhones with SSH installed all have the same default root password of "alpine," and once in the system it changes your wallpaper to an image of Rick Astley and then tries to install itself on other jailbroken iPhones on the network. Sophos says it hasn't confirmed any infections outside of Oz, and to be clear, this worm can't get to stock iPhones or jailbreak owners who haven't installed SSH -- but if you're running a hacked phone we'd say you should change that root password just to be safe right away. Get to it, kids.

    [Via PMP Today; thanks to everyone who sent this in]

    First iPhone worm rickrolls jailbroken phones originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Valve has a censored, Australian version of Left 4 Dead 2 ready and waiting (in case it needs it)

    Valve has a censored, Australian version of Left 4 Dead 2 ready and waiting (in case it needs it)

    Posted on October 7, 2009 | No Comments
    Australia's crazy anti-violent video game restrictions strike again! Valve submitted Left 4 Dead 2 (aren't we boycotting that game?) to whatever board is in charge of rating video games down there, and the board replied with this: yeah, this game is too violent for anyone under the age of 18.

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  • Australia won’t be playing Left 4 Dead 2

    Australia won’t be playing Left 4 Dead 2

    Posted on September 17, 2009 | No Comments
    left4dead-deniedSorry Australia, apparently you can't handle the zombie killing action and gore of Left 4 Dead 2. Nope, the government has decided that the graphic violence and gore, is just a little too much for the delicate sensibilities of the people of the land down under. Well, you won't be able to buy it at a retail outlet at least.

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  • Police try to trick hackers, with hilarious results

    Police try to trick hackers, with hilarious results

    Posted on August 18, 2009 | No Comments
    Here's a fun story. Police in Australia thought they were being mighty clever when they took over an “underground hacking forum.” (The forum is r00t-y0u.org, though it seems to be down right now.) One of the hackers on the forum then retaliated by breaking into police computers using a simple SQL injection. Security fail.

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