Telecom's organisation change to separate its retail and wholesale divisions (notably not including cellular), won't wash with punters, or the government. Partly, experience has made us cynical: any ihug, Orcon or Slingshot customer who has waited for a new DSL connection suspects that the, cough, separately run Xtra gets priority.

[The PC World radio winners were Andrew93, Dave Y and Shaun Wright. Check your inboxes, guys]

And CEO Theresa Gattung is still playing a dangerous game, trying to forestall further regulation with the minimal possible concessions to the government (as has been widely noted, Telecom's 'separation' announcement is short on detail). The risk for Theresa is that the mob will like the sound of separation, and the government will happily play to that with legislation that makes it genuine.

The whole 'separation' announcement reminds me strongly of Telecom's earlier effort to forestall regulation by giving rival ISP's a paltry boost in DSL access to 3.5Mbit/s. Theresa badly misjudged in thinking that concession would be enough.

Again, she's miscalculating how the government will react. But even if the 'separation' announcement had more beef to it, it probably wouldn't be enough. Theresa's personality resonates so strongly through Telecom, that most probably won't accept there's a genuine change of direction until she departs.

What do you think? Comment below and be in to win one of three PC World portable radios. They're crappy $12 jobs, admittedly, but they're battery operated - batteries included! - and will see you safely thru the next power cut. (Please allow for a delay, as comments are moderated before going live.)

Posted by Chris Keall at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 9 )

The Commerce Commission's latest jab against Telecom is to allow CallPlus and ihug unconstrained wholesale bitstream access to its DSL network. In English, that means the two rival ISPs can now access Telecom's JetStream service at its highest possible speed (that is, 7.6Mbit/s). Not, as previously, at a bandwidth-limit arbitrarily decided by Theresa (currently 3.5Mbit/s).

However, Telecom has obviously managed to be pretty hardball, or at least cunning, in its negotiations with Telecommunications Commissioner David Webb (one of three commissioners who together form the Commerce Commission). Ihug's general manager of regulatory affairs, David Diprose, tells Juha Saarinen he's baffled at the cost of unconstrained wholesale access: $27.87 a month, which the Commission reckons should work out to a retail price of $33.38. Diprose had been hoping for wholesale access at $20-$22 under his interpretation of the Commission's model.

Diprose says $27.87 would make for an unprofitable service, so while ihug is still digesting the latest developments, it looks like no immediate change could result. Score a short term victory for Telecom cunning. The medium and long term cost of winding up customers still further is yet to be determined

Posted by Chris Keall at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Want to see Kiwi super-developer Ben Goodger preview Firefox 2, or Microsoft's Tony Chor admit "we messed up" with IE security? Videos of sessions from the recent Webstock conference in Wellington are now online. Also check out Keith Ng's report in the August edition of NZ PC World, on newsstands Tuesday. Pictured: Goodger (left) v. Chor.

Posted by Chris Keall at 4:05 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

NZ broadband is too expensive, and will get cheaper when unbundling kicks in during 2007. But meanwhile, don't look too longingly at much-publicised US and UK deals. Often the grass isn't that much greener once you get your nose close to the dirt. UK ex-pat Gordon Laing recently moved to NZ. Check out Gordon's full broadband diary in the August issue of NZ PC World as he sets up home in Queenstown and - cough - starts shopping around for a fat pipe. But one preview:

Gordon didn't find the much-touted 'free broadband forever' deal from new provider Talk Talk much cop. For starters, it was only available in densely-populated areas of London, and required but you’ll need to switch to Talk Talk's line rental at £11 per month and sign-up for a £9.99 per month calling plan. There’s also a £29.99 connection fee and minimum contract of 18 months.

State-side, Cnet recently surveyed DSL plans (which are typically around $10 a month cheaper than cable plans). Sure Verizon is offering a new $US14.95/month plan, but only with a lousy 768Kbit/s download speed. And while AT&T is offering a killer $US12.99/month deal, after the one-year promo period you get flipped onto a $US29/month plan, close to the average of $US32/month - which is pretty much bang-on where NZ is for DSL, if you strip out the phone line charge.

Posted by Chris Keall at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 )

While the BBC doesn't offer its streamed video to anyone outside the UK, its website does offer a cute virtual replay feature of key World Cup moments. But all the true geek needs is a real-time Telnet stream that depicts the action using nothing but plain text ascii characters. If that sounds like you (you poor dribbling fool) proceed immediately to ascii-wm.net. (If you haven't used Telnet for a decade or so you'll be thrilled to learn XP has a built-in client. Hit the keyboard shortcut Windows Key-R, type cmd then telnet. You might have to turn off your firewall first. But, of course, it's worth the risk.)

Posted by Chris Keall at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Your SETI screen saver has helped crunch data in the search for signs of extra-terrestrial life. Now meet SETI's director, Dr Jill Tarter, who will be giving a free public lecture Friday July 7 at the Auckland University of Techonology. Head for the AUT Conference Hall, WA220 at 4.00pm. There will only be about 200 seats, so arrive early and muscle out the students. Tarter is based at Ceter for SETI Research in California, and her work inspired Carl Sagan's book Contact, which in turn inspired the film of the same name (Jodie Foster's character is based on Tarter). The PC World crew will be goofing off early to check out the Doc, so we might see you there.

Read Andrea Malcolm's interview with Jill Tarter here.

Posted by Chris Keall at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

If you're following the World Cup on the net, or after a hilariously sarcastic txt summary of games, you'll do no better than The Guardian's Scott Murray. (No, that's not him pictured; check out the link.) Far more entertaining than the BBC's effort. Plus there's a crafty little pop-up version of Murray's commentary that lets you follow a game on the sly at work. Alas, the Beeb is blocking its video and audio feeds from anyone outside the UK, which is bad news for Sky-less editors. Roll-on Freeview. Read Richard Betts' latest digital TV update here.

Posted by Chris Keall at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Theresa Gattung's departure is not a certainty by any means (click here for some of your comments about whether the Telecom CEO should stay or go). But with chairman Rod Deane's resignation stirring the mob, it has to be on the cards. If so, who should the board recruit: an insider? Ralph Norris? Nick Enyon? Tim and Nick Wood?
Leave your suggestion below. (Remember comments have to be moderated before appearing live, so please allow for a delay.)

Congratulations to Glen Balks, who won a copy of Symantec's Norton Save & Restore in our comment-and-win draw.

Posted by Chris Keall at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 7 )

Already winning the search war, Google is now set to hit Bill Gates where it hurts: his lucractive MS Office monopoly. Google has already been nipping around the feet of Bill's cash cow by bankrolling OpenOffice development. But that open-source Microsoft Office alternative has not really been pushed - possibly because it's not in keeping with Google's vision of software as something you only use online, not parked on a PC. Now Google's assault is about to get serious, with the release of a web-based app called Google Spreadsheets, which has just gone into a limited beta trial. Expect more developments shortly, given Google's March purchase of an online word processor called Writerly, which no doubt will shortly reappear as Google Word, or similar.

In New Zealand, our Paleolithic broadband makes it difficult to imagine so-called software as a service, be it Google Spreadsheets, or Microsoft's forthcoming Office Live and Windows Live, which will follow a similar tack. But it's a certainty that it's coming, and it's a nice change that Microsoft - a good decade after it killed WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 - will again have some genuine competition in basic business apps.

Perhaps even worse news for the Microsofties is a little-covered state government development in the US state of Massachusetts. In January this year, Fortune reports, Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn mandated that all state government office documents should be saved in Open Document Format (ODF), as well as other open standards such as HTML and PDF.

Long popular with geeks, ODF makes it easy for other software, such as OpenOffice, to read documents created in Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint. But now, following Quinn's landmark move, the European Union, the state of Denmark (yes Bill, very dark and Shakespearian) is actively considering ODF.

Momentum continued to build May 3 when the International Standards Organisation (ISO) ratified ODF, and vendors including Sun and IBM (maker of Lotus Notes) pledged to include ODF support in new versions of their office software.

Microsoft already has its response in the works: a format called Open XML, which will debut with the new version of Office (Open XML is still before the ISO). And as for Quinn, he soon ran into trouble: he was accused of fiddling his travel expenses in a story leaked to the press. The CIO was cleared, but left his job soon afterwards any way ("I was becoming a lightening rod"). Quinn's little maneuver, however, could prove historic a tipping point as Microsoft prepares to defend its US$9 billion-a-year Office business.

Posted by Chris Keall at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )