Elders this week announced it would make 80 per cent of its telecommunications staff redundant as it closed its internet service provider division.
The federal government has cancelled the contract for Optus and Elders to build a WiMAX broadband network, the companies say.
The cost of connecting to Australia's forthcoming WiMax bush broadband will not be as expensive as some have suggested, according to OPEL, a joint venture between Elders and Optus, the company building the network.
Yesterday in parliament, Communications Minister Helen Coonan was questioned on the necessity for government to examine maps of 40 key marginal seats in order to assess the political impact of Australia's landmark bush broadband announcement.
South Australian ISP Internode has set up a WiMax service to provide broadband access to the Yorke Peninsula region west of Adelaide, but not before its new infrastructure was almost built over.
Sprint's WiMAX roll-out in Baltimore will prove the Australian government's decision to worm its way out of the Opel WiMAX contract was a short-sighted, and ultimately damaging, political stunt that has benefited nobody.
As Christmas roars in upon us and the Rudds, Trujillos, and Conroys of the world hang their Christmas stockings, everybody is casting an eye to 2008 and the changes it will bring.
Hopefully, you've been spending your end-of-year break better than the executives at Optus, who seem to have taken advantage of the annual industry-wide lull to get onetime WiMax aspirant Austar United Telecommunications to the negotiating table.
Bill Murray's weeks spent in the purgatory of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania -- depicted in the amusing movie Groundhog Day -- have become a cultural sounding point, mentioned in passing to describe a situation where someone is stuck in the same painful, unresolvable situation day after day.
The government's Australia Connected program, it appears, is no longer an altruistic and long-overdue investment in Australia's infrastructure, but a political football whose primary purpose seems to be to send a massive "nyah-nyah" to the Labor party.
WiMax, the controversial long range wireless broadband technology, is set to spread across rural Australia from next year -- but despite the outgoing Howard government's ambitious project, both fixed and mobile variants of the technology are already being deployed around the world.
An analysis by representatives of Australia's two largest IT industry groups shows that neither political party in the federal election has come up with a comprehensive policy around technology.
When the government announced that Optus and Elders had won the bid to build Australia's bush broadband network, it provoked jeers and plaudits alike, but it was the ISPs' choice of WiMax as the bearer technology that has provoked the most furious storm of argument. Just how will the technology stand up to life in the bush?
IT remains a lively, exciting and suprising place. That makes predictions particularly foolish, but here are some picks for the winners and losers of the next twelve months.
Faced with an increasing number of wireless technologies and standards, planning a long-term networking strategy is a daunting prospect.
Faced with an increasing number of wireless technologies and standards, planning a long-term networking strategy is a daunting prospect.
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