ZDNet Australia

Telstra's Nine hopes put content in spotlight

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Suzanne Tindal) — Thu, 31 May 2012 16:45:01 +1000

Telstra is thinking about purchasing the Nine Network, and is currently going over the numbers with an investment bank advisor, according to The Australian. Does this put the cat among the pigeons for the competition watchdog?

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has been very busy in the content area, having to investigate Foxtel's acquisition of Austar. It finally decided that the deal could go through, after seeking and obtaining Foxtel's agreement to a number of conditions saying that it wouldn't keep certain content to itself in exclusive deals.

Telstra actually owns 50 per cent of Foxtel, which would make any acquisition of the Nine Network a concerning prospect.

Optus CEO Paul O'Sullivan has often pointed out that telecommunications is going to be a content game (PDF), and has spent a lot of time worrying that big providers will lock away access to that content, barring the way for anyone else. After all, once everyone is using NBN Co's pipes, differentiation is going to be key.

Telstra will have a lot of cash from its deal from NBN Co - that is, if it isn't altered by the Coalition, which seems likely to come into power at the next election.

Optus' parent SingTel has recognised the importance of going on the attack in this sense, with its recent restructure set to make sure that the telco doesn't lose ground to content players.

iiNet, meanwhile, has been busy pushing Fetch TV, which it and a number of other smaller telcos offer as a content package. It was one of the most vocal parties making submissions on the Austar-Foxtel deal.

iiNet was disappointed that the ACCC let the deal go through. "Now you've got Telstra, with its 50 per cent ownership of this merged entity - it's going to be able to dominate the bundled TV and broadband sector, with offers in the regions that nobody is going to be able to match, because no one's got the infrastructure in the country to be able to deliver the content you will get on Foxtel and Austar merged together," iiNet chief regulatory officer Steve Dalby said.

If Telstra is allowed to buy Nine, this effect could be exacerbated.

Luckily, it seems that the ACCC is very aware of these issues. Chairman Rod Sims told The Australian that the ACCC would have to look into forcing Telstra to sell its Foxtel stake if it decides to buy Nine.

It has also previously said that it has its eye on content providers trying to enter the telco space to take customers away from traditional providers.

Let's hope that its attention doesn't wander on the issue. In a world where infrastructure is standard, content is indeed king.

Cisco predicts zettabytes, declining peer-to-peer

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Josh Taylor) — Thu, 31 May 2012 16:29:01 +1000

As network traffic is tipped to reach zettabyte levels by 2016, network vendor Cisco has said that peer-to-peer traffic, as a percentage of total internet traffic, will actually drop 23 per cent in the next four years.

In Cisco's 2011-2016 Visual Networking Index forecast released yesterday, the company forecasts that, by 2016, IP traffic is projected to reach 1.3 zettabytes (or 1.3 billion terabytes) globally, equating to 110 exabytes per month. The Asia-Pacific region is expected to generate the most IP traffic, at 40.5 exabytes per month in 2016, followed by North America. The United States will remain the biggest traffic generating country at 22 exabytes per month, followed by China at 12 exabytes per month.

There will be 2.5 network connections per person globally by 2016, or 18.9 billion in total, but the percentage that is connected to PCs will decline from 94 per cent to 81 per cent, with the increasing take up of smartphones and tablets.

Peer-to-peer traffic currently accounts for 77 per cent of all network traffic, or 4.6 exabytes per month in 2011. This is set to hit 10 exabytes by 2016, but it will only account for 54 per cent of all global network traffic in 2016, according to Cisco. The change, in part, is due to the growth of internet video users, which is set to increase from 792 million in 2011 to 1.5 billion in 2016.

There will be 23 million internet users in Australia with nearly 142 million network-connected devices by 2016 - equating to almost 6 devices, per person.

Bucking current trends of fixed line decline, Cisco predicts there will be 18 million fixed line internet users, up from 12 million in 2011. The average internet user will generate 30.1GB of traffic per month, a 577 per cent increase from 4.5GB per month that was generated in 2011.

Mobile traffic will grow twice as fast as fixed traffic between 2011 to 2016, with the average connection generating close to 3GB of mobile data traffic per month in 2016.

Suraj Shetty, vice president of Cisco's product and solutions marketing, said that as people start to have more than one internet-enabled device, the zettabytes just start piling up.

"Each of us increasingly connect to the network via multiple devices in our "always-on" connected lifestyles. Whether by video phone calls, movies on tablets, web-enabled TVs or desktop video conferencing, the sum of our actions not only creates demand for zettabytes of bandwidth, but also dramatically changes the network requirements needed to deliver on the expectations of this 'new normal'."

SmartSparrow gives e-learning wings

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Mahesh Sharma) — Thu, 31 May 2012 14:49:01 +1000

For over a century, education has been stuck in the multiple-choice paradigm, so University of New South Wales student Dror Ben-Naim used his four-year PhD in adaptive e-learning to develop an alternative: an application-based "intelligent learning system".

The result was SmartSparrow, an application for university professors to build engaging online courses and interactive learning environments. The courses are known as smart learning apps. One example is an online, visual lab, where science students can perform virtual experiments. Rather than being an app developer, Ben-Naim described SmartSparrow as the university market's iOS.

"The Apple apps are third-party developers, and Apple provides them the framework, which is iOS," Ben-Naim said. "We're not a teaching company; we're a tool for teachers.

"We think the best way to improve learning is by empowering teachers - and really, that's our focus. We're about empowering and inspiring teachers with technology, such as an adaptive lab, a smart virtual lab.

"There's a huge demand, and there's a lot of tech you need to provide."

Professors can access student-performance analytics to improve course content and provide unique feedback to individual students, which Ben-Naim said is the foundation of an intelligent teaching system.

Six months ago, Ben-Naim closed a multimillion-dollar funding round, which he negotiated with venture capital firm OneVentures and fund UniSeed (a partnership to commercialise technology developed at the University of Melbourne, the University of Queensland and the University of New South Wales), achieved less than a year after SmartSparrow was spun out of UNSW.

There are about 100 professors using SmartSparrow, including several at the University of Arizona, where it was used to develop an online course on space exploration.

SWOT analysis

Strengths

It has early traction both locally and overseas, raised millions in funding, the founder experienced the problem firsthand and is passionate about learning.

Weaknesses

Some user-education is required to use the platform efficiently. It misses the opportunity to service students directly.

Opportunities

E-learning is a multibillion-dollar global market (education providers want to teach and students want to learn), and this will explode as universities attempt to use online channels to grow their student numbers.

Threats

I expect there would be similar technologies being developed in Silicon Valley, which could raise a greater amount of funding and take the critical first-mover advantage.

Conclusion

Ben-Naim is passionate about improving the quality of learning, and plans to achieve this via his ambitious and detailed vision. SmartSparrow is championed by its users, and the multimillion-dollar investment ensures that he has the resources at his disposal to properly execute it. The combination of these factors will ensure that it is a huge success.

Verdict: BOOM

Facial recognition OK, bar Facebook: survey

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Michael Lee) — Thu, 31 May 2012 13:23:02 +1000

Australians generally accept the value of facial-recognition technology for security purposes, but when applied to social media, only a minority accept its use.

(Fraunhofer Face Finder image by Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0)

This conclusion came from research conducted by Unisys (PDF) as part of its annual Unisys Security Index (PDF), which involved a national survey of over 1200 adults. It found that only 38 per cent of respondents supported Facebook's use of facial-recognition technology to identify or tag friends in photographs, while 50 per cent outright opposed its role in social media. The remaining 12 per cent had not yet formed a view.

The technology itself isn't to blame, however, with the context in which it is used appearing to be the main factor of whether it is trusted. When used for airport customs or immigration staff to identify passengers on police watch lists, 95 per cent of respondents supported the use of facial recognition, and only 4 per cent opposed it.

Similarly, when it came to police combining facial-recognition technology with footage from security cameras or publicly submitted videos, 92 per cent supported its use, and just 6 per cent opposed it.

But support began to fall when the technology was used by in the workplace to help employers identify what parts of a building their staff had accessed. About 66 per cent supported facial recognition used in this way, while 29 per cent opposed it.

"The research findings clearly show that the Australian public's support for facial recognition technology is determined by the context within which it is used," said Unisys Asia Pacific security program director John Kendall.

"There is very strong support for facial-recognition technology, but only in circumstances that Australians deem to be appropriate, such as policing or protecting borders."

Kendall said that even though Australians support the technology, they only support its use when they know what benefits there are to gain, indicating that people are still not convinced of the benefits of automatically tagging friends in social networks.

"These results suggest that Australians are happy for new security technology to be used, but only when they can perceive a clear and substantive benefit for themselves and for the broader community. When that benefit is less clear, then the level of support starts to decline," Kendall said.

Other findings from Unisys' research indicate that Australian attitudes towards security have not changed in the past year. Data-privacy issues continue to remain the highest concerns among those surveyed, specifically relating to credit/debit card fraud and identity theft.

PyCon offers $500 to attract women

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Suzanne Tindal) — Thu, 31 May 2012 11:23:01 +1000

PyCon Australia and Google are trying to get more women to attend the PyCon Australia conference, by offering $500 "gender diversity delegate grants" to fund travel, accommodation and registration costs for some delegates.

Women who are older than 18 and live further than 150km away from Hobart, where the conference will be held, are eligible for the grants - as long as they intend to attend both days of the conference and are interested in, or work on, Python-related fields or projects.

Pycon Australia and Google have said that the grants aim to reduce the financial barriers for diverse groups "who contribute, in important ways, to the Python community" to attend the conference.

Applications for the grants close on 22 June. Recipients will be told if they were successful in their application by 29 June.

PyCon Australia is the national conference for those who work with the Python programming language, and will be held on 18 and 19 August in Hobart.

Samsung launches Galaxy S III

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Josh Taylor) — Thu, 31 May 2012 11:11:01 +1000

With much fanfare and spectacle, Samsung today launched its latest smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S III, available on all major carriers from lunchtime today.

Samsung Galaxy S III
(Credit: Samsung Electronics)

Samsung held off announcing the device until today, despite providing launch dates for other regions at the beginning of the month. The company launched the device at Sydney's Capitol Theatre this morning.

The Samsung Galaxy S III features a 1.4GHz quad-core processor, Google Android Ice Cream Sandwich, an 8-megapixel camera with a HD Super AMOLED display at 4.8 inches, 1GB of RAM, near-field communication (NFC) and up to 64GB of storage, with only 16GB offered to Australian customers today. The phone comes in a choice of marble white or pebble blue.

Vodafone was first out with its pricing plans (below), starting at $29 per month on a 24-month plan, with a $20 handset repayment. This plan comes with 400MB of data per month in the first 12 months, and 200MB per month in the following 12 months.

Vodafone pricing
(Screenshot by Josh Taylor/ZDNet Australia)

Prices for Telstra start at $72 per month for $550 worth of calls, unlimited texts and 1.5GB of data per month, and plans go up to $129 per month for unlimited calls and texts and 3GB of data per month.

Optus plans start at $50 per month, with $12 per month in handset repayments. That includes $500 worth of calls, unlimited texts and 1GB of data. The highest Optus plan costs $99 per month, with unlimited calls and texts and 3GB of data per month.

Virgin Mobile has the device starting at $47 per month with $190 worth of plan credit and 250MB of data per month.

Virgin pricing
(Screenshot by Josh Taylor/ZDNet Australia)

Customers will be set back $899 to buy the phone outright, but Allphones is currently selling the device for $798 for the 16GB model.

In addition to working on existing 3G networks, the Samsung Galaxy S III is compatible with long-term evolution (LTE) or "4G" networks, but Optus has said that the phone will only support HSPA+ on its network.

Telstra told ZDNet Australia that it was in discussions with Samsung to bring a 4G version of the Samsung Galaxy S III to Australia, but it would likely be several months before the device hits Australian shores.

Spreets co-founders to exit company

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Luke Hopewell) — Thu, 31 May 2012 10:28:01 +1000

Co-founders of Australian daily deals site Spreets are heading for the exits in what its parent company Yahoo7 is calling a "planned management transition" set to take place next month.

Yahoo7 chief operating officer Stuart Sayers will head up the group-buying site, as Dean McEvoy and Justus Hammer exit the company next month.

Sayers thanked McEvoy and Hammer for their work with the company, while acknowledging that the company is now facing a tough market.

"While the current market for group buying has been challenging, the Yahoo7 management team remains committed to the success of the Spreets business, and to building a strong and sustainable group-buying business," Sayers said.

Yahoo7 bought Spreets last year for $40 million.

Australia's distant cloud

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Phil Dobbie) — Thu, 31 May 2012 10:05:02 +1000

The National Broadband Network (NBN) will provide fat pipes into our homes, creating an appetite for more content, more quickly. Yet, 80 per cent of what we consume resides in the US. Won't we hit capacity problems?

This week's Twisted Wire looks at the growth of the datacentre industry in Australia, and asks: is it enough?

International capacity will always be a bottleneck, unless more of the content we access is hosted locally. Caching and other network solutions can be part of the answer, but they are less relevant with the increasing use of real-time applications.

All of this may be good news for datacentre providers. Right now, there is more than $2 billion invested in building new centres. The downside for consumers is the relatively high cost of local hosting - electricity is expensive, and we don't have the economies of scale enjoyed in larger markets. There's also a local competitor who is greener, cheaper and well connected, and situated just over the Tasman.

In this week's program, you'll hear from:

Sean O'Halloran, CEO at Alcatel-Lucent Australia
James Spencely, CEO at Vocus
Mark Rushworth, CEO at Pacific Fibre.

Do you think datacentres are the next big opportunity for the Australian telecommunications industry? Is the current investment just the start of something much larger? Call the Twisted Wire feedback line on 02 9304 5198 to air your views.

Running time: 29 minutes, 30 seconds

Global server shipments up, but revenue down

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Larry Dignan) — Thu, 31 May 2012 09:07:01 +1000

Hewlett-Packard has managed to top the global server market, as far as shipments are concerned, followed by Dell and IBM.

According to the latest figures from Gartner, shipment numbers were up during the first quarter of 2012. However, that doesn't mean sales figures are on par as well, as Gartner researchers also found that revenue was on the decline during the same time frame.

Fortunately, the disparity isn't too great - yet. Specifically, worldwide server shipments grew by 1.5 per cent, whereas server revenue declined 1.8 per cent.

However, Gartner research vice president Jeffrey Hewitt noted in the report that the results can be seen in a different light.

The first quarter of 2012 produced relatively weak shipment growth on a global level, with a variation in results by region. All regions showed growth in server shipments except Western Europe, which posted a decline of 6.4 per cent. In terms of revenue, Asia/Pacific, Middle East/Africa and Western Europe posted declines. These results are not that surprising considering the current variations in regional economic conditions.

To hone in even further, Eastern Europe grew the most during the first quarter with a 16 per cent increase in shipments, while Japan posted the highest vendor revenue growth with 10.6 per cent.

Following better-than-expected second quarter earnings (despite major layoffs that are coming up), Hewlett-Packard topped the global vendor list, as far as shipments are concerned, despite a 0.4 per cent decline from the previous quarter.

Dell, IBM, Fujitsu, and Cisco rounded out the top five - and, the last two were the only ones to see any growth in shipment numbers during Q1 2012.

Furthermore, Fujitsu was also the only company, among the top five global server vendors, to post positive revenue growth at 4.5 per cent.

Via ZDNet US

Qld IT job losses Labor's fault: govt

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Luke Hopewell) — Thu, 31 May 2012 09:03:01 +1000

The Queensland Department of Education has let go of 171 IT contractors, blaming the previous government for forcing the minister's hand.

Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek's office confirmed to ZDNet Australia this week that the department won't be renewing the contracts of 171 IT staff, due to the need for budget cuts.

"Because of the previous Labor state government's financial mismanagement, Queensland is heading towards an $85 billion debt. Ministers have been asked to go through their departments to identify savings across the state, and that will be an ongoing process," the minister told ZDNet Australia in a statement this week.

Queensland's opposition leader, Anastacia Palaszczuk, slammed Premier Campbell Newman's orders to clear the decks.

"It is incredibly hard to provide for your family, and it is incredibly hard to pay the mortgage, if you do not have a job. Telling people on a Friday afternoon that they are dismissed and should not come to work on Monday is a shameful way to treat employees. This week, the same thing will happen to the IT section in the Education Department - [171] employees are gone, and those people will only find out when they turn up to work," she said in state parliament this week.

Flame virus could attack other nations

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Lance Whitney) — Thu, 31 May 2012 08:52:01 +1000

The Flame virus recently found in Iran could be used to infect other countries, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

The United Nations agency, which is charged with helping members protect their data networks, plans to issue a warning about the danger of Flame.

"This is the most serious [cyber] warning we have ever put out," Marco Obiso, cybersecurity coordinator for the ITU, told Reuters. The warning will paint the virus as a "dangerous espionage tool that could potentially be used to attack critical infrastructure," Reuters added.

Flame was recently identified as a culprit in a cyber attack against Iran and other countries in the Middle East. The malware was caught stealing sensitive data from computer systems and files, and is also designed to capture information from computer displays and audio conversations.

Security vendor Kaspersky Lab, which claims to have uncovered Flame on behalf of an ITU request, said the virus is around 20 times the size of Stuxnet, the virus that infected an Iranian nuclear plant in 2010. Kaspersky believes that the new malware exceeds other threats known to date, in both complexity and functionality.

The ITU is also airing on the side of caution, with Obiso calling Flame a "much more serious threat than Stuxnet", believing that the virus was likely created by a nation state. However, others don't share the same doom-and-gloom attitude.

Hacking expert Jeff Moss, who serves on the Department of Homeland Security's advisory council, said that the ITU and Kaspersky are "overreacting" to the spread of Flame, Reuters noted. Researcher Marcus Carey from security firm Rapid7 said that every new malware discovered these days seems to be called "the worst ever".

The ITU was contacted for comment, but no response had been received at the time of writing.

Amidst the debate over the threat of Flame, Iran claims to have achieved victory over the virus.

The country's National Computer Emergency Response Team said that it has engineered a defence against the malware that can identify and remove it, according to BBC News. The response team also said that the security tool was actually completed in early May, and is now ready to be sent to organisations that are in danger of being infected.

Any long-term analysis of Flame, also known as SkyWiper, could take a while.

McAfee has found that the virus' main module alone consists of more 650,000 lines of code. And much of the code is purposely confusing, in order to thwart security experts from easily deciphering it.

But that same complexity could keep other cybercriminals from adopting the code for their own purposes.

"The extraordinary amount of obfuscation of the code ensures that the functionality of the executables is not only hard to understand, but also helps reduce the risk that one could capture the code and easily utilise it for their own needs," a McAfee representative said in a statement.

Via CNET

Westpac CIO wants tertiary collaboration

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Luke Hopewell) — Thu, 31 May 2012 08:48:01 +1000

Westpac chief information officer (CIO) Clive Whincup has said that companies who want better IT graduates ought to work more closely with tertiary institutions, to develop more applicable courses for students.

(Studying image by Stephen S, CC2.0)

Speaking at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) event in Sydney yesterday about the skills shortage facing the Australian technology sector, he said that Australian companies ought to work with universities to build courses that teach business-appropriate content.

He said that, when he speaks to the university graduates who enter Westpac, he's often surprised to find that many of them are ill-equipped for the tasks they need to complete.

"I talk to all of our graduate intake into Westpac technology, and what I increasingly see is ... insufficient awareness of a business environment, and business applications of the skills that they learn in universities.

"All too often, it's quite a shocking experience for our grads to realise that there are aspects of technology, that are everyday features and facts of life in a large organisation, which they simply have not encountered in any of their previous academic experience," he said.

Whincup said that he would happily work with tertiary institutions to build more appropriate courses for students looking to get a job in the financial services technology sector.

"My belief is that [universities and the industry] need to collaborate much closer on content for some of the courses - particularly, perhaps, elective courses, which are much more business-focused - and prepare our graduates and our students earlier, for the kinds of things they're going to be asked to do with technologies, when they do actually enter the workforce. I'm personally very willing to do that."

Whincup added that universities could shoulder some of the blame for inadequate education, saying that institutions rarely listen to the feedback of their alumni.

"I do feel as well, that universities make insufficient use of their alumni once they do enter the workforce, because actually [listening to] the experience that new graduates entering the workforce is the key to understanding how their academic preparation can help them introduce their skills into the workforce.

"Those are the people that know, specifically, what the issues are. I really enjoy talking to grads and young people. And they, for some reason, really enjoy talking to me. That's the key."

Whincup said that the supply of skilled technology workers in Australia will always outpace demand, adding that, as a result, Westpac felt comfortable tapping contractors for IT work.

"If we look at the increasing demand for technology skills in Australia, it's become clear that we will never produce enough technologists to fulfil our own internal demand. Just as in any other industry, a direct consequence of that, is that we will tap into global supply chains to fulfil that," he said.

Westpac has previously been criticised by unions for its "best sourcing" program, which sees the bank outsource some of its technology jobs.

Wikileaks' Assange can be extradited: court

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (AAP) — Thu, 31 May 2012 08:32:01 +1000

Julian Assange has lost his British Supreme Court extradition appeal, but lawyers of the Wikileaks founder want the matter revisited.

While the 40-year-old Australian was stuck in London traffic en route to the hearing on Wednesday, a courtroom packed with global media heard Lord Phillips recount the findings of a seven-member judicial panel.

For more than 18 months, Queensland-born Assange has been fighting a Swedish public prosecutor's request that he be extradited to Stockholm, for questioning over allegations of sexual assault against two women in August 2010.

Lawyers for Assange argued that the prosecutor was not a judicial authority, the title necessary to order an extradition.

Five Justices of the UK Supreme Court disagreed with Assange, while two decided in his favour.

"The majority has concluded that the Swedish public prosecutor was a judicial authority ... it follows that the request for Mr Assange's extradition has been lawfully made, and his appeal against extradition is dismissed," Lord Phillips said.

Assange's barrister, Dinah Rose, Queen's Counsel (QC), pounced on the judgment, suggesting that the majority of Justices had based their decision on an interpretation of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a point of law which had not been argued during the appeal hearing.

Subsequently, Rose was granted 14 days to submit an application to the court, which could lead to the appeal being reopened.

"The minority of judges considered that the words 'judicial authority' mean what they say: a court and a law," Assange's solicitor Gareth Peirce told reporters outside the court after the judgment.

"Lady Hale, in her dissenting judgment, considered that the basis on which the majority decided, was putting the cart before the horse; that you cannot say that practice determines what the law means."

Peirce said the matter must be given further consideration by the court.

"We will be informing the Supreme Court that the basis on which the majority decided the Vienna Convention point, the practice, trumping the law, was not argued before the court at all and we, therefore, didn't have an opportunity to argue it. And that, in itself, would be a breach of ... a fair hearing," she said.

Assange has previously indicated that if his Supreme Court appeal was unsuccessful, he would consider taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, QC, said the British Supreme Court decision was "inevitable", but not unanimous.

"There are technical possibilities and, of course, the main issue is the European Court of Human Rights, because that is the final court in Europe and certainly he has a reasonable prospect there, but it is unlikely that they would halt the extradition," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Australia would provide consular services to Assange.

Two Swedish women had accused Wikileaks founder Julian Assange of sexual assault, a matter made murky by the fact that the allegations were lodged a month after Wikileaks began publishing thousands of classified US government documents.

Telstra 4G spreads, Next G still king

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Josh Taylor) — Wed, 30 May 2012 17:23:01 +1000

Telstra has revealed that it is selling close to 40,000 "4G" devices per month, and has boasted that a new survey ranks Telstra's Next G network performance above that of Optus and Vodafone.

The company today announced that it has turned on its 1000th long-term evolution (LTE) "4G" base station in Mackay, Queensland, with over 300,000 devices sold since launching the network in September last year.

Up until this week, Telstra had just two 4G phones in the market: the HTC Velocity 4G and the Samsung Galaxy S II 4G. This week, the company also launched the HTC Titan 4G. Telstra told ZDNet Australia that of the 300,000 devices sold so far, 70,000 are 4G phones; the rest are either tablets, USB dongles or mobile Wi-Fi devices.

At the same time as the company is experiencing a boom in 4G sales, it is also adding new customers to its 3G network at a record pace, gaining over 2.5 million new customers in almost two years. Customers have reported that this is putting a strain on the network, but Telstra said it has upgraded more than 5000 base stations over the last year to meet the growing demand.

The company backed up its credentials by pointing to a survey conducted by US research firm JD Power and Associates, which said that Telstra has the best mobile network in Australia.

The organisation spoke to 1900 Australian mobile customers between February and March this year, comparing texting, voice calls and data across Telstra, Optus, Virgin and Vodafone, and found that Telstra ranked highest overall, with only 10 customer-reported problems per 100 network connections. The next closest was Virgin Mobile, a subsidiary of Optus, with 13 per 100.

Overall, the report found that Australians have the most problems with slow downloads, at 24 problems per 100 connections, followed by web-connection failures, at 14 per 100. The report noted that the number of problems with Australian networks is relatively similar to that in the US, but Australians reported a slightly higher number of problems with downloads; 24 per 100, compared to 21 per 100 in the US.

Telstra's executive director of mobile, Warwick Bray, said that the results reflect Telstra's own research.

"Our customers tell us they choose Telstra for superior coverage, fewer dropped calls and because they can enjoy reliable mobile data on the move. The research findings confirm what our customers and drive surveys have told us for years, and are a testament to the skill of our network engineering team, which is among the most experienced in the world," Bray said.

Australian mainframes breaking the budget

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Suzanne Tindal) — Wed, 30 May 2012 17:03:01 +1000

On the same day that the South Australian Government announced that its spending $33 million to expand a mainframe services contract, a survey has revealed that Australian mainframe users are paying through the nose for their loyalty to the platform.

Australian mainframe users spent 30 per cent of their annual IT budget, the most of any of the markets surveyed, according to a survey of 590 IT decision makers, 35 of which were in Australia, commissioned by Micro Focus. It was spent on operating, maintaining and improving the integrity of their mainframe applications

Eleven per cent of those Australian mainframe users had allocated between 40 and 50 per cent of their annual budget to maintain their mainframes, annually.

In comparison, New Zealand and UK firms spent only about 23 and 25 per cent, respectively, on maintaining their mainframes.

Unfortunately, the costs of maintaining mainframes was also on the rise, according to 49 per cent of respondents, due to unexpected increases in workload processing power, higher licensing costs relating to mainframe million instructions per minute (MIPS) and business increases.

And, prior research has shown that Australia's love affair with the mainframe is hardly over. A global study conducted two years ago, by business services company BMC, said that companies thought that mainframes were there to stay.

Of the 71 Australian respondents, 94 per cent said that they believed the mainframe was a viable platform. None of the respondents said that they planned to stop using the platform in the near future.

"As a transaction engine, they just are the simplest example of how that system works," BMC's director of mainframe James Russell told ZDNet Australia at the time, and explained that it was efficient, reliable, centralised and easy to manage.

Bruce Craig, country manager for Australia and New Zealand at Micro Focus, said that it was important to conduct applications management to prioritise what applications are provided with expensive processing power.

Of the respondents, 61 per cent saw value in managing their application portfolio, with 74 per cent saying that they would like to be able to migrate applications "as is" to other platforms.

Twenty-nine per cent of businesses said that they offload application testing to another environment. Although 72 per cent do application testing on the mainframe, only 43 per cent have enough MIPS to do so efficiently, according to the survey.

"This research highlights that IT is increasingly becoming an asset management problem," said Craig.

Symantec replaces Aussie vice president

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Michael Lee) — Wed, 30 May 2012 16:53:01 +1000

Symantec managing director and vice president for the Pacific region, Craig Scroggie, has stepped down from his position after serving the business for eight and a half years.

Craig Scroggie
(Credit: Symantec)

Scroggie will be replaced by Brenton Smith, who joined Symantec a year ago as the company's vice president for the Symantec.cloud business across the Asia-Pacific, Japan and Singapore regions.

Smith was previously the managing director for CA Technologies in Australia and New Zealand, and, over the past 20 years, has held senior positions at organisations including Siebel Systems, SAP and SAP consultancy BrightStar.

"Brenton brings a wealth of experience to this role," said Symantec senior vice president of Asia Pacific and Japan, Bernard Kwok.

"With his great wisdom and hands-on approach, I look forward to this next chapter of Symantec in Australia and New Zealand under Brenton's leadership."

Kwok also acknowledged Scroggie's contribution to the company, wishing him the best with his plans to pursue other business interests outside of the company.

The company said that following Smith's new role, the Symantec.cloud business will move into the Asia-Pacific and Japan strategic sales group led by Bjorn Engelhardt.

China not behind US military chip backdoor

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Michael Lee) — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:09:01 +1000

China was not involved in a backdoor that was allegedly installed in chips used by the US military, according to the researcher who originally made the discovery.

(The door is not obvious image by DaveBleasdale, CC BY 2.0)

Earlier this month, Sergei Skorobogatov, a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, released draft papers for his hardware security research. Notably, his most recent work looked at an "American military chip [the Actel/Microsemi ProASIC3] that is highly secure, with sophisticated encryption standard [and] manufactured in China". Upon examination, he found a previously unknown backdoor, which had been inserted by the manufacturer.

"This backdoor has a key, which we were able to extract. If you use this key, you can disable the chip or reprogram it at will, even if locked by the user with their own key. This particular chip is prevalent in many systems, from weapons [and] nuclear power plants to public transport. In other words, this backdoor access could be turned into an advanced Stuxnet weapon to attack potentially millions of systems," Skorobogatov wrote at the time.

After Skorobogatov's work was picked up by Reddit, many jumped to the conclusion that China was behind the backdoor.

"The claims about [the] Chinese being involved, was made up by someone who originally made the post at Reddit," Skorobogatov told ZDNet Australia.

"It is the US manufacturer Actel who inserted the backdoor," Skorobogatov wrote.

"We never said the Chinese have put a backdoor inside Actel's chips and it does not say so in our papers. It is as though people have put two and two together and made four or five or six, depending on what their agenda is. We believe that other chips will have backdoors. And since a US chip has them and [that] you can do lots of things that give you a vast amount of control over the devices, then, is there any reason to suggest other manufacturers have not done the same?"

Errata Security researcher Robert Graham also called initial reports "bogus", saying there was no evidence to suggest that it was the Chinese that were responsible, or even that the backdoor was malicious.

He explained that the chips have a built-in debugging interface, known as JTAG (named after the Joint Test Action Group, which was formed to test circuit boards). It is in most chips, because it's too costly to make customised versions, without the interface. To use or exploit the interface, you actually need physical access to the chip.

"Whether you call this a security feature to prevent others from hacking the chip through JTAG or a secret backdoor available only to the manufacturer, is open to interpretation," Graham wrote on the Errata Security blog.

Actel, itself, appears to call it a backdoor, noting in a 2002 security paper (PDF) that chips which use Static-RAM (SRAM), including the ProASIC3 (PDF), are vulnerable to attack:

All SRAM [field-programmable gate arrays] (FPGAs) come with a security back-door that leaves designs vulnerable to compromise. Internet news groups regularly detail the ease with which one can simply read back the internal configuration bit-stream, through a chip's JTAG or proprietary programming interface.

Today's largest suppliers now integrate a variety of security settings in all FPGAs, but, unfortunately, even "locking" your SRAM chip with the vendor's security bit might not be good enough to prevent theft. It is easy to surmount some device families' security safeguards by applying high-voltage sequences to certain pins. This action puts the chips into manufacturing test modes, which re-enable internal-device-state access.

Furthermore, Actel's paper notes "SRAM FPGAs ... consistently prove inadequate for providing effective design security", and recommends using chips based on technologies other than SRAM.

Given the age of the paper and the potential for technology to have changed in the meantime, ZDNet Australia contacted Microsemi to confirm that the paper was still relevant to the ProASIC3, but had not received a reply at the time of writing.

As for whether the chips are used in military applications at all, remains to be seen. Graham notes that the US military uses a lot of commercial, off-the-shelf products, indicating that the issue may not be as widespread as initial reports may have assumed it to be.

He also notes that none of Actel's chips have been certified by the US Government to hold secrets.

On the other hand, Skorobogatov said that Actel's parent company Microsemi is a military-oriented manufacturer, and Actel, which Skorobogatov said was acquired over a year ago, aimed 70 per cent of its sales at military customers.

"They are trying to push their products for industrial applications, but, due to high cost and competition, still remain mainly military oriented."

Defence IT a bigger job than expected: Farr

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Josh Taylor) — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:48:01 +1000

Department of Defence (DoD) CIO Greg Farr has said that the department was provided with $550 million in the 2012-13 Budget for IT remediation because the DoD's IT environment is a bigger job than was originally thought when the strategic reform program began in 2009.

Greg Farr
(Credit: Department of Defence)

While the DoD was one of the harshest hit in this year's Federal Budget, with the government pushing for cuts to achieve a surplus, information technology remediation was given $550 million over the next four years, as part of the strategic reform program specifically designed to deliver savings.

Farr told a Budget Estimates hearing on Monday that this is in addition to the $940 million outlined for IT reform in the DoD back in 2009. That program was originally scheduled to be completed in four years; however, the Budget now has spending running until 2015-16. The DoD was asked by ZDNet Australia yesterday on the specifics of the additional spending, but did not respond by the time of writing.

Farr said that the increased spending is being made because back in 2009, the department had little idea of the scope of the overhaul that would be required.

"We have a much better understanding of the size of the Defence information environment, the amount of equipment we have in it, the age of that equipment and what needs to be remediated. That is probably the largest bit of the additional funding. It is a significantly larger task to do the remediation than we initially thought," he said.

He said that the amount of money spent on IT will decrease over time, and that despite additional outlays, the program will still result in $1.948 billion in savings.

A number of existing programs also need additional investment, he said. In 2012-13, the government has allocated $89 million, with $124 million, $198 million and $139 million in the years after that. Farr said that the determination of when the money would be spent would depend on when the government approves a number of upcoming consolidation programs, indicating that most are scheduled to be given the tick within the next 12 months.

"We would expect government approvals in the next 12 months on our terrestrial communications bundle, which consolidates our networks; I would expect approvals on our datacentre consolidation. I would expect approvals on the replacement of our personnel system - the PMKeyS replacement. A number of those big-ticket items will hopefully get government approvals this year," he said.

"We are bringing together our major computing datacentres, so that we get better asset utilisation and better governance over them. Our terrestrial communications have been brought together into a single contract. Once again, we will have full visibility and control over them. Then we will move on to some of the others around our distributed computing."

Farr said that prior to the reforms, there was a "lack of understanding, visibility and total governance" in the DoD's IT, but added that the department has now attempted to address that.

A report from the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) late last year noted that the DoD has managed to save $224 million so far as a result of the consolidation program, but warned that the program is complex, and risks failure if it falls behind schedule.

"More than two years into the reform process, ICT continues to represent a material risk to the timely achievement of the SRP investment and savings target set in support of the longer-term objectives of the white paper," the report stated.

"The failure or even the significant delay of one of these projects is likely to have a domino effect on other SRP activities that could delay or deny the anticipated flow of SRP savings into improved Defence capability."

Banks, ISPs may be online gambling police

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Josh Taylor) — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:16:01 +1000

Banks and internet service providers will be asked to reduce Australian punters' access to overseas online gambling sites under recommendations made in a government report.

The interim report (PDF), commissioned in May last year by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Select Council on Gambling Reform, was published by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy yesterday. It estimated that there are 2200 online gambling services in breach of the Interactive Gaming Act, reaping around $1 billion a year from Australians.

To combat this, the department has recommended the establishment of a national standard for interactive gambling providers, which would establish harm minimisation measures around responsible gambling, lines of credit and a pre-commitment on the amount a gambler intends to spend in one session. There would also be a consumer protection framework with protections of customer funds, customer information, identity and age verification and spend-tracking facilities. Providers that don't sign up to this standard would be banned under the Act, and penalties for breaching the Act would be administered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

The banned gambling websites will be added to the ACMA's blacklist website, to be blocked by voluntary software-based filters. The department also suggested that internet service providers (ISPs) could have a warning page pop up whenever such a site was visited, but stopped short of calling for the pages to be blocked, as part of the government's controversial mandatory internet filtering proposal.

"This approach places ISPs in a position where they would be enforcing prohibitions on gambling with overseas providers, where there is no law that currently prevents Australian citizens from gambling on these sites. Implementing such blocking tools would be strongly opposed by ISPs and other key stakeholders," the report stated.

"The Australian Government has clearly stated its position, that [the] blocking of websites by ISPs should target child sexual abuse material."

The department said that banks could also voluntarily block payments to recognised illegal websites. But, in order to do that, the banks would need to be given safe harbour under the Act so as to be protected against potential unintended consequences from the blocking of those transactions - such as, accidentally blocking a legitimate transaction. The report noted that, while this method may deter some gamblers, others would just find alternative methods of transferring money, such as using third-party payment companies like PayPal or Western Union.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said that the government had not yet made any decisions on whether to act on the recommendations and called on interested parties to make a comment on the interim report by 25 June.

"This is an interim report only. The government has made no decisions about possible changes to the [Act] and will not do so until we have had further public consultation with interested parties."

Optus-NBN tick against ACCC charter: Turnbull

au-edit-zdnet@cbsinteractive.com (Josh Taylor) — Wed, 30 May 2012 12:29:01 +1000

Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has slammed the competition watchdog's pending approval of the $800 million deal between Optus and NBN Co that sees the telco shut down its hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) network, and move customers onto the National Broadband Network (NBN).

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) indicated on Monday that it will approve the deal, which would lead to 429,000 HFC broadband customers in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane moving onto the NBN from 2014.

To convince the ACCC to let the deal go ahead, Optus said that it has no intention of offering wholesale services over HFC, upgrading the HFC to provide speeds higher than 100 megabits per second or extending the network farther than the 1.5 million premises it covers today. It also said that the cost of operating the network would make it tougher to compete with NBN Co.

But Turnbull branded the ACCC's decision in parliament yesterday evening as being "thoroughly unconvincing and contradictory". He said that the government prevented Telstra from building a competing HFC network, and Optus could have competed against Telstra's fixed-line copper domination with the HFC network.

"But here, in the socialist paradise of Julia Gillard's Australia, the government is building a massive new fixed-line telecommunications monopoly, and, just in case there would be any competition with it, the government is paying Telstra and Optus to decommission their HFC networks, as well as paying Telstra to decommission its copper network," he said.

He pointed out that the ACCC rejected arguments that the HFC deal would improve NBN Co's rate of return, and that the roll-out of the NBN would be slowed if the deal doesn't go ahead. He said it admitted that the HFC network is able to meet entry-level consumer demands for broadband. Yet, the deal was ultimately approved.

"How on earth did the ACCC conclude that the Optus HFC deal should be approved? How could it conclude that an anti-competitive arrangement, which has, to the best of my knowledge, no counterpart anywhere else in the world, be acceptable here in Australia?"

Turnbull said that the only benefit of the deal is to Optus, in avoiding the cost of maintaining its network.

"But is this a public benefit, or is it ... simply a supposed benefit to Optus? Even if you accept the ACCC's proposition, why does it not offset that benefit to Optus against the $800 million cost incurred by the NBN and the unfortunate Australian taxpayers who are ultimately funding that and many other payments to the NBN?"

Despite Optus' own admission that it would not upgrade the HFC network, he said that it is "heroic" of the ACCC to assume that Optus will not invest in upgrades to its HFC network to offer speeds higher than the currently available 100 megabits per second.

"Given the rapid pace of disruptive technological change - given the plethora of technological changes, which were not only not predicted, but also not anticipated - why would anyone assume that this network will not be upgraded in the future? The ability to upgrade copper networks to carry high-speed broadband improves year after year, month after month, as we have seen with the various evolutions of DSL."

He questioned the value of the deal to NBN Co if Optus has no intention of upgrading its HFC network to compete with the high speeds on the NBN.

"This draft determination is so contradictory that the only conclusion you can take from it is that the ACCC believes that the management of the NBN Co are commercial morons who are recklessly paying $800 million to get something which is going to fall into their lap for nothing anyway."

He said that NBN Co management are not "morons", but are paying $800 million to eliminate a viable competitor to the NBN.

"For the ACCC, which is supposed to be flying the banner of competition and ensuring that monopolies are kept in check, to say, 'No, this deal can go ahead', is abandoning its charter. It is a draft determination that should be abandoned as well, and replaced with a ruling that would be more consistent with its distinguished track record."

On Monday, Optus said that the deal would allow the company to redirect resources from having to maintain the HFC network to retail services, but told ZDNet Australia that no job cuts were planned in the HFC area at this time.