May 23

Telstra’s $0 plans

Filed under: Internet, broadband, consumer, telcos | Back to: Homepage

Telstra’s new bundled plans offering a free laptop with their wireless plans is a good move to improve take up of wireless Internet.

It’s surprising none of the providers haven’t offered these deals sooner given entry level laptops are cheaper than mobile phones and these plans have proved an resounding success in the mobile industry.

As with all these deals, the devil is in the small print. You may be getting a “free” laptop but the cost of the wireless broadband will easily make up for this. The total price of the plan over the 36 month contract is $3,564 which would buy you a lot of laptop.

36 months is a long contract and we can expect to see prices drop and better deals appear as the other companies respond.

Also, a $700 laptop is a pretty basic beast many business users will find doesn’t meet their needs.

Overall, this is an interesting deal that’s going to radically change the business market. However I’d recommend most users sit and wait to see what other deals become available.

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May 15

Budget 2008

Filed under: government | Back to: Homepage

The new Federal government’s budget shows Canberra as lost on IT and communications issues under this government as it was under the Howard administration.

An interesting development was the continuation of the Australian Broadband Guarantee.  This flags the likelihood that all the proposed broadband rollouts are really still born with the 4.7 billion proposed being absorbed into the general 20bn building Australia fund.

It seems the obsession with controlling the Internet will continue with the trial of ISP based filtering to go ahead. At least we’re getting a few more details on how this will work, although I’m still not convinced our Federal politicians have any inkling of the scope of resources required to run this program effectively.

The changes to software depreciation rates and fringe benefit tax rules for laptops are a negative marginal effect which shouldn’t really change much.

Overall, this budget is best described as “mostly harmless” to the Australian tech scene.

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