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Telstra. Might not be any great loss.

Telstra look to be attempting this with Air. (using a combination of dedicated WIFI and guest networks from their ISP clients) DOesn't seem to have taken off enough. https://www.telstra.com.au/bro...

However as I said in the post above, I *did* update it manually - and then LTE stopped working because it was no longer compatible with Telstra's network. Which has been a common and long standing problem with the Nexus 6P and Telstra and it's been going on for over a year. Don't believe me? Ask Whirlpool: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au... or Telstra themselves: https://crowdsupport.telstra.c...

The Nexus 6P has been a disaster in Australia and, despite the fact I loved the phone, it's pushed me off Android... for the time being.

Speaking as a long time Android fan who recently switched to iOS because work provided me an iPhone 7, this is only true if you actually get updates. And the vast majority of Android users, do not. So when they get a vulnerability found in their Samsung/HTC/Whatever device - chances are it will never get patched.

I had a Google Nexus 6P as my previous device (it's still on my desk in fact) and while I loved the device, updates where not as promised. Despite it being a Nexus, I was still beholden to my Telco for updates and they dragged their feet like mad. In fact, when I last turned off the Nexus 6P, the Nougat update was still not available (unless you manually enrol in the beta program, which I did, but then I had all kinds of issues with the Telco's LTE). So even on a damn Nexus, updates are hardly assured.

I fully realise older iPhones stop getting updates, too - but we're talking about a Nexus 6P here - the thing hasn't even been available for a year in Australia yet and Google and Telstra have already washed their hands of it. I also realise Google may / may not be responsible for the issues with Telstra's LTE on the Nexus 6P - but rest assured, if the iPhone has an issue, Telstra sits up and takes notice. When I first got my Nexus 6P, I spent the first 2 months locked to 3G because LTE wasn't supported at all on. (Source, in case you think I am making this up: https://crowdsupport.telstra.c...).

...what about Telstra?

from the following link on Telstra website:

" If you have or are planning to use a Telstra USB 4G (320U) or Telstra USB 3G (312U) on a PC currently running Windows 10, please note that the Telstra Connection Manager software is currently incompatible with that operating system."

upgrade to win 10 and your internet stops

https://crowdsupport.telstra.c...

Most US providers charge $5-10 for a SIM. They often waive it with the purchase of a new phone and, less commonly, with a new contract, but that doesn't mean they don't charge for them. That's beside the point, though; for T-Mobile, AT&T, or Sprint on the current-gen iPads, it's Apple SIM or bust, and you're buying that from Apple, not your carrier; the only carrier-specific SIMs that will work in the current iPads are for carriers not participating in the Apple SIM program, AFAIK. So yes, that AT&T would essentially brick the SIM for other carriers is outrageous.

Furthermore, buying SIMs is fairly common.

Depends. AMR-WB (sometimes marketed as HD-Voice) which has been around for years (not all carriers support it though) is much higher quality than what you typically get over POTS.

As an Australian I can say that this doesn't work. Even assuming that a suitable solution gets off the ground (which it wont), eventually you will get a government coming along who will blame that service for all their financial incompetence and come up with the "solution" to privatise the service. The result: one company with almost total control of a nation's infrastructure and stupidly expensive prices.

So, that's about $13 / GB. AT&T (ie. the global rip off artist of the century) basically charges $10 / GB to inividuals.

Cheap by Australian standards. Telstra charge $25 for 1GB, with excess data at 10c/MB or $40 with no excess data charges. You can pay $95 for 15GB with same excess data 10c/MB excess data charge. The prepaid option is even worse $20 for 250MB up to $180 for 12GB.

amaysim's $9.90 for 1GB or $29.90 for 4GB is about as cheap as it gets in Australia.

Telstra have traditionally worked closely with Microsoft, and are resellers of their products. This is just business as usual for them.

On one hand you have a massive, monopolistic company that has held back competition in the industry (but whose influence is now waning), while the other company is Microsoft. It seems like an obvious match.

What I don't understand is why there is any reference to the NBN in the summary?

Guess that's one reason they all left Android.... Something about their phone being completely out of date and unsupported 3-6 months into a 24 month contract.

I made that mistake with my last phone (a Sony/Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro), which I quite liked initially, but was abandoned by both the manufacturer and my telco. So I'm never buying a pone from them again. But I'm still happy with my Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which although apparently abandoned (already and again) by my telco (I'm looking at you, Telstra, you total cunts), is easily flashed with an up-to-date version of the OS.

everybody else will get 4.1 in a year or so.

I doubt it - most good vendors and carriers are preparing for 4.1 rollouts already.

Even Telstra looks like they'll play ball, which is a remarkable achievement...
http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile-phones/mobile-phones/smartphones/

3G is actually far better than 2G, at least with the formerly government owned's network.

Like pretty much everything else in life, it's not a clearly black-and-white situation. Sometimes government regulation is good (whether it is telecommunications, health care, food standards, whatever) and sometimes it is bad.

Until recently, in Australia our options for ISPs have been very poor. This was essentially the result of the previous government's (whose Communication Minister for some time was Robert Alston, regularly pilloried by The Register as being "The World's Biggest Luddite") blind ideological drive to privatise the government monopoly (Telstra, nee Telecom). To preserve the value to shareholders of the newly privatised company, the company was not split into separate retail and wholesale parts (which was advocated by pretty much everyone in the industry who wasn't Telstra) but instead a private company found itself with a complete monopoly over the entire national infrastructure. The government passed some feel-good laws about minimum service obligations (e.g. see http://www.telstra.com.au/universalservice/docs/uso_smp.pdf) to prevent people in the bush from getting screwed over because they weren't economical to service, but these covered only telephony services. As a result, many people outside of the major cities (and even a substantial number inside their suburban areas) have only been able to use dial-up (and then not even at 56k) until wireless services became more widespread recently. Telstra also abused it's monopoly and illegally prevented other companies from accessing the telephone exchanges (e.g. see http://www.theage.com.au/business/telstra-cops-18m-fine-for-exchange-block-20100728-10uwx.html) which prevented any serious competition from emerging.

Thankfully, in the last few years, things have been changing - some great ISPs have finally been able to build up some infrastructure (iiNet, Internode) and offer at least some level of competition to Telstra. These guys mostly service only the cities (which includes something like 80% of our population) but it doesn't help those in rural areas. In most places there is now some level of wireless coverage available. Although this is fairly expensive (e.g. $30/month for 1GB, $150/GB for excess data with Optus) it's still much better than what they had before. The current government has started building a $40bn National Broadband Network, but it will take many years until this is finished.

TL;DR: Sometimes government regulations are good, and sometimes they are bad.

It's not just the American telecoms. In Australia you have Telstra charging "only" 25c/MB ($250/GB) on their Freedom Connect mobile plans, but if you're on one of their regular mobile plans they're gouging you for $2/MB ($2,000/GB).

It's not just the American telecoms. In Australia you have Telstra charging "only" 25c/MB ($250/GB) on their Freedom Connect mobile plans, but if you're on one of their regular mobile plans they're gouging you for $2/MB ($2,000/GB).

http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/plans/nextg-cap-plans.cfm
Note the fun "25c per MB" part when your (or your "smart" phone) is done with the 1 or 2 GB per month.

we can just go online for this stuff now.

...and many of us have been doing so for years. I have just taken delivery of Telstra's white and yellow pages, despite the fact that I have not been a customer of theirs for over 15 years. Given that this unwanted print is about .13 m^3 in volume, that amounts to a scary statistic in terms of forests unnecessarily chopped down.

These guys take absolutely no notice of my requests to stop delivery, so the stuff just ends up filed directly in my recycle bin. Perhaps what might be more effective might be to set up an arrangement with like-minded people to re-deliver these directories at the telco's head office on a certain date so that their foyer fills up to the extent that their staff can't move...

But customer of both Optus and Telstra will be unable to opt-out.

that is not true ... they CAN go somewhere else.

Like what? Take their home and leave the community? (fyi: that's the only downside in my eyes of the area I'm living: everything in communications is Telstra only - the only wire is Telstra's optical fiber, no mobile but Telstra's has coverage. Cannot install a satellite dish - would cast a shadow on my solar panels).

True but there are many other ISPs. So your 'opt out' in that situation is churning to another ISP

Not all of us can do. Example:
– in the present - residents in the Telstra's Smart Communities - wired with Optical Fiber to the premises, all the comm infrastructure (phone and Digital TV included) is owned by Telstra, no other ISP can get into
– in the future - who is going to operate the NBN for the remote areas? Will they be able to churn?

Another thing that upsets me: I'm not able to know what are the entries in the black-list (and no, I'm not referring to KP). TFA states:

The use of a standardised block page notification, which will allow ISPs to notify users that the content that have requested has been blocked, and how to see a review of the block

Now, that would allow a sense of control from anyone on: what's in the blacklist and why. But until this would become operational^^^, my situation of being "mandatory opted-in by my ISP" is not pleasant at all.

^^^ my very strong preference would still be no filter
The next choice (fallback) - an opt-out (default is "Filter on") approach available to all Internet consumers individually. But this creates an interesting problem: "filter an Internet connection" or "filter a user"? (i.e. "Think of your children: what do they see on internet" taken together with "Think of you searching something on WikiLeaks")

I have never met or even heard of anyone who uses Second Life...

I have. Once. A very good friend of mine has a reclusive sister with a body built for comfort rather than speed, and the kind of face that sank a thousand ships. She spends hours on Second Life while she munches away on potato chips getting even fatter, hoping to meet the love of her life. [sigh.]

Apart from her, the only instances I have heard of are big corporations like this who hoped to milk a fictional cash cow, only to find her teats were dry and are pulling out.

I guess it's a self-fulfilling thing that if 2nd Life insists on being a hang-out for losers, then only losers will bother going there.

Telstra also offers it's iPhone plans starting with 2.5MB of data per month. http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/phones/iphone/pricing.html * Pay As You Go rate is $2 per MB

Ever notice the 3G networks around the other parts of the world haven't needed to bitch and moan about data usage of smartphones?

Hate to tell you this, but that's because many parts of the world charge their users per megabyte they download. Changes the way people approach usage when they're going be charged an extra 25c/Mb (at a minimum) if they go over a certain (minuscule) amount.

Worse than these?

"Speeds represented are peak network downlink speeds. Actual customer download speeds will be less and will vary due to network configuration, congestion, distance from the cell, local conditions, hardware, software and other factors."

The 21Mbit/s number is pure grandstanding and PR puff. The Ericsson press release, of which TFA is basically a clueless rewrite, doesn't include the disclaimer since Ericsson isn't actually providing a service and so cannot be hauled before an Australian court for misrepresentation under the Trade Practises Act, like Telstra can.

Sigh, if having an iPhone meant unlimited data...

http://www.telstra.com.au/nextgnetwork/ipricing.htm

170M standard - pay big $$$ for extra, and there is no such thing as unlimited. Max is 9Gig. There are other carriers here (Aus) but none AFAIK offer unlimited plans.

There's also no reason for them to be hard to read. See, for example, the FTC's privacy policy: http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/privacy.shtm.

Governments (well some governments anyway) seem to be outstandingly good at providing comprehensible, sensible privacy policies. Look at the one from the Australian Institute of Criminology for example or the New Zealand Police (those sites chosen because they're organisations that some people would be a bit nervous about :-). They tell you exactly what they collect, how they collect it, why they collect it, what they do with it, and how to disable some of it (e.g. cookies) if it makes you feel uncomfortable.

Now compare it to Telsta's policy which more or less says "We'll do anything we feel like with your personal data" - is there anyone in Australia that isn't included in some manner in their list of organisations that they'll hand your details to?.

It matters a hell of a lot if you call a mobile from a land line. Calling a local land line is 30c for unlimited time. Calling a mobile is 40c a minute. Ridiculous! Granted, I'm on the cheapest plan but even on Telstra's highest premium plan charges 37c a minute for non-Telstra mobile numbers. Plus a 39c connection fee.

I can get a calling card for dozens of countries for less than 1c a minute, so why in the world are these calls so expensive?

It matters a hell of a lot if you call a mobile from a land line. Calling a local land line is 30c for unlimited time. Calling a mobile is 40c a minute. Ridiculous! Granted, I'm on the cheapest plan but even on Telstra's highest premium plan charges 37c a minute for non-Telstra mobile numbers. Plus a 39c connection fee.

I can get a calling card for dozens of countries for less than 1c a minute, so why in the world are these calls so expensive?

As Australian, trust me I would prefer to be charged to recieve calls. In America you don't have to pay 42c/min to call mobiles! We do over here and that is because in some obsecure cases it does cost 42c/min to call a mobile and they generalize that charge for everyone even when it is only costing them 2c/min. I don't live in a desert nor does the person I am calling. It doesn't cost that much to move my data but because the person I am calling could be in the desert I have to pay the shitload. The only decent place for telecom/mobile charges was Israel but that is because the Government at the time did a good job for regulating it.

Well check out what the major carriers in Autralia charge. Optus, Telstra (shudder), Vodafone, 3. $1AU ~ 0.$7US.

We also get options like free talk time within the same carrier, free sms messages etc. Depends on your carrier and your plant and all that.

My phone is largely used for business and I get a lot more calls than I make. However I do use it quite a bit. I pay $50/mnth for a capped plan that gives me $230 of calls/sms etc. Calls are ~$.30 flagfall and ~$0.1/second. I never really hit the cap.

That aside, to my mind it doesn't matter whether the system in the US works or not. It's just plain stupid to have a system where you pay for the actions of someone else, ie someone calling you. There is no logic behind it.

https://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/products/wireles s/whatiswap.cfm#cost

The following call charges apply for WAP GSM & CDMA Mobile calls*:

16.5 cents per 30 seconds for calls made in peak times.

8.25 cents per 30 seconds for calls made in off-peak times.+

All WAP calls will incur a 22 cent call connection fee.

This is what we get charged for GPRS, either PAYG or Subscription, it's outlandish, forget downloading a song! that'll cost you around $40 AU: http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/networks/info/gpr s.htm

There is no way in hell I will ever use gprs other than dire emergencies (so far, that's consisted of a scrabble argument and dictionary.com, once) I am never going to use GPRS until Telstra come to their senses.

I haven't looked into that iMode thing yet, which looks like yet ANOTHER subscription service, but knowing telstra, it will be overpriced and generally useless.

https://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/products/wireles s/whatiswap.cfm#cost

The following call charges apply for WAP GSM & CDMA Mobile calls*:

16.5 cents per 30 seconds for calls made in peak times.

8.25 cents per 30 seconds for calls made in off-peak times.+

All WAP calls will incur a 22 cent call connection fee.

This is what we get charged for GPRS, either PAYG or Subscription, it's outlandish, forget downloading a song! that'll cost you around $40 AU: http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/networks/info/gpr s.htm

There is no way in hell I will ever use gprs other than dire emergencies (so far, that's consisted of a scrabble argument and dictionary.com, once) I am never going to use GPRS until Telstra come to their senses.

I haven't looked into that iMode thing yet, which looks like yet ANOTHER subscription service, but knowing telstra, it will be overpriced and generally useless.

McDonalds Australia has a deal with Telstra to provide Wi-Fi access at all their stores across the country. http://www.telstra.com.au/wirelesshotspots/locatio ns.htm
I think a better concept would be one which enabled there to be an unbroken link between "restaurants" along highways and, perhaps, wireless coverage in cities. This would allow people traveling and living within the covered areas to access the internet wirelessly Telstra/McDonalds as the ISP, as you said.

We only have 4 GSM-based providers... Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and Virgin.

Each has good plans for certain segments of the population... If you are only down for a short time, and unlikely to have many Australian people to contact regularly, then a cheap prepaid option (from any of the four) will probably suffice.

If you're heading to Canberra, are you going to be spending much time outside the city? GSM service falls off pretty sharply outside the urban centres in Australia... Also, Telstra is generally the most expensive in any category, but has the best coverage outside the city areas...

Incoming calls are not charged in .au...

If you outline your expected call usage, a better opinion can be given...

I have been a vodafone customer for many years now, with no complaints ever... but that's not to say that they're the cheapest for everybody...

This Telstra web page crashes Firefox 1.0 (final) every time; I never encountered a crash with 1.0PR and earlier, though I may not have visited this page with those versions.

Since you are in .au, try 1234 I don't think it's quite the same thing, nor is it free but functionally it is similar. (it uses a voice mail type system rather than SMS) You'll never get Google having access to all the Yellow Pages info for free when Telstra is making money out of it.

You've obviously not been here. You see, we have this little thing called Telstra, which is an organisation dedicated to preventing the Australian people from accessing the internet by any means possible.

Even the US is getting hosed for prices

Come to the land down under just about every phone is available for $0 upfront

here is some from the big bad telco as well

That's not entirely true.

In the land Down Under, Telstra is the dominant telco, and it's currently 51% government owned. The current Liberal Party (think: nice Republicans)-National Party (think: farmers) coalition government really wants to flog off the rest. The problem is that Telstra provides many services to the underpopulated areas (aka "the Bush", who are generally represented by the National Party half of the Coalition) that really don't make much economic sense but make a lot of political sense. Also, it's sort of halfway decent that the outback farmers get at least a phone service. Anyway, every man and his dog knows that if Telstra gets fully privatised, *bang* there goes any semblance of service to the bush, since it is just not econmical.

To that end, the government has brought in a Service Guarantee (including Universal Service Obligations) that says (amongst other things) Telstra must provide certain minimum standards to all subscribers, and if they don't they get smacked. The government hopes that after a few years we'll all see what a good corporate citizen Telstra is and give the Libs the OK to flog off the other 51% of Telstra.

Now, one big complaint from the bush is that they get bugger all access to broadband. Even getting net access at all can be tricky for them. Satellite (if available) is very expensive. This would almost certainly not improve under a toally privatised Telstra. However, if Telstra could provide near-broadband to the bush without having to string up hundreds of miles of cable, things would again be looking promising for the privatisation thing to be on the agenda again.

Speaking from a purely Australian voter/taxpayer POV, the keyphrase is the National Party might be the junior member of the coalition but they can wield a fair amount of power over the Libs when they want to.

Thanks to our 50% government owned monopoly, broadband and bandwidth in any form is horribly expensive. Most ISP's that have lasted more than 6 months here impose caps of some form or another on data transfer (for AU$90 a month, I get 8 gigabytes of data download and free upload at 256/64k, not a bad deal). ISP's have sometimes tried implementing rolling limits, usually along the lines of 'your transfers must not exceed 25% of the last three days average transfer', but these generally have a bad name due to the difficulty involved in working out exactly how much you can shift.

According to the press release issued when they sold their share of IBM GSA to IBM it is part of "Telstra's vision which is to improve its internal IT skills base".

If they are stopping outsourcing stuff to IBM GSA they are certainly going to need extra people to cover it. (Of course, a lot of those people will probably be poached from IBM GSA...)

Apparently this fee is to pay for the upgrading and maintaining of the infrastructure Telstra maintains for us to be able to have the Net.

However, the Australian goverment is trying to sell off Telstra.. and its infrastructe for a quick profit.

I'd dump my landline entirely and get another cell if I didn't need it for dial up internet, since I live in the sticks and there is no cable, no DSL, and the top speed for dialup is 28.8.

We have recently ungone a revolutionary (for us!) price change (and soon to be price W A R). I realise that *most* people in this world want a landline and their DSL.. but some of us are already paying our Mobile tax.. and don't care to pay for a land line we don't use.

Yes I realise that Hell$tra ownes the copper, and can do what it likes.

1) This is not a law. Its a code of practice, and no-where in the article does it say whether said code is mandatory.

Actually, it became news because it became a law. Or effectively, anyway. The ACA has adopted it, making it part of the conditions of having a telco license.

See the media release from the ACA that says "It requires carriers and carrier service providers to comply..."

It seems to be directed at the bulk SMS operators that pay for a feed into a carrier's messaging system. From a quick flick through the documents, it seems carriers will have to put compliance with this "code of practice" into their contracts with the bulk SMS operators. Carriers that don't will be in breach of their licence.

The cost of SMS is getting lower. According to this page, you can send bulk SMS at 18c / msg (that's only US 12c) in Australia right now.

Andrew Scott

My 1500/256 Nella Networks FlatRATE ADSL service came online today. It's using the Comindico IP Network and is a truly unlimited service. Aardvark were even offering cases of Red Bull to those who download the most! That said, I do pay AUD240/month for it (opting to avoid the slower unlimited services which start at around AUD90/month). You can get 'always online' service from TPG starting at AUD19.95/month, with the first 400mb costing ~AUD80, then capped to 10Gb and reasonable rates thereafter. Meanwhile, my 3G NEC e606 mobile handset from three gives me 3000 minutes per month of voice calls for AUD99 - significantly better than the AUD300-500 I was recently giving Optus for around a third of the airtime. I guess this makes me one of the lucky few well connected Aussies. If it weren't for me living in Sydney and being able to justify the expense I'd be putting up with an overpriced, flaky Telstra service like everyone else! I'm still perplexed as to how they have managed to hang onto the Telstra Rewards program for so long - would have expected the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to have raised an eyebrow over this some time ago.

In Australia we have the legislated Customer Service Guarantee which describes expectations in terms of services, appointments, repairs, etc. If the telco does not meet these expectations they must rebate the customer upto $40/working day. I note however that while these used to refer to monthly access fees ($11.65/month for residences some years ago, now more like $25/month and almost $40 for companies) they are now fixed at $12 and $20 for residences and businesses respectively. You can bet this is quite deliberate, although I'm surprised the Australian Communications Authority allowed for this change.

These broadband topics always put me in a bad mood. I live in one of the capital cities of Australia (Adelaide) yet if I want broadband (ADSL is all thats supported in Adelaide) access I have to pay Tel$tra these prices.

For a sample: $76 AUD (about 48 USD currently) a month = 256/64 connection with a monthly download limit of 500 MB . Extra downloading charged. Per MB. I always knew that US broadband was heads above ours but now I find that the Koreans are so far ahead that we'd have to use a telescope to find them.

I am very surprised that so many slashdot readers are anti-sms. I wonder how many of these same people get all excited about pervasive computing, wifi connected handhelds and the like? Is there much difference? Really?

These people appear to be missing the appeal of SMS to most people: It's cheap, you've always got your phone with you and you can do other stuff while communicating (listen to music, watch a movie, read a book). SMS is an inexpensive method of non-critical communication. This is/was especially important when prepaid phone services became available, as the call costs were expensive per second, but SMS had a flat rate.

In short, SMS has/had a much better _percieved_value_ than voice calls.

What I really like is the ability to purchase stuff using SMS like Coke or even your parking!

BTW the popularity of prepaid phone and SMS was never predicted by some of the Telcos, especially not here in .au. A Whole Other Story if anyone cares.