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Security Guards, Alarm Companies Object to Australia's National Fiber Network
natecochrane writes "Australia's proposed high-speed National Broadband Network has put the fate of more than a million security alarm systems that alert Australians to fire, home invasion, break-in and medical emergency in limbo pending the building of a simulated test bed next year. A group that represents security guards and those that supply monitored alarms has concerns that ranged from the inconvenient ('angry customers woken by their alarm systems beeping' during a nightly NBN upgrade) to life-threatening in the case of medical alarms, its CEO said. 'Under the fibre-optic system there won't be that redundancy and backup [from the copper phone system]. So if it goes down no one will know,' ASIAL CEO Bryan de Caires said."
With enough fiber in your diet, you won't have to wake up in the middle of the night in anger.
I am Aussie and local calls cost anywhere from 15c on up depending on which carrier and plan you are with (there are some higher end plans that give you unlimited local calls though)
Charge is per call for local calls.
Most people here pay a charge per land line call 15c, 20c or 25c depending on their "bundle".
Hey Australia! The 20th century called and wants it's horribly antiquated billing practices back.
Incidentally the European standard emergency number 112 is very easy to pulse dial when joining cables.
Telstra techs here in .au once described their network of pipes as a secondary storm water system. One wet day I got called out for a traffic signal fault. Our computer room was flooding from water flowing up out of the Telstra pipe, across the floor and under our false floor, triggering a flood detector.
Telstra guy found a pit down hill from our building, and finding it dry tugged really hard on a cable. The resulting flood in the pipe stopped the water flooding our building.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Some of us, you know, actually leave the house. That is what most people use alarms for. Most people don't need a gun to defend themselves in Australia, they are not that weak.
There was water leaking into the conduit between my house (in California) and the local box.
My favorite POTS story involves an old woman whose phone stops ringing. She still knows that she's getting incoming calls though because her dog barks whenever someone calls her. One of her kids reports the problem to the phone company and a tech is sent out to troubleshoot the problem. Turns out to be a grounding issue -- the ground wire got separated from the ground rod. Why was the dog barking when calls came in? She chained the dog to the outside d-marc and the chain was in contact with what was left of the ground wire. The poor dog was being electrocuted every time somebody called her.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
This is Australia... I think you mean "Not if you throw your boomerang at them as they break into your house..."
Different culture.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?