The NBN Co, the company rolling out Australia's national broadband network, the NBN, has bought enough new copper wire that can go around Australia one and a half times, the Australian Labor Party claims.

It's early days to be sure, but the Federal Government's latest showpiece, the My Health Record system, is already beginning to look like it will end up as another cluster***k.

A respected academic and network expert has written to a number of top politicians proposing the creation of a pilot telecommunications security assurance centre to implement and oversee security procedures for evaluating telecommunications infrastructure and systems.