Adventure Ausrama Blog

Netflix will provide 4K streaming services in Australia from March next year. Just how successful this will be is questionable Broadband is poor for the majority of Australians with suburban Aussies mostly on 200 GB of download space at ADSL2 speed. This is insufficient for 4K. You will have to pay a high premium to Netflix to get it as well. Few will pay more for less, so few will buy 4K televisions to get it. Personally, I feel it is a bad business judgement. You can't sell travel tickets before the railway is built and it will be at least a decade before Australian broadband is even adequate. Like all the other Internet companies Netflix will spy on you, offering new content based on your history of movies watched. You will not be able to turn this "feature" off. Just about everything is available on Foxtel now and the price is falling. Spying is not possible on the Foxtel satellite TV service. In the US, Netflix has been accused of crowding out...

If the National Broadband Network ever gets finished health care for rural Australians will improve. The Abbott Government has sacked the NBN board. It has also began an inquiry. When will this end and real completion goals be set? The previous government made the mistake of not having goals. This is what led to its demise in the last election - it had lost its way on most issues. An inquiry is seen as more "pussy-footing around". We need a clearly defined schedule.  All major construction projects have dates set out for finalization of each stage. Why does the NBN have to be any different? Surely they know how much time it takes to lay "X" amount of fiber optic cable. This is the problem with monopolies: they consume time and money. Why not put stages out for competitive tenders? Surely real competition can get things moving. The inquiry must come up with positive workable solutions. We cannot have another government mess up. Get rid of the bu...

CSIRO continues its groundbreaking work in broadband technology. After taking US based computer manufacturers to court to make them pay for Wi-Fi developed by CSIRO, work goes ahead on wireless broadband. The new system uses ordinary VHF antennas already on rooftops. Smithton in Tasmania is the town chosen for project testing. Terminals were set up on six farms, the furthest one being 8.2 km away from the transmitter. Phone, the Internet and video were tested. A speed of 12 megabits per second was achieved using just one TV channel. VHF channels are soon to be phased out with free to air television moving to UHF. The new broadband is very efficient. Where television had broadcast using 40 kilowatts per channel, wireless Internet worked perfectly with 3-watt. The technique of "beamforming" was used: multi-user input and spacial division multiplexing output. Work still has to be done to improve downloading capability. Such an Internet system is of paramount importance to Austra...

Tasmania turns the new broadband network on. Well the initial phase has been hooked up and is working. The project is going to be a vast enterprise with optical fiber being laid in place of copper. It will offer consumers video streaming that is 100 times faster than at present. The difference will seem magical to most people. Hopefully and I mean hopefully it will be no more expensive than existing services. The Government has promised that it will be cheaper, a miserly $29.95 a month. Time will tell on the price. The service is being set up as a virtual non-profit business, a public system aiming for only 6 percent profit. Apparently, e-health is coming to Australia. Patients will be monitored from home. In the Us such a system has resulted in hospital admissions being cut by 60 percent. Sick children will receive schooling direct to their sick bed. Buildings will become 'alive' with remote monitoring cutting power bills. Traffic lights will be synchronized. Mobile connectiv...