* Posts by martianm

2 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Aug 2012

Turnbull says NBN Co could offer FTTN with optional fibre-for-cash

martianm

Re: same old BS

I live out there too and currently get 8mbps ADSL2+ because we are a long way from the exchange. But what you are missing is that the nodes will not be at the exchanges but distributed around the suburbs. That is, there will be multiple nodes in an exchange footprint. This would mean that ADSL (xDSL?) to a node would be over only a km or so and easily sustain the 25 mbps you want. This is what those lucky people close to exchanges already get.

Oh, and BTW, ADSL technology has already been shown to go over 750 mbps on copper back in 2010 so I think FTTN is a very good balance of a very fast backbone with one or two orders of magnitude improvement in broadband speeds for us folk far from exchanges.

Australia threatens telcos with mobile roaming price laws

martianm

Re: Legislating against stupidity

...Except that prices for international roaming are never *in* the contract. (Or the company would never be free to raise them.) They say, "They are on our web site, go look. Sign here please."

The point of the Aus/NZ govt. action is to get the telcos to be me transparent about the roaming pricing since more customers are travelling and expecting to be able to use phones overseas than in the past. Surely greater transparency is a good thing, right?

And not getting a $5000 bill for one day of phone use in Singapore is also a good thing right? A mother travelling to NZ from Aus for 2 weeks needing to keep tabs on medical situation for a child got a roaming bill of $6500 - I'm sure you agree this is excessive and that no amount of expectation of higher costs when travelling would include a bill of this magnitude?