Gerard Knapp

The growth in Australian enterprise Internet adoption is continuing at a steady pace according to latest reports from Australian research company www.consult. The firm found that despite significant growth in the number of leased line permanent connections, Australian enterprises are still using dial-up Internet access and analogue leased line connections. www.consult believes this is because […]

Australian Internet provider OzEmail has launched MyFinance, a Web-based personal finance service. MyFinance’s primary focus will be on providing comparative data and information on a full range of financial products and services. A variety of information will be offered on such topics as home loans, credit cards, mobile phones, investments, Internet banking and international phone […]

The Australian subsidiary of online brokerage provider E*Trade has sought to distance itself from the network outages afflicting its US parent. Thousands of irate small investors in the US were locked out of E*Trade’s share trading service for small periods over three days last week, causing the company’s price to slump from US$50 to below […]

Australian telecommunications carrier AAPT will attempt to undercut its rivals in the Internet industry with a cheap per-minute timed service to consumers. AAPT will offer a service called SmartSurf which will be metered at 2.5 cents Australian ($US0.016) per minute increments, totalling AUS$1.50 (US$0.96) per hour. The company made news last week when it bought […]

Primus Telecommunications has become the latest in a long line of Australian telcos to offer Internet connectivity. Under the Internet Primus banner, which was launched to the public on the weekend via television advertising, Primus will offer prices for basic Internet connection starting at less than AUS$9 (US$5.80) per month. The company has also announced […]

An Australian public servant has been appointed chair of the Government Advisory Committee of ICANN, the new global regulatory body for the Internet. Paul Twomey, CEO of the Australian Federal Government’s National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE), will lead a committee charged with providing advice and counsel to the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names […]

Internet service provider OzEmail’s Net music channel Chaos Music Market (CMM) has released the first of 15 downloadable tracks using the Web’s latest audio technology, the MP4 format. The tracks that have been released to mark the MP4 launch include work by American musicians Public Enemy and David Crosby, and Australian performers The Whitlams, TISM, […]

Tradegate ECA, a peak industry body for electronic commerce in Australia, has launched an Internet-based superannuation notification and payment system that is expected to cut costs to employers and fund administrators by AUS$500 million a year. The new system, known as EC-Net, will streamline superannuation procedures while cutting costs to both small businesses and superannuation […]

Following the signing of an agreement, Europe’s leading audio and data service Music Choice will be included as a branded channel over the broadband, data broadcast platforms deployed by The Fantastic Corp. As a result, Fantastic’s customers and partners–among them BT, Telecom Italia, Deutsche Telekom and Astra-Net–will be able to offer the Music Choice channel […]

In the face of an unprecedented demand for Internet-based services, Telstra will commit an estimated $A1 billion to upgrade its telecommunications network to become completely digital by 2004. The company, a partly-privatised Australian government communications carrier, will next year start converting all of its voice circuits to run over the Internet Protocol (IP) on a […]

Australia has a new player in the copyright law reform debate with the creation of industry lobby group, the Australian Digital Alliance (ADA). The ADA formed in response to fears that overprotection of intellectual property rights in Australia will restrict access to information, and restrict creative output. The Alliance, which combines private and public sector […]

In a significant shift away from Microsoft, Netscape has allied with Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Cisco Systems to win a bid for infrastructure support for Telstra Big Pond, one of the largest ISPs in Australia. The joint contract means the three vendors will provide support for Australian telecommunications company Telstra’s Big Pond Internet and e-mail service. […]