Possibly because of Sandy – Squarespace, which runs the back end – is in New York.
I think I can wait out the storm (so to speak) and will chase them up later – in the mean time any of the links you see are broken so don’t bother clicking on them.
Except this one: hopefully it’ll work and you can see what they’re up to.
UPDATE: No, even that one. Head over to status.squarespace.com if you want to see what they’re up to.
Another long weekend, and another PABX hacking takes place.
It tends to come in waves, but lately it’s been particularly
nasty with at least one report of a $250,000 weekend for one local company.
You probably know how it works but it bears repeating.
Ratbags ring around after business hours looking for a PABX system. They try
various combinations of readily available default passwords (user name and
password set to 0000 for example) and once they’ve struck gold they wait for a
long weekend.
Staff clear out on Friday at 5pm, then the diallers start
in. They have access to the set-up systems of the hacked PABX (which hasn’t
really been hacked, just left unguarded) so they assign all the direct dial
outbound lines to call numbers overseas – typically in those countries that
couldn’t care less about such things. Think Somalia or Azerbaijan. These
compromised systems spend the next three days dialling out and every time they
connect the company in questions starts paying through the nose for the toll
call.
The staff return to work on Monday none the wiser until the
phone bill arrives, typically with tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of toll
calling included.
The company will then ring the telco which will say sorry
but your phones made all those calls, and even if the local telco waives any
profit margin and offers the calls at cost, you’re still in the gun for
thousands of dollars owed to a foreign telco that isn’t going to take no for an
answer.
The ratbags in question typically get a clip of the revenue
earned in their country and have had quite a profitable weekend. Even if the
host telco over there wises up and kicks them out, there’s always another telco
to use.
Rinse, repeat until wealthy.
This isn’t a new phenomenon – in 2005 we covered the
situation at Computerworld and even then we referred to advice given in 2003.
There are, however, some simple steps you can take here to
make sure you’re not done over. Fortunately it’s all quite straight forward.
First, talk to your PABX system provider. Actually, the real
first step is to figure out if anyone in your organisation is responsible for
the PABX – in many cases I’m told responsibility has devolved to the IT department
who don’t necessarily know all the old PABX hacker tricks.
But talk to your provider about securing your system and you’ll
probably discover the easiest thing to do is change the default passwords to
something more difficult.
I’m in two minds about password security – on the one hand a
long and tricky password means you’re unlikely to be hacked. On the other hand,
who can remember them? Bruce Schneier once told me the best way to secure a
system was with a long password that’s complex and difficult that is written
down and stored by the computer, on the basis that anyone who steals your PC
won’t know about the bit of paper and will miss it, and anyone who’s hacking in
from outside won’t be able to see the bit of paper because they’re in another
country. I quite like that.
TelstraClear has a page of advice on what to do that’s worth
a read. The TCF put out a warning last year and also has a page of information on what to do.
While the telcos do what they can to limit the damage from
this kind of thing, at the end of the day we the customers have to play our
part and making sure we bolt the door before we head away for a break is a very
good thing to do.
Our ideas about
privacy need redefining in the internet age
Hayden Glass is a Principal with the Sapere Research Group,
one of Australasia’s largest expert consulting firms. Thanks to Rick Shera
(@lawgeeknz) for instructive conversation.
I consider myself a fairly typical internet user. Google for
web search, a Gmail account for email, calendar and contacts, the Chrome
browser for surfing, and my Google drive for a whole host of documents stored
and shared in the cloud. On my Android phone I have 60 or so apps installed. I
have no Facebook account, but I am on Twitter. I use Dropbox to share files,
Flickr for my photos, iTunes for music, and Tumblr and WordPress for blogs.
Plus, like the rest of you, I use online banking, shop online, and get my news
nearly exclusively from online sources. I provide my location to make Google
maps work better and also to help get better search results, but I click
“Deny” when my phone gives me the choice to share location with any
particular website.
I am sharing, therefore, quite a lot of information on the
internet. This is an entirely standard way of life. Around 80% of us use the
internet,
and 80% of users report using Facebook.
The internet is such a part of daily life that we now share
information unconsciously. Everything we do online creates a record and we
don’t think too much about what happens to it. In US academic Daniel Solove’s
vivid phrase, “data is the perspiration of the Information Age”. Others, like
American computer security specialist Bruce Schneier, think of your
click-stream as a type of pollution, in the sense
that it is created by doing some useful online task but it can have unpleasant side-effects
that need to be managed.
In Part 1 of this post we take a brief look at the online
privacy environment and what makes it different. In Part 2 we will look at
how laws are changing to adapt to it.
Part 1
Something new under
the sun
Problems of information privacy are much more difficult in
the internet age because the internet itself is so widely available, and
information flows on it are difficult to control.
The internet has no borders, and is not based in any
particular country. The location of service providers or users is generally
unimportant: information available in one place is available in all, and it is
difficult to control or trace the flow of data. Content is continually being
added or modified, but content is also persistent, i.e., information that was
once on a website can be searched for and retrieved even after the content of
the site has changed.
The internet is also tricky for governments to control.
There are, of course, still telecommunications operators who connect you to the
internet. They have extensive physical investments, powerful brands and reputations to uphold. But
service providers who hold information about you are generally not dependent on
individual governments for resources at all. Most of the New Zealand internet’s
most popular services are provided by US firms based in California with servers
all over the world, and with little local presence here. The ability of the New
Zealand government to influence the activities of, say, Facebook is limited,
and given the aterritoriality of the internet, it is often not clear how firms
can navigate the thicket of different national responsibilities.
Privacy, of course, is also a non-internet problem. Those
holding information need to not, for example, lose sensitive government data in
the internal post, or leave
their computer systems open for members of the public to access.
But often internet users do not realise how much they are
sharing (see these unfortunate Belgians), or what the consequences are.
Facebook stands accused of deliberately making it hard for users to control
their own privacy,
and even the most sophisticated can get it wrong, releasing data that they
think is innocuous (like AOL or Netflix) that turns
out not to be when combined with other public data. See also a local example.
Gold in them thar
hills
The major online services companies have also raised
substantial privacy concerns by mis-estimating what their users are happy with:
cue dismay when Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, said that his firm was built on
privacy expectations that all users might not share and the furore over changes to Facebook’s privacy settings that have led to EU
and FTC regulatory
intervention, or when Google’s then CEO Eric Schmidt said that if you want to
keep something private online “maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the
first place”.
With all of this information about your online activities
able to be discovered, there is money to be made in sifting through it,tying it
together, and then selling the profiles to online advertisers.
Consider Rapleaf, a US outfit
that matches email addresses with a range of public data including Zip code,
age, income, property value, marital status and whether the person who controls
this email address has children. It claims to have data on over 80% of US email
addresses, and charges 0.5 cents per match.
Or this (registration required), a deal between Facebook and a firm called Datalogix
that allows the site to track whether ads seen on Facebook lead users to buy
those products in stores. Datalogix buys consumer loyalty data from retailers,
and matches email addresses in its database to email accounts used to set up
Facebook profiles.
Generalised concern
It is hardly surprising that people are concerned about
online privacy. Americans say their biggest perceived privacy threat is social
networking services like Facebook and Twitter (they are also worried about
unmanned drones, electronic banking, GPS/smartphone tracking and roadside
cameras) (WARNING: PDF).
New Zealanders are worried too. A Law Commission survey revealed that 84% of respondents were concerned about “the security of
personal details on the internet”, more than were concerned about
“confidentiality of medical records” (78%) or “government
interception of telephone calls or email” (72%).
Expectations of privacy clearly depend a lot on context. Information
I share with my mother I may not wish to share with my friends (sorry guys),
and information I share with my friends I may wish to keep secret from a
potential employer. Information that I directly and intentionally share (e.g.,
via Twitter) is less sensitive than information that I do not know is being
collected. I would consider my browser history, my email and my search history
more sensitive than my purchase history from Amazon.com. I am pretty relaxed if
information about these things is used just to target online advertising. I am
less relaxed if these data were put together and used to establish my identity
or calculate my credibility and trustworthiness.
And since my list of privacy preferences will not be the
same as yours, it becomes clear that the question of online privacy is about
the limits of my ability to control the flow of information about me, and my
basic point here is that the internet age means that I have less control than
before.
If users are concerned about control but feel
(and to some extent are) powerless, what help does the law provide? We take up
that story in Part 2.
The Commerce Commission has cleared Vodafone’s bid to buy
TelstraClear, paving the way for the merger.
However, there doesn’t appear to be any form of ongoing
monitoring or caveats on the deal. Vodafone had already indicated it would not
be buying all of TelstraClear’s spectrum assets as that would exceed the limits
on 2100MHz spectrum and would also potentially be a barrier to approval. That
aside, we had expected to see some kind of monitoring regime put in place
specifically for this merger. Market dominance is now effectively in the hands
of two players – Telecom and Vodafone – and TUANZ would have liked to see some
kind of additional monitoring put in place to assure customers that no cosy
duopoly could emerge. Presumably the Commission felt either it couldn’t impose
such a regime or that existing market monitoring was enough.
From the Commission’s press release:
“In reaching its decision, the Commission considered that
the merged entity would continue to face competition from Telecom, as well as
Orcon, Slingshot and other smaller businesses in providing fixed line voice and
broadband services to residential and small business customers”.
The Commission says there was no significant business
overlap between Vodafone and TelstraClear – something that has been painfully
obvious for many years now. Hopefully the two combined together will have the
ability to shake up the market and to challenge Telecom for the number one spot
– a long-held goal of Vodafone CEO Russell Stanners.
Time will tell – and TUANZ will be keen to see the results
of any competitive tension in the market.
The UFB rollout is slated to take until the end of the
decade and arguments about whether that’s 2019 or 2020 aside, for most of us
it’ll be years before we see the fibre van roll up outside our homes.
For the foreseeable future, we’re locked in to a copper
world here in suburban New Zealand. While I fully support schools, hospitals
and businesses getting access to fibre as a priority (SME businesses stand to
gain the most from the UFB rollout and New Zealand will benefit from the
increased efficiencies that will bring) it does mean there’s a balancing act to
be maintained and unfortunately home users are on the wrong side of it.
But that’s OK because the advances in technology in the
copper world mean we should be able to see better services on our copper networks
in the meantime.
Over on Computerworld, a comment from Malcolm Dick (he of
CallPlus/Slingshot fame) caught my eye. Malcolm points to a recent announcement
regarding VDSL 2+ with vectoring:
“which gives download speeds of
100[Mbit/s] and upload speeds of 40[Mbit/s] on copper runs of 400metres long –
I would guess that covers around 800,000 households in New Zealand.”
Even standard VDSL as it exists today would be great – not
so much for the download speed but for the upload.
Currently, as you know, I’m running TUANZ from home – I have
a very good ADSL2+ connection and regularly get in excess of 15Mbit/s down.
This is fine for my uses for the most part, but the upload speed of at best
1Mbit/s is a killer. I’d be much better off with a 50Mbit/s down, 30Mbit/s up
speed which, given my location (less than 600m to the Mt Roskill exchange),
should be readily attainable.
Except there are very few VDSL sellers out there and worse,
the data caps are so incredibly low. It would cost hundreds of dollars a month more
to connect to a VDSL port, for no apparent reason.
Today, each VDSL port costs a premium of about $20 over and
above an ADSL port. Why? Because that’s the price the Commerce Commission has
set. It’s a premium service, so it needs
a premium connection price, goes the theory.
Given the difference isn’t in the card in the slot but in
the backhaul and in the contention rates and so on , this is an artificial
price which keeps the retail price too high to be of interest to either
retailers or consumers.
Retail ISPs keen on selling VDSL will need to increase both
backhaul capacity and make sure the service delivers a higher level of quality
than ADSL2 does in order to attract customers. I get that, but an artificially
high price point that simply delivers extra cash to Chorus doesn’t really cut
it.
And then there’s the “copper versus fibre” model. The
argument goes like this – ISPs should not be wasting their time and money
investing in copper because fibre is coming and copper is a competitor. We
should artificially inflate prices on copper to ensure customers are
“encouraged” to take up fibre instead.
That’s all well and good if we all have access to fibre
(which we don’t) and if there is absolutely no other incentive in making the
leap to fibre (there will be plenty of incentives) but that’s not the case.
Instead I would suggest faster copper speeds serve as an
enticement to fibre – that a customer who has already moved up to 30Mbit/s is
more likely to want 50Mbit/s or even 100Mbit/s when that becomes available.
They’ll have discovered the apps they need to make such speeds worth their
while and their service providers will also have figured out which services
customers want. All of that is good for the fibre rollout because when it
finally arrives at my doorstep I’ll have an incentive to move – an incentive
other than “copper’s so expensive now I might as well”.
The telcos I’ve spoken to are all keen to rollout VDSL
services. They see the upside to it as they’ve seen the upside to unbundling
the copper lines today. They get increased margin, customers get better
service, they win more custom as word gets around and everyone’s happy. There’s
investment, there’s competition and there’s a dynamism in the fixed line market
that we simply wouldn’t have believed only three or four years ago. We were
late to unbundling, yet it’s still delivering results.
If we are to hike the price of copper lines to encourage
migration to fibre, we run the risk of snuffing out the nascent competitive
market in our fixed line world – that at a time when two of the three largest
players are about to join forces. That would be a tremendous leap backwards for
the industry and we, the customers who can’t get on to the UFB fibre, would pay
in terms of service and price.
Copper isn’t a competitor to fibre today. It might be once
the UFB is built but for the next seven years or more, it’s simply the only
choice we have for bulk broadband services. It’s important we get the regulated
price settings right.
The Commerce
Commission is due to report back on Tuesday with its decision regarding the Vodafone
purchase of TelstraClear.
Should it go
ahead the takeover will redefine an industry that’s already undergone dramatic
upheaval over the past dozen years.
We started in
2000 with the Fletcher Inquiry into the telecommunications sector, which
recommended the creation of a stand-alone regulator to oversee the industry.
This came at the end of a decade’s worth of nonsense that came about as a
result of the government’s sale of Telecom lock stock and barrel as a monopoly.
Funny that – monopolies operate in their own best interests and expecting
Telecom to do any different would be like dropping a hungry timber wolf in a
cattery.
By the mid-2000s
it became apparent that the light handed regulatory approach was not going to
deliver anywhere near the kinds of results we needed. The decision to unbundle
the local loop – something most other countries had done many years before –
was delayed until it was all but irrelevant. Finally, the bicycle courier
debacle saw the government break cover and demand Telecom operationally
separate.
By the end
of the 2000s, that was also deemed to be a slow-moving train wreck. Telecom had
continued to act in its own best interests and the industry had suffered as a
result – although the Commerce Commission had actually used its powers to take
on issues like Telecom’s “loyalty” scheme and the sub-loop extension service
(SLES) problems which were designed to block competition from getting a leg up.
So we embarked on the biggest project of them all – roll out a fibre to the
home network that would either overbuild Telecom’s copper network or require
Telecom to structurally split in two to take part in the venture.
Telecom
chose the latter path – Chorus was born and we are starting to see the fibre
network deployment take shape, albeit very slowly at first.
Telecom has
a lot to do in the coming year. It has to compete while figuring out how to
finish off splitting away from Chorus. It has a new CEO and has to compete in
the nearest thing we’ve ever had to a level playing field.
On top of
that, we now have Vodafone making the leap from a mobile provider, with an ISP,
into a fully-fledged telco hopefully with a keenness for shaking up the market.
Here at
TUANZ we thought long and hard about the ramifications. On the one hand we have
a reduction in competition as our top three telcos become two. We have a
consolidation at that end of the market where all the power lies and we see 80%
of the market dominated by two telcos, telcos who have had a history of sitting
pretty alongside each other in the mobile space.
On the other
hand, Telstra was never going to allow TelstraClear to compete vigorously in
the New Zealand market. Quite why Telstra bought Clear Communication off BT is
something of a mystery – I put it down to Telecom’s purchase of AAPT and a
desire to keep Telecom on a short leash. Mess with us in Australia and we’ll
mess with you in New Zealand, was the warning.
AAPT turned
out to be something of a mutt with fleas and so Telstra did the bare minimum for
its fledgling Kiwi company. After the Auckland City Council refused to allow
the expansion of TelstraClear’s cable TV business in Auckland (looking at you, New
Zealand Herald for that particular nonsense) and the staggering Commerce Commission
decision not to unbundle in 2003, TelstraClear really had no business plan for
growth. Sure, it had a tremendous asset in the form of its fibre backhaul
network, but its decision not to peer locally, its shambolic cellphone network
deployment in Tauranga and multitude of brand names did nothing to build its
business locally.
Rumour has
it that TelstraClear approached Telstra about buying Vodafone New Zealand’s
business in order to grow swiftly. Telstra baulked at the asking price
(rumoured to be $3bn) and instead entertained a reverse deal that includes a
clause to keep Telstra out of the New Zealand market for some time to come.
The upside
to the deal, however, means we finally have a competitor that can take on
Telecom in the fixed line market in ways Telstra simply wouldn’t entertain.
Vodafone has very little business in the fixed line market. Sure, it bought iHug
and has a consumer presence, but in the all-important business market, it’s a
minnow. In order to really take on Telecom in its heartland, only Vodafone has
the scale and with TelstraClear’s assets (both network and people) it would
have the ability.
I’d expect
the Commerce Commission to come back with an agreement to allow the deal to
proceed, albeit with a variety of caveats regarding market monitoring. If there’s
any sign of a cosy duopoly forming, I’d expect the Commission to act swiftly,
but I have high hopes that won’t be needed. It’s up to Vodafone now to deliver
on the promise of the Clear network. If it does that, we should have a more
dynamic and interesting market. If not, the Commissioner will have to wield the
scalpel once again.
This article was contributed by Kerry Butters on behalf of Broadband Genie, the consumer advice site for finding the best UK broadband
Broadband
in the UK
When it comes to choosing a broadband provider in the UK, it
can seem a little daunting at first, with many options available. Whilst there
are special offers everywhere, if you change provider you also have to give
consideration to your specific needs. If you know exactly what you’re looking
for in a broadband deal, it makes it far easier to shop around for a service
tailored to your requirements.
Very often customers go with whatever is convenient. If your
ISP also provides your television channels and phone line, you can get a
package that is one payment per month, thus making it easy to understand
exactly what you’re paying for, with just one direct debit to pay. Just because
you are paying for all three in one go, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re
getting the best offer.
If you don’t use the internet that often and your priority
when choosing a provider is cost, there are some great deals available.
Companies offering broadband from as little as £3.25 per month as an
introductory offer for the first 9/12 months. These offers tend to have speeds
of around 14Mbit/s to 16Mbit/s.
This doesn’t mean that you will necessarily have to watch
you’re downloading at the same time. Many providers giving these offers have
unlimited downloads as part of the package and as such, these offers are
certainly worth considering.
There are even companies that offer fibre optic broadband,
unlimited downloads, free calls at weekends and evenings and to users of the
same supplier with up to 30Mbit/s for £4.00 with free installation. Very good for
an 18 month contract.
However, as always it isn’t that easy for everyone. The UK
ranks pretty low in the European ranking when it comes to broadband. There are
still millions of homes across the country with low internet speeds and no
access to fibre optic broadband and whilst the government’s claims that 90% of
all UK homes will have superfast broadband
by 2015, experts, including some ministers, have already questioned the
viability of this. The government have a plan to invest £680 million over the
next three years and many believe this just isn’t enough to fulfil their
promises.
Another very important thing to bear in mind when choosing
your broadband supplier is that claims of “speeds up to” are just that. The
fact that a provider is claiming speeds up to in a certain area, doesn’t
necessarily mean your home will get that speed. If you’re considering changing
your provider for one that is advertising quicker speeds, it makes sense to do
your homework first and look into what users of that supplier in your area are
saying about it.
Internet Service Providers claims and user’s experiences are
often poles apart. The best thing to do is go on forums, see what people in
your neighbourhood are saying are the best suppliers, as they are often far
more reliable than the ISP’s themselves. Nevertheless, broadband in the UK is
regulated by Ofcom and this is something that they say they are addressing as
we speak.
If the government are to be believed though things aren’t looking too bleak for the future. The UK hopes to be a European leader in
broadband by 2020. If this is the case, then they are going to have to get a
move on very soon.
Hopefully it’s not too scary-looking.
We’ve moved to a cloud solution for two reasons: firstly, we need to use telecommunications if we’re going to represent you in this arena and one of the big trends in the last year or so has been the move to the cloud. Secondly, the reason everyone is talking about the cloud is cost savings, and we’re very big on that round here.
Plus the functionality has increased dramatically over recent times – today, the site is hosted via Squarespace and as you can see it’s got at least as much capability as we used to have if not a wee bit more. You can Tweet or post these links to Facebook and when a new social media/content sharing idea rises up (as I’m sure it will) that’ll get added in as well.
From my side of the screen it’s got a bunch of new features that I’ll be making use of, including an iPad app that will allow me to manage the site from anywhere I can log on. I can see who’s reading what and which stories are generating the most interest. This makes the editor in me very glad indeed.
Once we’ve got the website bedded in, we’ll look to move other aspects of our business over to the web as well. We have a back-end database, we have an email mailing list and we hold events – all of these things can be outsourced to the cloud and we’ll be doing just that over the coming months.
I’m keen to make the TUANZ website the hub of telco discussion in New Zealand and to that end I’ll be posting more guest blogs than ever before. It’s important that we, the users, have a rounded, well supported view of the industry and so if you’ve got anything you want to say, don’t be shy – let me know and we’ll sort out a spot on the blog for you.
And on that note, if you do spot anything on the site that’s not working or looks weird, drop the webmaster a line. You’ll find him at: paul@tuanz.org.nz because that’s how we roll these days. Be kind – he’s new at all this.
In Part 1 of this post (link) we look at the historical approach to universal service. Part 2 looks at the future: and in particular at rural broadband.
To its credit, the government has recognised that access to broadband in rural areas is a serious economic and social issue. The Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) is the response: an industry-funded, government-led programme building faster broadband infrastructure in rural areas. When it is finished 86% of households outside the cities and most rural schools, health centres and public libraries will be able to access fast broadband, mostly within the next two years. Vodafone is building around 150 new sites and securing fibre to more of its towers, and Chorus is building 3,100 kms of new fibre.
The RBI was a big and welcome change in approach on how to to encourage telecommunications companies to provide services in hard to reach areas.
Not only is the RBI a better approach in terms of actually getting services rolled out in rural areas, but it sets a simple and clear standard for minimum broadband services which:
Four challenges for the review
First, there will be continued pressure from rural customers for better broadband services (see paras 164 to 167 of this Commerce Commission summary.
This could take the form of a minimum guaranteed broadband service that must be available to all New Zealanders. There was much debate around the RBI as to whether 5 Mbps was fast enough for those customers relying on fixed wireless services (although of course it is a whole lot better than the no broadband at all that many ruralcustomers faced before the RBI came along). The UN has defined broadband as a basic human right, and Finland in 2010 made a rule that all telecommunications operators were required to offer broadband access of at least 1 Mbps.
Competition over the RBI-funded infrastructure should mean that customers willgradually get more bang for their buck – in urban areas competition has meant growing datacaps with broadly static prices. Wireless services have smaller data caps than copper-based services reflecting the higher costs of data on wireless technologies. But new mobile technologies should allow faster wireless data speeds and bigger data caps in due course.
Second, the government’s review will need to consider updating the TSO requirements for the internet age.
Certainly free local calling is heavily utilised – accounting for 29% of all voice minutes in 2011 (see page 11), but if the Commission is right it is holding back competition.
For the growing number of customers who use mostly or only their mobiles,”free” local calling is rather expensive. Other elderly TSO requirements – like not charging more in rural areas than in urban areas, and ensuring Chorus does not shrink its network seem superflous given the developments of recent years.
What to do with the ineffective price cap on basic voice services is trickier. It does not seem to serve customers very well, although clearly it is helpful for the industry to be able to put up prices every year.
Third, the obligations could be extended beyond just Telecom. With Chorus, the network company, now split from Telecom, the retailer, it doesn’t obviously make sense that the TSO obligations should rest only on Telecom. If Telecom is required, say, to have a standard plan that offers free-local calling as an option, there is no obvious reason why this rule should not apply to other operators as well.
The fourth challenge is ensuring everyone can get decent broadband.
Even after the completion of phase 1 of the RBI there will be coverage and competition black spots. There is a phase 2 of the RBI ably explainedby the Commision in para 159 of this report to reach schools and other priority users that are not at present covered by the RBI or the government’s fibre network (the UFB).
Systematic, public, up-to-date data on remaining areas of trouble could also help – it seems like it would be an easy extension on the government’s broadband map to show people who do not have service at present. This would help operators to figure out the value of network extensions, sharing infrastructure where it makes sense in remote areas. Satellite solutions will work for many. Community self-build solutions like those from Wiz Wireless can also help in some parts of the country.
Over to you
So the ball lies fairly firmly in the government’s court. Its review is required to be completed by the end of 2013.
We wait to see the outcomes with interest. A bold answer would consign the outdated TSO requirements to the dustbin, and ensure a sensible alignment between the TSO and the RBI as we continue to work towards universal broadband.
Hayden Glass is a consultant specialising in telecommunications with the Sapere Research Group, one of Australasia’s largest expert services firms
New Zealanders have long suffered due to a lack of legitimate online video options. Alert readers will recall that we have looked
at these issues in a blog post The Ins and Outs of Online Video, and the next step is to get some better data on how our options compare with more fortunatate isles.
We want to do this by creating a list of legitimate online video options and their key characteristics. If you are a user of online video options willing to share your knowledge with the world, feel free to contribute what you know, or correct what is there in thisspreadsheet.
We also want to gather information on how New Zealand compares. So if you are using the US iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, Lovefilm or some other major online international video service, please fill in the sheet that explains how it stacks up. We promise not to tell anyone if you are breaching their terms and conditions.
With your contributions the idea is that this table can become a trusted source of information, and TUANZ and others can use it in their ongoing lobbying on these issues.
