TweakTown Australian Edition News Feed

Telstra are experiencing major outage to what seems like all of their services

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:52:22 PST

[UPDATE] Telstra's Facebook page has been updated with:

All - Telstra lost connectivity with the international data network around 1:40pm this afternoon, which resulted in an overload on domestic sites, causing issues with internet access.

The vast majority of customers are back online, but our engineers continue to monitor the network.

Call volumes are high to our customer service channels because of this outage and we appreciate your patience.

We'll keep you updated as soon as we can.

BREAKING: Telstra are experiencing a massive outage to their services, which seems to be affecting not just normal ADSL customers, but Cable-based, Next-G, Satellite and more. The outage started about an hour ago and has been quickly spreading.

Telstra's own Facebook page has been updated with the following message:

A service outage has been identified which is resulting in intermittent internet access. This is being treated as a matter of high priority. Thanks for your patience.

We're seeing discussions all over the place right now, with a news story on IT Wire, discussions on Overclockers Australia, AusGamers, and more.

Telstra's Service Status page says everything is OK, but was last updated at 9am.

This post will be updated as more information is released.

Samsung and Blockbuster unite, will bring films to Samsung-branded Smart TVs, and more

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:46:01 PST

Samsung Australia have just inked a deal with Blockbuster, where they'll allow thousands of Blockbuster movies to their new range of Smart TVs, as well as Galaxy-branded smartphones and tablets. Paul Uniacke, CEO of the Franchise Entertainment Group (who owns the rights to the Blockbuster brand in Australia) says that "the Samsung deal is a brilliant deal".

This will allow Australians to have access to thousands of movies that can be streamed directly to Samsung-branded products such as Blu-ray players, Smart TVs, tablets, smartphones and more. The new deal will also allow Samsung to push Blockbuster movies onto Samsung-branded notebooks and Ultrabooks.

According to "Samsung sources", the content deal struck with Blockbuster will not be announced until the second half of 2012, where global Samsung plans to launch their Blockbuster offering in the USA, UK, and Europe in the first half of 2012, with Australians getting access to the content as early as September.

Optus acquires Vivid Wireless, is now set to unleash 4G network

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:44:24 PST

Optus have just announced they've acquired Vivid Wireless for a tidy little sum of $230 million, with full intent on using Vivid's existing spectrum to boost its 4G network using LTE-TDD. The full announcement is below:

Optus today announced that it has entered into a conditional agreement to acquire Vividwireless Group Limited (which operates under the vividwireless and unwired brands) from Seven Group Holdings (SGH), for an expected cash consideration of A$230 million.

- Through the acquisition, Optus will also gain access to up to 98MHz of spectrum in the 2.3GHz band, a band already used by some of the world's leading operators to provide 4G services.

- Optus plans to use this spectrum to build a new 4G network using LTE-TDD technology.

- This new network will deliver wireless broadband to households and businesses in metropolitan Australia with typical download speeds ranging from 25Mbps to 87Mbps - twice as fast as existing competitive 4G services. It will be integrated with Optus' 1800MHz 4G network, which will be launched in Newcastle and the Hunter region of New South Wales in April 2012.

So, Optus, you'll be delivering 4G services "twice as fast as existing competitive 4G services", such as those with Telstra? We'll see just how fast your 4G download speeds are when you deliver it. I could almost put money on it not beating Telstra. But, here we have it, folks. 4G is coming from Optus.

US firm Space Systems/Loral wins NBN contract worth $620 million

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:25:05 PST

US-based Space Systems/Loral has won a $620 million contract that involves two satellites which will provide high-speed broadband to areas in remote Australia. The announcement was made just moments ago in Canberra by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, as well as NBN Co chief Mike Quigley.

Loral Space and Communications, a California-based group, will launch two satellites which will provide the high-speed Internet by 2015 under the national broadband network (NBN). If you didn't already know, the NBN Co is the federal government-owned enterprise who is in charge of rolling out fibre optic cable broadband to 93-percent of Australia's 13 million homes, schools and businesses by 2021.

If the fibre optic network is not available to you, the fixed wireless technology and satellite technology will be used to 4-percent of premises, and 3-percent of the remaining premises, respectively. Stephen Conroy said in a statement:

This will ensure high speed broadband is delivered to Australia's remotest towns, such as Calvert in the Northern Territory and Bandya in Western Australia.

Australia's first Windows Phone-powered Nokia device arrives in March

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:23:06 PST

The first Windows Phone-powered Nokia-branded smartphone to go down under, will be the Nokia Lumia 800. It has been confirmed by Nokia, but which carriers will take it on? Nokia's answer: "all of them, and possibly others, too."

Nokia said in a statement that the Lumia 800 will arrive in Australia in March "through Optus, Telstra, Vodafone and all major retailers in March." No pricing or exact date in March have been etched into concrete, yet. There'll be three colours available, shown in the picture above.

Have you held out for the Lumia 800, or have you chosen to order it and have it shipped over? Not long until we see some competition against Android and iOS-based smartphones in Australia.