Optus has moved to play down the implications of the copyright ruling on its 'TV Now' service for lucrative deals covering exclusive rights to deliver popular free-to-air content to mobile devices
The Prime Minister Julia Gillard will unveil the National Broadband Network fibre "footprint" in Perth tomorrow, detailing which Australians will be connected to superfast optical-fibre and which will be serviced by slower wireless or satellite technologies.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy will travel to Perth tomorrow morning to make the announcement jointly with the Prime Minister as Labor seeks to raise the profile of its broadband policy within the election debate.
Speaking at an Australian Information Industry Association luncheon in Melbourne, Senator Conroy said he expected the direct participation of the Prime Minister to make broadband policy a "front and centre" issue in the campaign.
Government has promised that 93 per cent of Australians will be connected to the ubiquitous 100Mbps fibre to the home network, with four per cent connected by WiFi and the final three per cent of Australians in remote areas connected by satellite.
He said the Perth announcement would provide a definitive map for Australians wanting to know whether their communities would be serviced by fibre. Senator Conroy told the audience of technology professionals that those outside of the fibre footprint would still be provided with internet connection with speeds about 20 times that of today.
"You will actually see whether you are in the 93 per cent of fibre (connections), you'll be able to see whether you're in the four per cent wireless, you'll be able to see the three percent satellite," Senator Conroy said.
"I think with Julia making (the announcement) it is front and centre tomorrow (as an issue,)" he said.
"It's a very exciting announcement, which I am hoping will mean that (broadband) on the agenda now, and that it's going to be debated all the way through (to election day.)"
Dieneke Koster
| Until recently, having employees using their personal smartphones or tablets for work could have landed CIOs in hot water, but with what is bel…
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.
