NEW ASPEN EMAIL ADDRESS

AKSA · « **on:** 5 Jun 2006, 04:42 am »

Hi Folks,

As of today, it's now

aksa1 -at- bigpond.com

By replacing the ampersand, I'm trying to avoid the email harvesters..... just over 50% of my incoming mail was spam!!

Hope this causes no inconvenience, notification also on the website.

Cheers,

Hugh

Geoff-AU · « **Reply #1 on:** 5 Jun 2006, 01:19 pm »

so you've gone from the dark side to the darker side then?

AKSA · « **Reply #2 on:** 5 Jun 2006, 10:46 pm »

Geoff,

Recently I bumped into a very old friend from my school days in Adelaide in the sixties, and it turns out he is now Chief Group Manager of Telstra Bigpond. Fancy that, huh?

It's only ADSL, but now I have 20Gb of monthly bandwidth - and it's almost the same speed as Optus cable!

Cheers,

Hugh

Geoff-AU · « **Reply #3 on:** 6 Jun 2006, 08:27 am »

I hope he pulled a few strings and gave you a good price as well!!

it's interesting bumping into old friends and seeing what they're up to.

G Georgopoulos · « **Reply #4 on:** 6 Jun 2006, 08:37 am »

Hi Guys the broadband in oz runs not as broadband unbelievable they
have so many speeds they sell and they are all called broadband meaning
you get broadband speed fromwhat ive seen it's a scum at most double
the speed of dialup thats my two cents

glad to see mr hugh dean here i hear we also have amplifierguru here
thats awesome the moderators at diyaudio.com have gone nuts lets
make this forum rock hey bring more members guys ill be here

cheers

Seano · « **Reply #5 on:** 6 Jun 2006, 10:55 pm »

Thanks for the new email addres, Hugh.

By the way........what's broadband? Or for that matter ADSL?

Here in rural & regional Oz.........all we can get (unless we rob banks for a living) is dial-up........especially if you live like I do in the rural fringe of an inland city.....2 kilobits per second. Ripper.

Which might explain why I now use the work LAN connection

AKSA · « **Reply #6 on:** 6 Jun 2006, 11:28 pm »

Hi Seano,

Yes, I'm acutely aware of the rural setting. I was raised in remote South Australia, and in many cases phone subscribers were responsible for their own line back to the main road. My brother works for Telstra first as a tech then as a service officer, and knows the scene well. 'The last mile' has always been a huge issue for Telstra.

Did you watch 4 Corners this week? A program about oncology services for rural communities. It seems rural folk get about half the medical care of their city counterparts when they are treated for cancer, all this in our great brown land of plenty.....

OTOH, the anonymity and indifference of city life is not something all Australians would tolerate, where everything has a price, and communication is sparse. There is an adversarial aspect to city life completely absent in the country, BUT we should never forget people are pretty much the same wherever they are.

Cheers,

Hugh

Seano · « **Reply #7 on:** 7 Jun 2006, 10:50 pm »

We watched Four Corners..........we both knew the family of the woman featured being treated for ovarian cancer as well as the old couple who were dealing with mouth cancer....both were from our former home of Bourke.

Suffice to say that even where we are now (in a rural city of up to 50,000 people) the state of medical services means that virtually any trauma case more serious than a busted bone will result in a transfer to Melbourne or Adelaide......as for oncology and pallative care......Ha!

The reason country people are generally positve and healthy iss that they simply can't afford not to be!

The problem with communication networks is that they must be maintained. Let them run down and you are faced with an even higher bill to fix....and that's the drama faced by Telstra in R&R Oz. I actually have no beef with Telstra....and I don't really mind be left down low in the technology tree......mainly because it makes you far more aware of how unimportant so many of these new technology toys really are for a happy, peaceful and rewarding life.

jules · « **Reply #8 on:** 8 Jun 2006, 12:09 am »

ah yes, Telstra, maintenance and the bush ....

When my phone line was first emplaced some 20 years ago Telecom had a large team and the latest Cat D7 cable layer. The line was buried about a metre below the ground and when I first started using a computer out here the speed was a racy 19kbps.

Recent line upgrades were done with a D5 that looked as though it might have been around when my line was first installed. Some of the line to my neighbours place is actually visible on the ground surface! The line speed is now 7.2kbps.

Failing the arrival of new technology the future doesn't look bright.

jules

AKSA · « **Reply #9 on:** 8 Jun 2006, 01:11 am »

Jules,

Here's another. About 15 years ago, Telstra made a very large purchase of solderless line connectors from a nameless US company in Minnesota. They were bought for their field techs to use as joiners in junction boxes, both at street level and in home junction boxes.

These connectors take the form of small transparent, plastic bubbles, about the size of a fingernail. The wires are pressed into the sides to make the connection in a viscous, conductive gel within. Their life is measured in hundreds of years......

Except now an insidious corrosion problem has crept in, and resistances are steadily rising. The line is clear until the junction box, then signal can't easily get through. Result: bad coms, poor intelligibility, very slow data transmission.

These connectors are everywhere, and probably responsible for Jules' problems. Replacement right across the network in every state of Australia will cost many billions of dollars. Telstra by law is obliged to hire out its infrastructure to other carriers at giveaway rates, which take no account of maintenance costs and certainly don't factor in replacement of these gel connectors. The copper network is failing fast, long, low density traffic (= rural!!) networks are suffering the most, and the situation will inevitably get much worse as Sol fights the Government on line rental to other carriers. Sol only has to sit around and do no maintenance, and the Govt's share in Telstra will dwindle to below $3 a share. As fixed phone rentals steadily drop, cell phone usage will escalate with other carriers, costing Telstra revenue. When the Govt's hand is forced (and this may not happen since the Govt is enjoying large income from a mining bonanza!), they will cave in and Telstra rental rates to other carriers can be boosted, and soon after, maintenance begin.

I have had Optus cable since 1997, nine full years. In 2006, no Telstra cable is available in the Heidelberg area of Melbourne, and yet we are only 13 kms from the centre of Australia's second largest city of 3.6 millions. Only ADSL is available on their antiquated, copper network, which has been in position for more than a hundred years. This gives some indication of the political paralysis playing out between Telstra and the Government.

Sorry, a bit off topic.....

Cheers,

Hugh