The non-sniffable OPEL smell of WiMAX

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by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Tuesday, 08 April 2008

Page 1 of 3 ! As we all know, the Optus and Elders joint-venture called OPEL was felled by the Federal Government, not only seeking to save almost $1b but promote its own fibre network at the expense of next-gen WiMAX. What a shame. Related stories Yahoo!'s Zimbra spiffs up iPhone support MacBook touch - here's hoping it's not a pipe dream Google goes to 'Android Market' in App Store challenge Why iPhone 2.0.2 fixed problems for some users Why Pod when you can Plum? Senator Stephen Conroy, the Australian Federal Minister for Communications, dealt OPEL a death blow last week on the 2nd of April, with the rather flimsy excuse that it would supposedly only cover “72% of identified under-served premises”. Telstra’s Country Wide Group MD, Geoff Booth, was quick to gloat that “the OPEL plan failed to meet the fundamental requirements of the funding and would have done nothing to increase the availability of broadband access in rural and remote Australia”. Booth said that: "The previous Government's decision was made as a result of poor process and delivered little for regional Australia. It's now time to put this mess behind us and move on. Telstra, the Federal Government and the industry as a whole need to look forward and come up with a realistic and achievable holistic solution for getting broadband to all Australians with 21st century technology." But ATUG, the Australian Telecommunications Users Group, was at pains to highlight some important points. ATUG said that “The big issue now is what is happening in regional areas? Where ISDN is being withdrawn end users wind up with a choice between dial-up and NextG, which currently does not offer metro comparable broadband pricing.” Regular readers and anyone at Telstra would know that, while I love Next G and think it’s an amazing and superfast wireless service that is not only the fastest and largest in the world, it also has one major barrier to widespread adoption: it’s just too expensive! So what do I think Telstra should do, what else does ATUG say – and what about the world’s other OPELs? Please read onto page 2. << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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