Digital Tasmania | Non-profit organisation

Digital Tasmania

Phone: +61 432 870 881

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22.01.2022 One of our local members, Andrew Wilkie MP - Independent Member for Clark is concerned about the proposed contact tracking smartphone application, and has said that he won't install it unless there is more transparency.

21.01.2022 Already several service providers are having major slowdowns and outages in Tasmania because some run with limited capacity headroom or backup links due to the cost and lack of backhaul options. https://www.theguardian.com//coronavirus-and-the-nbn-will-

20.01.2022 Digital Tasmania is attending #ACCANect 2019, celebrating 10 years of @ACCAN_AU and it’s many, many achievements for telco consumers.

20.01.2022 Customers of @Internode (and possibly their sister companies) are having a tough time across Tassie tonight... after an earlier outage, fixed line services are running at Satellite speeds, with Northern Tasmania particularly affected. According to Internode, it's only affecting 'some DSL customers in Launceston' https://advisories.internode.on.net/item/19513/ This follows a recent improvement after weeks of worsening peak time performance. What broke?

20.01.2022 With Vodafone shrinking to 100 staff in Hobart (from nearly 1000, link in comments), and some other large providers operating much of their customer services from Asia for some time, citing cost, how much do you value "local service" when choosing a Telco?

19.01.2022 Facebook are running free seminars in Hobart, Launceston and Devonport next week. Topics include "Tourism on Facebook and Instagram" and using Facebook Messenger for your business. Further information & registration see the website: http://fbcommunityboost.com.au/

18.01.2022 DigiTas welcomes investment by the state government to improve coverage on the East Coast AND that multiple mobile providers will benefit from it. This means that customers of more than just one mobile company will benefit too. Following a competitive open tender process, Optus will build 15 new mobile sites between Binalong Bay and Buckland, a 205km stretch of the Tasman Highway. These sites will be available to other operators to also install equipment, hopefully on more fa...vourable terms than the usual industry standard. Although coverage for some networks is already good along this route, there are some definite blackspots in challenging and sparsely populated terrain including between Buckland and Triabunna and north of Bicheno. The works should be completed by early 2021. This East Coast upgrade to mobile coverage supported by government benefits all operators and contrasts with the announcement yesterday of West Coast upgrades benefiting just one operator and their customers. http://www.premier.tas.gov.au//improving_mobile_coverage_o

15.01.2022 $270 million for a Northern Tasmania prison could buy a lot of home detention systems or high quality (and monitored) video conferencing for families to stay in touch with inmates. That amount could also finish the NBN properly with Fibre across Tasmania and pay for a new Fibre cable across Bass Strait for a competitive and reliable connection to the world. But locking people up has been Tassie’s purpose for 200+ years so let’s stick with that.

14.01.2022 EVENING SLOWDOWNS? NOT ALL TYPICAL EVENING SPEEDS ARE EQUAL Digital Tasmania is aware of reports of evening speed issues with some providers in Tasmania. Recent broadband speed monitoring data (and our own independent testing) shows some of the ‘better’ providers in their reports having the worst observed evening speed in Tasmania. One major provider in particular has been observed to be experiencing regular slowdowns in the evenings for more than a month. This comes dow...n to a lack of provisioning by those providers to match usage demand in Tasmania. Furthermore, published figures for a given provider might not be representative of the measurement in a specific state. What is ‘Typical Evening Speed’ anyway? Some might think that having a 100 megabit per second (Mbit/sec) connection means that you could download a 100 megabyte (MB) file in 1 second. Other people are aware that there are different units (8 bits to a byte) so the answer would be 8 seconds? But it’s not quite as simple as that At a technology level there are several overheads Ethernet and TCP/IP mean that the maximum attainable ‘download rate’ of your ‘file’ you can achieve on your 100Mbit/sec connection is a fraction over 95Mbit/sec. The speed available to you is limited by: The speed of the service you are purchasing. Your ISP’s network. Your ISP’s connection to NBN. In the case of NBN Fibre to the Node & Basement, and ADSL the speed of your modem’s connection. In the case of NBN Fixed Wireless, signal quality and other users on the same tower/infrastructure. Other technical factors like latency, buffers, and constraints of the site you are accessing. Many of these are technical reasons (like the maximum sync speed for a copper phone line), but most come down to ‘oversubscription’. For most services at a residential price-point, the ISP is not going to provision 1:1 for every single user. This is where typical evening speed is a measure that is published, based on measurement of actual tests showing the typically attainable download speeds between 7pm and 11pm, and considering the factors above. Your perceived and effective speed can also be influenced by all of the above, but also your ISP’s technical infrastructure and precisely how they deliver your services (things like DNS and cache/content delivery systems, and latency).

13.01.2022 The Meander Valley Gazette reports that Meander Valley Council spent $37,000 opposing a Telstra mobile black-spot tower at Blackstone Heights near Launceston. When some areas of the country including Tasmania are crying out for coverage, this council fought against progress and paid dearly. Telstra for their part could have provided better information regarding the community benefit of the proposal to Council at an earlier stage.... Ultimately, it's the community and mobile consumers who lost out because most Councillors chose to ignore the planning scheme and professional advice of Council's planning officers who recommended approval of the proposal in the first instance. The planning appeals tribunal (RMPAT) dismissed every objection against the proposal including a suggested condition that the tower be decommissioned after 10 years.

13.01.2022 There's a major issue affecting Telstra mobile phone services on the West Coast since about 8:30am this morning. According to Telstra staff, they plan to fix it by 4:29pm next Wednesday. (see comments for details).

11.01.2022 The ACCC is reviewing backhaul pricing across Australia. Currently the Telstra underwater cables between Tassie and Victoria attract a 40% uplift (extra cost) compared to other links around Australia. Tasmanians have long been disadvantaged by this regulated price discrimination on backhaul, it means some providers have congested services, make a loss or simply don't serve Tassie which reduces competiton and choice. https://www.itnews.com.au//vodafone-calls-for-price-cuts-o

10.01.2022 The Advocate reports on plans to include a new Bass Strait fibre-optic cable with the proposed Marinus Link interconnector. We would hope that the cost benefit of running a fibre-optic cable would be obvious - it would allow organisations to purchase redundant capacity with full choice of carriers. At a typical cost of less than $50 million, it is a fraction of the total cost of the multi-billion dollar project! https://www.theadvocate.com.au//marinus-link-could-boost-/

09.01.2022 Infrastructure Australia adds Mobile Blackspots to Australia's Infrastructure Priority List (26/02/2020) "The 2019 Australian Infrastructure Audit acknowledges that mobile services in regional, rural and remote areas can be costly and poor quality, and that coverage gaps affect community safety, liveability and productivity." https://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au//mobile-telecom

07.01.2022 ALERT Scammers are using Australia Post branding to text message (SMS) people about fake parcel deliveries to get you to click on unsafe links. Find out... how to spot an Australia Post SMS scam https://staysmartonline.gov.au//australia-post-sms-scam-ta and sign up to our free email Alert Service to keep up to date with the latest online threats www.staysmartonline.gov.au/alert-service See more

04.01.2022 Media Release from DigiTas regarding West Coast mobile blackspots. In short, good but only for some consumers, not all. Link to Mobile Market share data https://www.statista.com//australia-mobile-handset-servic/

03.01.2022 WIN Television offline this afternoon.

02.01.2022 More mobile blackspot coverage is great! But as we've said before, focus should be put on equitable access for multiple carriers in these areas if grants of public funds are used - e.g. mandatory domestic roaming, tower sharing, backhaul sharing; rather than picking winners. It would benefit more consumers in these areas, not just those using the service provider who was awarded the funding. http://www.premier.tas.gov.au//mobile_black_spot_program_e

02.01.2022 60 years of television broadcasting in Tasmania. Amazing to go from 2 to 4 then scores of channels with Pay and Digital TV since 1994, but what’s left of local production and what’s the future?

02.01.2022 Around 25% of iPhones/iPads are at risk of being hacked. That attention-grabbing headline is to say that within the last month, in Australia, more than 13% of unique Apple iPhone smartphones and iPad tablets used on the Internet were either "obsolete" models which don't support current software, or had software updates available but not installed. A further 12% run software which is current but will imminently become unsupported. This isn't picking on iPhones - a similar or ...possibly worse situation for other devices like Samsung/Android but it's a little harder to calculate due to all of the variations. Keeping your software up to date is one of the most important things you can do to maintain your device's security. There is malware that utilises security bugs in the device software to read your passwords, steal your data, and which can be triggered by simply visiting a web page on a device which has not been updated. Manufacturers like Apple are only routinely supporting their devices with software updates for around 2-4 years. After that, you're on your own. Best advice is to stop using old devices which don't get updates. This means your perfectly serviceable phone might be effectively consigned to eWaste. Do you think that smartphone manufacturers should provide a longer period of support/updates for a smartphone or tablet once purchased?