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FROM THE FIFTH ESTATE: EDITOR'S BLOG (JUNE 2018)

Telstra cutting 8000 jobs

Targeting a 30 per cent reduction in labour costs, Telstra announced in June that it would be cutting at least 8000 jobs which will largely be facilitated by automating enterprise service provisioning. Naturally, the union that employs Telstra workers was not happy and has now mounted a concerted campaign to highlight its issues.

This “shrinking to grow” mentality, which forecasts that by 2022 Telstra will have split in two and halved its workforce from 10 years ago, wasn’t washing with investors as the share price immediately started to tank in the wake of the announcement.

Optus World Cup soccer fiasco

If you are a soccer fan, you would have been very excited in the lead-up to this year’s World Cup finals tournament in Russia. Every four years, it is a veritable feast of soccer where most of the world’s best footballing nations and players gather in a month-long smorgas board of fancy footwork, thumping strikes and theatrical dives.

For the first time, in 2018, the only way fans in Australia were going to be able to see every match would be to pay for an Optus streaming service (or have a qualifying service contract with the carrier). From the very beginning, it was a disaster for Optus specifically and the live streaming industry in general, a situation that some say proved that important live sport should reside only on TV and not the internet.

Traditional broadcaster SBS was not devoid of blame but they could arguably be excused for having to sell off a lot of the matches to raise cash that had been cut from their public broadcasting budget by the current Federal Government.

In the end, the technical issues experienced by Optus which were attributed to failures in its content delivery network, proceeded to provide an awesome free kick for SBS ratings.

Any way you look at it, the disaster of this venture should serve as a warning to other sports bodies who are looking to new ways to deliver their “product”.

Windows Server 2019 is coming

Those who work with large standardised operating environments will be well-aware that a new version of Windows Server is looming on the horizon. Microsoft announced in June that the new iteration is now available in preview. This US-based article is recommending you start planning now for the transition.

The latest test build of the next Windows Server include a first look at Hyper-V 2019, plus a new analytics feature called System Insights. A more extensive rundown of the new features was highlighted by the Redmond Channel Partner website while Network World listed its Top 6 new features.

Meanwhile, this interview with a Microsoft insider is laden with a bit of marketing spin but it is probing for answers from an administration point-of-view so is a worthwhile read.

NBN

There has been a lot of noise about service interruptions as people get connected to the NBN. So, it is good to see that industry watchdog ACMA, has produced a new set of standards compelling the wholesaler to ensure customers are not left without connection to the internet for extended periods of time

Lifehacker gave a good run-down of everything you need to know about the new benchmarks which are your rights as a consumer.

Over at Computerworld, there was an update on how the NBN FTTC rollout is progressing while iTNews focused on revealing a detailed roadmap and timeline of options to upgrade almost all last-mile access technologies.

There were also some interesting details revealed by NBN on the amounts of data some of its top users are accessing while the Labor Party declared that it wants to start fining NBN for incidents where the customers receive “horror” service.

It was always a predictable outcome from the type of balance-sheet-driven approach that this nation-building infrastructure project has now been subjected to, but NBN fessed up that a new pricing structure would see regional users paying more than their city-dwelling brethren for the same wireless services.

This is a PR puff piece does put a few voices from the coal-face of construction into the conversation but is clearly facilitated via content marketing teams for the network. The give-away is when you see “nbn” printed with the “TM” (Trademark) in superscript. Straight cut and paste from a media kit.

If you are serviced via fixed wireless footprint and want to upgrade from what many find to be poorly provisioned services, here is a dose of reality regarding what the cost can be even if just seven kilometres from the nearest connection and an hour’s drive from Melbourne’s CBD. It could cost up to $1.2 million.

New research is showing that people are losing interest in the NBN because “the time it is taking to roll out the network nationally and the negative stories about disappointing speeds and connection issues”.

It appears larger retail services providers are finding get-around solutions to problems that are inherent in the wholesale network. Vodafone recently launched it’s play on gathering as much market-share as possible with a suite of new offerings including Wi-Fi boosters for black-spot customers.

The Fin Review used a bit of lateral thinking to identify that there is an upcoming downgrade to NBN’s activation forecasts - and therefore FY 2018-19 revenues for both organisations.

What’s new

I’m a big fan of the gizmos and gadgets website, New Atlas which focuses on new products and concepts in a range of categories including Computers. If you were watching over the last month, you would have read about Microsoft’s back to the future new Intellimouse and a new Duo laptop with a slide-out second screen.

Meanwhile, IBM’s AI technology won a debate against a well-practiced human and you can get an inside peak at a system being touted as the world's most powerful supercomputer which can handle a staggering 200,000 trillion calculations per second.

Maybe, an underwater data centre Microsoft is deploying off the coast of Scotland will tickle your fancy or how IBM’s annual “Future-tech list” this year targets focus on the world’s smallest computer and “unhackable” data.