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August 23, 2008
I am typing this post whilst sitting in a cottage in the treed hills behind Clare Valley in South Australia. I am able to do so courtesy of a friend's computer and their Telstra mobile wireless broadband-- their Next G network. It is very impressive--market changing. Telstra claims its Next G network covers ‘over 99 percent of the population’, compared to some of the other networks which typically cover only major metropolitan areas.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, bark, 2008
Mobile wireless broadband is the future as it offers more flexibility than fixed line broadband that is limited a specific location --a home or business. But the technology underpinning mobile broadband needs to be substantially upgraded in terms of speed if it is to be viable, since the Next G network is very slow in downloading newspapers due, no doubt, to the usual backhaul and capacity constraints.
Viable here means giving up a fixed line broadband and going mobile. At the moment Telstra is charging $129.95/month 10GB plan. Too much. Currently I am with Three, who are mainly a cap city mobile provider. Their roaming access to the Telstra 3G network is far too expensive as it is structured around a roaming penalty rate. I understand that Three are negotiating a wholesale agreement with Telstra so that Three customers can make use of the Next G network.
Gary Sauer-thompson, Morton Bay Fig, trunk, Kapunda, 2008
If this is the future then what surprised me was that Seven didn't use the Olympics in an effective broadband customer grab which could easily have used both online and offline channels to let us choose from dozens of simultaneous events to watch instead of the heavily edited highlights packages. Telstra's Next G Olympics offer was only the same highlight packs available through Yahoo's online site — and live, streaming video of Seven's TV on the phone for a flat AU$10 or AU$4 per day.
The delivery of live streaming video is the ISP's next step up the food chain and they follow the lead of SelectTV and begin bundling TV stations from around the world — compelling ones — as quota-free downloads. We can then plug in our Apple TV and funnel this content to our lounge room.
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