Central Western Daily, 20 Dec 2006
I read an article by ATUG (Australian Telecommunications Users Group) (http://www.atug.org.au/RegDevReports/ATUGR&MDReport2006.pdf) that there is a refund for faults on a phone line under the Customer Service Guarantee.
Back in December 2005 I had my phone go down for 3 weeks (actually longer) after a storm. I rang up Telstra today and got a hefty credit. Your readers should know about this. This was a real surprise as before I just got a little refund on the line rental for downtime not the actual inconvenience downtime caused to my small IT business that relies heavily on the phone and Internet access. In that period I used CDMA Minimax to get around this - slow and barely able to process the data.
In that ATUG December newsletter they also mentioned wireless spectrum for rural areas to setup wireless ISPs being auctioned. There are opportunities to overcome these monopolistic phone companies once we can get infrastructure going to compete with them.
Telstra is doing an audit on their CDMA and 3G (WCDMA) networks using a company called Zamro. It shows they are starting to realise how pathetic their CDMA network is and need to find the blackspots and fix them.
I tried to get a wifi community wireless network going in Orange in November, but no-one was interested after 6 months of trying. I had written the portal software myself and collected latitude/longitude data for the area.
Bathurst Wireless (www.bathurstwireless.org) is a good community wireless network. It is run by locals and allows for file sharing, video streaming and voice over IP and runs on Linux servers.
We are just not that technical or are too spendthrift in Orange to give it a go. Cabonne looks more likely to use this technology.
Orange has a 3m antenna height exemption whereas Cabonne has a 10m antenna height exemption so Cabonne is way easier to get a decent long-distance link going for outlying areas.