February 21, 2007 – LIVEdigitally

Australia's Broadband Drought……. Caused by?

Posted on February 21, 2007 by Guest Contributor

So the broadband problem in Australia is “getting worse”, according to a propaganda message by Telstra yesterday at their ~~Back Telstra – Campaign~~ Don’t-Hate-Us campaign. Which I definitely agree, that our broadband adoption rates are falling that behind of even emerging countries, yet alone against the developed ones.

Now We’re Talking

Some key points to note in the meeting were:

– They said: We’re not a monopoly in the market. I point out:(Telstra has 65% market share)

– They said: There are several hundred service providers in the market I say:( (Yes, and Telstra leases lines to 98% of them)

– They said: Talks regarding broadband de-monopolisation broke down because of the regulators I say:( (Well obviously because you didn’t want to let go of your market share!)

Then he went on whinging about how Australia needs to adopt broadband faster and no one’s doing anything about it. As you can clearly see, if you were the Monopoly, you have to make the first move and stop blame shifting it on everyone else.

And what’s worse! This happened: Telstra Raises Prices- AGAIN

I’m amazed at the irony where a service provider who owns the copper lines, can also compete in the market where they provide products to resellers, and then compete against them. It surely doesn’t separate Telstra’s power to, “Hey! Let’s screw everyone and raise the cost of our Leased Lines so that we can compete”. And they go ahead and compete against these resellers by selling broadband, fixed line services and mobile services.

Well then, if Telstra had a mum, she’d cane him for this nonsense.

Dialing in to the Emerging Telephony Conference

Posted on February 21, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

ETel logo As any of my regular readers have figured out, I love CES, it’s my favorite technology conference (as opposed to CeBIT, which is my least favorite – ugh, Hannover). The next-most enjoyable tech activities to me are the ones where you get to see upcoming stuff that’s either just reaching the market as well as the stuff that may never hit the market (Wired’s NextFest is a great example). So when I heard about O’reilly’s eTel conference here in my own backyard (SF Airport Marriott), I thought it sounded like a good thing to check out.

Here’s the official blurb:

Opportunity Doesn’t Always Knock, Sometimes it Calls. Have you answered the call yet to attend the hottest telephony conference of the year? The Emerging Telephony Conference takes place next week February 27 to March 1, 2007 in Burlingame, California. ETel explores the strategies for taming disruption and exploiting opportunities being created by web telephony innovations.

You can see the list of speakers here and the full schedule is here. I’m not exactly sure if I’ll make it to all the sessions or just 2 of the days, but if anyone wants to geek out at lunch or something, get in touch.

Also, the kind folks at O’Reilly are giving LD readers a special 40% off discount. Not too shabby, eh? Register today with code etel07fnf40.

Email Overload and Interruptive Communications

Posted on February 21, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

I try to avoid re-posting content, but this list of ways to deal with email overload was too good to ignore. Original source is CNN/reuters:

Admit that e-mail is managing you. Let go of your need to check e-mail every ten minutes.
Commit to keeping your inbox empty.
Create files where you can put inbox material that needs to be acted on.
Make broad headings for your filing system so that you have to spend less time looking for filed material.
Deal immediately with any e-mail that can be handled in two minutes or less but create a file for mails that will take longer.
Set a target date to empty your in box. Don’t spend more than an hour at a time doing it.
Turn off automatic send/receive.
Establish regular times to review your e-mail.
Involve others in conquering your addiction.
Reduce the amount of e-mail you receive.
Save time by using only one subject per e-mail; delete extra comments from forwarded e-mail, and make the subject line detailed.
Celebrate taking a new approach to e-mail.

I’ve actually adopted #1 and #7 in the past two weeks, I must say, it’s been wonderful. I’ve come out against ~~CrackBerries~~ BlackBerries many times before, and I’m starting to really crystallize my thoughts on what it is I don’t like about the most recent innovations in communication technology (especially IMing, SMS/texting, email, mobile email, and even things like call-waiting): these are all forms of communication which are all about being interruptive.

So my auto-email updater is now off. IM is on, but I ignore it a lot when I am focusing on something, and I may soon turn it off more often. I like SMS, but can also easily ignore it. I do try to avoid call-waiting (except when the wife calls) as much as I can. I’m not perfect at any of these things, but I’m trying. I think I feel like I’m fighting an uphill battle, it seems as if the world is shifting into a mode where interruption is not just happening, but accepted and even encouraged.

I’d like to hope that we’re at the extreme end of the pendulum on these behaviors. I’d like to think people will shift back toward the middle. A little less phone calls in the movie theaters and at the restaurants. A few fewer Swiss Army Knives mounted to peoples’ ears at all occasions (psst, I mean bluetooth headsets). Maybe the little red blinky light on the BlackBerry can just keep going off throughout dinner? Or we can try to stop saying “hey, hold on just a sec, I wanna grab this call.” Can we please?

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

My name is Jeremy. It’s been 9 minutes since I’ve checked email, and I have 411 unread emails in my inbox.