Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Communications
Minister Senator Stephen Conroy seems to be trying to increase the
depth of the hole he's digging with his much maligned Internet content
filtering trial. The content filtering scheme and the trial are already
widely unpopular but Senator Conroy is stretching the bounds of
credibility by restricting the ISPs taking part to mostly bit players.
The six ISPs selected to take part in Senator Conroy's scheme are
Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect,
Netforce and Highway 1. That list really does seem to be a case of spot
the ISP you've heard of. OK, we've all heard of Primus.
The issue then is why are none of the top three ISPs, who between them
have several million subscribers, taking part in the trial? Could it be
because all of them have expressed misgivings over the proposed content
filtering scheme?
The Government may be able to claim that number one player Telstra
Bigpond has not put up its hand to volunteer its services. However,
that is certainly not the case with the number two and three ISPs Optus and
iiNet.
In fact the boss of iiNet, Michael Malone, told iTWire a couple of
months ago that his company was keen to take part in the trial so that
it could be exposed for the sham it is.
Yet the Government has passed over the opportunity to use the
substantial subscriber bases of both Optus and iiNet and opted for a
bunch of bit players instead. What is the Australian public to think?
There are no prizes for guessing. Media tongues are already wagging and
the blogosphere is alight with indignation. If the Government really
has snubbed two of the top three ISPs for its trial because they have
openly expressed opposition to the concept of ISP content filtering
then many will justifiably think it is engaging in a cynical plan to
fix the outcome.
Government apologists in this matter could no doubt claim that Senator
Conroy and his department are merely trying to get an objective result
by excluding openly hostile ISPs. Maybe so.
However, with a prevailing view in the Internet community, including
the top three ISPs, that mandatory content filtering is technically
unsound and even dangerous in a democracy, the best thing Senator
Conroy could do for himself right now is invite Optus and iiNet to the
party.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
Latest Headlines from IT INDUSTRY
