Communications Technology

Telstra doubled the speeds of its Next G network but delayed its announcement for a week after the election campaign, fearing it may “influence the debate” between the independents who are deciding who will govern the country.

The telecommunications company yesterday launched a 42 megabits per second (Mbps) USB wireless modem capable of typical user speeds of between 1.1 and 20 Mbps in selected areas. Upload speeds vary from anywhere between 0.3 and 3 Mbps.

The previous modems were capable of 21 Mbps peak speeds, half that of the new modems. Real-world download speeds were between 0.5 Mbps and 8 Mbps.

To put this into some perspective, the new wireless modem, if operating at full real-world speeds, allows users to download a 3 megabyte song three times faster. It will now download in 1.2 seconds instead of 3 using the new modem. For movies, which are of a greater file size, it will be much more noticeable.

Broadband was a key policy difference between the parties during the election campaign and it is also shaping up as one of the concerns of the country MPs who are deciding who will form the next government. Telstra’s speed bump could be interpreted by some as supporting the Coalition’s claims that existing wireless networks could be substitutes for Labor’s more expensive fibre-to-the-home proposal.

“We just didn’t want to feel like we were influencing the [telecommunications] debate,” Telstra spokesman Craig Middleton said of the announcement timing, which was delayed from 25 August.

The dual-carrier technology used will cover approximately 50 per cent of the population at launch. It allows networks to send and receive wireless data using two channels simultaneously

If elected, the Labor government plans to spend $43 billion on a nationwide fibre network supporting speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second, whereas the Coalition would spend $6 billion on a mishmash of technologies that would include upgrading existing copper networks and more wireless to support 12 megabits per second peak baseline speeds.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott has said in the past that Australians shouldn’t assume wireless technologies won’t ever be comparable to fixed-line technology. Telstra’s upgrade shows that wireless broadband is creeping up to the 100 Mbps minimum speeds promised by Labor’s national broadband network.

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Australia will only reap the true benefits of a digital technology boom if there is a solid partnership between the public and private sectors, Telstra boss David Thodey has warned.

Speaking at a WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry lunch yesterday, Mr Thodey painted a bleak picture of inefficiency and an uncompetitive market if the two sectors did not start collaborating.

“I do worry that we are not really working together across state, federal, even local government with think tanks, academics and the private sector. The private sector must play a critical role and it must be commercially driven,” Mr Thodey said.

“Now I do understand that sometimes you have to invest in the long-term but if you lose the commercial imperative I believe you get a lesser outcome and that’s what I’ve always stood for.

“That’s the problem with the world where the private sector’s not tabled in, you start to get inefficiency so we would say we need a collaboration between public sector and private sector going forward.”

Curtin University’s internet studies Professor Matthew Allen said no venture should be a “primarily public” one and there should be controls put in place to ensure a competitive and fair marketplace.

“What is needed is to distinguish between the control and provision of the underpinning infrastructure, what you might call the wholesale infrastructure, and the provision of specific services based on that infrastructure,” Professor Allen said.

He cited Labor’s mooted National Broadband Network as an example, and said a public company could have a “monopoly provision” to manage and control access to the network, parts of which could later be sold at a fair market price to public companies to ensure competitiveness.

Mr Thodey would not be drawn on whether Telstra preferred the NBN or the Coalition’s plan to use a patchwork of technologies, saying only the company remained “policy agnostic on broadband”.

“Today we are actively engaged with NBN, we have a non-binding financial agreement with the current government, which we are actively working on,” he said.

“We have not in any way deviated from that, that’s what we signed up to do and until that changes we ain’t changing.”

He said a change of government wouldn’t have an impact on Telstra because the NBN was a long-term project in its infancy.

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A high-tech expedition that aims to create a detailed map of the wreckage of the Titanic has begun exploring the ocean floor where the ship sank nearly one hundred years ago, the crew said.

Sonar onboard an automated submersible vehicle combined with high-resolution video will be used to create three dimensional images of the fabled oceanliner.

The expedition, organised by the American group RMS Titanic, which holds exploration rights for the wreck, arrived this week aboard the scientific vessel Jean Charcot and started by laying flowers on the water’s surface to commemorate the 1500 victims of the shipwreck.

Transponders were then deployed at the bottom of the Atlantic to determine, with the help of sonar pings from an automated underwater vehicle (AUV), the exact position of the Titanic.

Finally, the AUV “Mary Ann” was deployed at 0647 GMT. She reached the bottom after diving for an hour and 40 minutes.

“Surveying of the Titanic wreck site has begun,” said the expedition on its website.

Another robotic submersible equipped with a video camera will be deployed next.

Christopher Davino, president of RMS Titanic, said in a statement that the goal is to “create the most detailed portrait of Titanic’s wreck site to date”.

The team of experts, he said, “will be using some of the most advanced technology available to create a portrait of the ship unlike any that has been created before - virtually raising Titanic and sealing her current state forever in the minds and hearts of humanity.”

The mission, which set sail from St John’s, Newfoundland, will provide real-time video and photo updates on Facebook and Twitter during a more than 20-day expedition.

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