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IPTV In The Dark Ages Says ACMA

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According to a report by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), the Australian market for internet protocol television (IPTV) and internet video is less developed than many other international markets, with fewer than five IPTV providers and fifteen internet video providers offering full-length professional content directly to consumers.


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According to ACMA, the industry participants interviewed for the study believed that IPTV and internet video will become more common in Australia in the future but there was disagreement over the actual timeframe, with estimates ranging from 18 months to three years.

At a basic level, IPTV is the delivery of multimedia services over a managed IP network. In the communications industry, IPTV is often seen as ‘Telco TV’, a subscription television service offered by DSL-based telecommunication carriers.

There are several supply-side factors acting as barriers for IPTV and internet video deployment.
Internet video providers believed that capped plans for broadband access and the cost of downloads were important barriers to take-up and deployment.

Capital expenditure requirements were cited as a major barrier for potential IPTV deployments, although this may become less important with a national fibre to the node (FTTN) network rollout.

 

According to US analysts, Light Reading, the worlds top ten largest IPTV deployments lists seven European countries, with three of the top ten IPTV providers being French.
The list’s top provider, Iliad, offers French consumers a DSL/IPTV/VoIP triple play bundle for $US45 a month, and will soon start offering consumers fiber lines for the same price as existing DSL offerings.

A recent study stated that in the U.S. family of four will pay $US140 per month for the triple play, compared to $US80 in Germany, $US54 in France, and $US50 in the UK.
Much of France’s success (from the consumer point of view) is attributed to local loop unbundling.

Overall, the development of IPTV and internet video is all part of the growing number of new online delivery methods, new types of content and engaged consumers are driving significant change in the media and communications industries.
Examples include the appearance of social networking websites, the rise of user-generated content and new online avenues for obtaining entertainment, including music, TV and film content and interactive games, says ACMA.

iiNet Gobbles Up Westnet

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iiNet Limited has announced the signing of an AUD$81 million agreement which will see the acquisition of rival internet service provider Westnet.

The acquisition of Westnet (Australia’s sixth largest ISP) reinforces iiNet’s position as the third largest ISP in the country and a serious competitor in the nation’s telecommunications environment.    

“This transaction brings together two of Australia’s best loved ISP brands,” said Michael Malone, Managing Director of iiNet.  
Westnet will continue to run as a separate operating entity.

The two ISPs will work alongside each other in knowledge share and expertise which will lead to an increased overall level of service to both iiNet and Westnet customers.   

With Westnet’s 215,000 active services, including 138,000 broadband users, iiNet’s total number of active services will grow to over 680,000, including over 470,000 dial-up and broadband subscribers.

The combined subscriber bases will give iiNet a market share of over 30 per cent in the NSW.   

Asus Gives Radio Listeners A Green Choice

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With the support of more than 10,000 broadcast stations worldwide, users can now listen to whatever catches their fancy.

When they connect the ASUS Internet Radio (AIR) via a wireless or LAN (DHCP) connection, the whole world opens up as they can choose music from any genre from any corner of the globe.

Filtered ISPs Make Senator Conroy Breathe Easy

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Only days after hundreds of Australian businesses are still trying to untangle themselves from the so-called UPS parcel virus, Federal Communications Senator Stephen Conroy has welcomed news “advances in filtering technology”.


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“The internet is a wonderful tool that is delivering benefits to increasing numbers of Australian families but the Government wants to find ways to make it safer, particularly for children. This report will assist the Government to deliver on its election commitment to create a safer online environment,” Senator Conroy said.

ISP filtering is one element of the Government’s $125.8 million Plan for Cyber-Safety, which also includes education, international cooperation, research and law enforcement.

“The next step is to test filter technologies in a real world environment with a number of ISPs and internet users,” Senator Conroy said.

Senator Conroy’s statements come just days after anti-virus vendor McAfee identified the UPS virus as a variant of Generic Downloader.ab and reported that it was also circulating in a message claiming to include nude pictures of Angelina Jolie. Symantec Security Response also catalogued it as Downloader.Diliv and Panda Security calls the Trojan virus Agent.JEN and notes that it has been in circulation since 2005. The resultant fall-out has been a crippling of a number of businesses both here as well as overseas.

 

Tests undertaken during the ACMA investigation found that the quality of ISP-level filtering technology has significantly improved compared with the technology used in a previous trial conducted in 2005.

“It is very encouraging to see that the industry has made significant progress with ISP filtering products and we are heartened that many of the products tested are commercially available, with many of them already deployed overseas,” a somewhat relieved Senator Conroy said.

The results in the ACMA trial were based on illegal and inappropriate content. The tests included filtering over and above simple black-list filtering, and the trial did not specifically test the impact of black-list filtering on its own.
“Filtering specifically against a black-list of illegal content as well as the ability to filter additional material will be one part of the upcoming pilot trial,” Senator Conroy said.

“We are interested to see the results of filtering in real-world conditions and I encourage ISPs to participate. This will enable the implementation of ISP filtering in Australia to be undertaken in an informed and effective way.”

Toshiba & BigPond Make Wireless Even Easier

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Toshiba and BigPond have announced the availability of three new notebooks with BigPond Wireless Broadband built-in.


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The four products are: the Port_g_ R500, the Port_g_ M700 tablet, the Tecra M9, and the Port_g_ R400 tablet PC.

“With high speed mobile broadband access available to 99 per cent of the Australian population, it’s natural that people should have the freedom to take their office with them without a second’s thought,” said Justin White, Product Marketing Manager, Specialised Segments at Toshiba Information Systems Division.  “

And according to BigPond Group Managing Director, Justin Milne, “Notebooks are a great way for our customers to access Bigpond’s Wireless Broadband service and be more flexible in where and how they access the internet.”

 

 

First Aussie Spammer Nailed

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A Perth Court has found Clarity1 guilty of spam crimes for sending 56 million commercial emails in 12 months.

Last week Justice Nicholson of the Federal Court in Perth found that Clarity1 had contravened the Spam Act 2003 , rejecting the company’s defence that recipients had consented and enshrining the precedent that emails harvested prior to the Spam Act are not protected.

“The fact that address-harvesting may have occurred at a time when no such prohibition was in the law, does not prevent the application of the provision in its term from the date it came into force,’ Justice Nicholson found.

This first prosecution of a spammer by the Australian Communications and Media Authority is a shot across the bow of local spammers indication “that their activities will be vigorously pursued by ACMA,’ said Chris Chapman, ACMA Chairman.

“‘This has been an important test case for the Spam Act,” he said “Justice Nicholson’s findings should give Australians confidence in the effectiveness of this important legislation.

‘The receipt of spam imposes significant cost and inconvenience on individuals and businesses by disrupting email delivery, clogging up computer systems, reducing productivity, wasting time, irritating users and raising the cost of internet access fees.’

“The ACMA is to be congratulated for developing and presenting a thorough case against Wayne Mansfield, and for putting an end to the
huge amounts of spam originating from his company’s servers,” said Rob Forsyth, Regional Managing Director for Sophos Asia Pacific.

Clarity1 and its Managing Director, Wayne Mansfield will discover what penalties will be imposed at a later date.

 

Microsoft Dithers Between Yahoo And Investors

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The saga of the computing giants it seems will continue with the next move being up to Microsoft as Yahoo blissfully ignored Microsoft’s Saturday deadline for its $US 44.6 billion takeover bid.

And since Yahoo allowed Microsoft ‘s weekend deadline to pass the next move in this Mexican stand-off should come from Microsoft although analysts say that the options are not particularly appealing and some major investors are becoming restless with the lack of progress._
Furthermore, the consensus among most analysts is that Microsoft needs Yahoo more than Yahoo needs Microsoft, so that it can compete with an increasingly expansive Google._
So if Microsoft still wants to acquire Yahoo, it really only has three options left: to raise the price, to launch a hostile takeover bid, or to take a break in the hope Yahoo flounders._
However these options come with caveats: they are expensive and their outcome is uncertain._
So perhaps a friendly merger is the only option left on the cards for Microsoft.

So Where To Now For Microsoft?

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With Microsoft’s recent decision to drop its purchase of Yahoo, the pressure is on Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer to make his money-losing Internet business succeed against Google, says a report in Bloomberg.com.


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courtesy: www.a.abcnews.com

The danger for Microsoft, says the article, is that Google, “will expand its dominance while Ballmer plans a new course. Google gained 10 percentage points of market share in Internet queries since June, providing 59.8 per cent of the searches done in March”.

With Yahoo, says Bloomberg.com, Microsoft would “have tripled its share of U.S. online searches and would have become the biggest seller of graphical- display ads on the Internet”.

This would have been enough to reverse the fortunes of Microsoft Internet unit, which lost $US228 million last quarter.

The other option for Microsoft, says the report, is to pursue other acquisitions, such as Time Warner’s AOL, to win more Internet visitors, or to go after News Corp.’s MySpace social- networking site.

 

However noted most analysts, there are no other properties around of the size of Yahoo that can be bought up by Microsoft.

As for Google, it will continue to benefit from the collapse of the Microsoft-Yahoo deal as web sites around the world decide it is the safe choice during troubled times for search ads.