Displaying items by tag: Broadband

The Australian Labor Party has announced it will provide free broadband for a year to 30,000 homes which have no Internet connections, as part of its broadband policy for the upcoming election.

Labor's announcement that it would provide $2.4 billion for an additional 1.5 million homes to be provided with fibre if it were elected to office has been dismissed as "a continuation of the muddling-on process seen over the last decade."

Malcolm Turnbull has some explaining to do about the costs of the NBN this morning, after Guardian Australia reported figures hidden in a report commissioned by him showed a full-fibre NBN or a multi-technology mix would have cost about the same.

If you want to experience 5G at maximum speeds, you'll need to do so using a smartphone capable of accessing 5G mmWave networks. In Australia, the only phone that's capable, for now, is the Google Pixel 6 Pro, although that will surely change in 2022 and beyond.

TPG Telecom and Vodafone, two firms that merged last year, have both started offering 5G home Internet plans, in what is a welcome development for those stuck on the NBN.

Fixed wireless access subscriptions, both 4G and 5G, will reach 473 million globally by 2030, the technology analyst firm Counterpoint Research predicts, which means that it will service 36% of fixed broadband users across the globe.

New Zealand broadband provider Spark has announced a waiving of data overage charges for all users who are on data-capped fixed and wireless broadband plans.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has taken a 25% stake in two retail service providers that resell NBN services and says it will offer discounted plans to its customers through these two companies.

NBN Co has realised a discussion paper to industry on proposed changes to the Special Access Undertaking (SAU) lodged with the ACCC. The SAU sets out the framework that governs the terms on which the company supplies services to the industry. The proposed variation includes options to change to pricing with only the Access Virtual Circuit (AVC)component, dropping the contraversial Connectivity Virtual Circuit (CVC) component. It also adds all the current Governments Multi-Technology Mix access technologies, such as Fibre-to-the-Building, Node, Curb (FTTB, FTTN, FTTC) and Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC).

More than 500,000 Australians moved to faster NBN plans in the first quarter of 2021, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says in its latest Wholesale Market Indicators Report.

Since COVID-19 restrictions were introduced in March last year, more online Australians have increased their use of telehealth consultations and video conferencing/calling.

If you need lots of mobile data because your wired NBN isn't fast enough, isn't available or there are other issues, then Telstra now offers an impressive 400GB of data over 3G, 4G and 5G networks for $85 per month.

The company rolling out Australia's national broadband network has reported revenue of $3.5 billion for the first nine months of the financial year 2020-21, with no breakdown offered for the third quarter alone.

Qualcomm has announced real-world test results demonstrating that 5G mmWave connectivity speeds on commercial devices is 16 times faster than 5G operating solely in sub-6 GHz frequencies.

The mobile data service revenues will grow at a 7.1% CAGR over 2020-2025 driven by the projected rise in the adoption of 5G services, which yield higher average revenue per user (ARPU), according to GlobalData.

MATE wants to encourage customers to stick with it rather that churn to another provider after the six month discount period has elapsed by offering the deal to new and existing customers, which the company claims makes them "the only telco to do this."

They say a change is as good as a holiday, but despite being a universal constant (and making your pockets very heavy), the last decade saw the most rapid change in our history - with the COVID-19 tinged decade we're currently in set to see change changing at the fastest pace yet.

The NBN Co's latest pricing review appears to be a massive waste of time, with the company putting up ideas, ignoring feedback on all but minor issues and then just ploughing on with own agenda, one retail service provider says.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has released another research report in its ‘Communications and media in Australia’ series, with headline figures showing 8.2 million terabytes of data downloaded, 9.6 billion voice minutes and more.

NBN Co is proposing a soft cap on variable data capacity charges, more generous data inclusions and says it will progress long-term pricing reform through a Special Access Undertaking (SAU) variation consultation with industry and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).