Feel good story of the month has to be PIPE, a Sydney company started in 2002 by entrepreneurs Bevan Slattery and Stephen Baxter, which is laying a pipe from Sydney to Guam, the end result being an alternative to international Internet content will be available other than Telstra and Optus. What makes this story great, is not only is somebody taking on the big boys, but they are spending up to $200 million to do so. Sure, it is probably private capital, but once the cable goes live, the benefits to all – not just in service, but competitive cost savings, will be great.
Got a call from Pam about being charged her for sending 55 text messages in an hour, which she swears didn’t happen. When contacting her provider, Hutchison 3, she alleges they were rude and unhelpful, so she went to the telecommunications Ombudsman. Nice move. If you have any type of problem with telecommunications companies, don’t be defeatist about it, do what Pam is doing. The Ombudsman will sort it out one way or another.
Steve bought the first series of West Wing for his wife in the US, but found he couldn’t play it on his DVD player in Australia. Why? Different countries have different broadcasting encoding systems. The three main systems are PAL, NTSC and SECAM. Australia uses the PAL system, the US NTSC. In layman’s terms most DVD players use one or the other system. However, there are some DVDs that use multi-zone technology and will play any disc.
Also, Steve has got his last smartphone to trial, the iPhone. He has been impressed to varying degrees with the different phones he has used. It will be interesting to hear his verdict next week!