Friday 30th
October 1998
PBL BUYS 25% OF FOXTEL
Kerry Packer's Publishing
and Broadcasting Limited (PBL) took up an option today to buy 25% of
pay-TV channel Foxtel from News Limited for $160 million. The
move has left Telstra as
the major stakeholder in the venture with 50% ownership, and both PBL and
News Ltd on 25%. Speaking at PBL:'s Annual General Meeting in Sydney yesterday,
Mr Kerry Packer said that although Telstra had the option to dilute its equity
down to 33%, leaving all three partners with equal stakes in the loss-making
operation, it was his understanding that Telstra did not intend to take up
that option. Foxtel recorded losses of $212 million in 1996-97 and $166 million
in 1997-98. Mr Packer said that the owners felt pay-TV was unlikely to be
profitable in Australia until the year 2000. Many Australians had subscribed
to Foxtel (or its now defunct rival Galaxy) when pay-TV was first introduced
in order to have their houses wired up at little or no cost in preparation
for new digital services like high-speed Internet transmission.
Thursday 29th
October 1998
TELSTRA TO MOVE VOICE CALLS ONTO
NET
Telstra
have announced an ambitious 5-year, $1 billion plan to move Australia's
voice calls onto the Net. The plan comes less than two years after Telstra
argued vigorously that IP traffic would cause its exchanges to melt down
unless it was allowed to introduce timed Net calls - a move that the Federal
Government of the time strongly rejected. Under the new plan, Telstra will
gradually convert its national infrastructure from existing switched digital
links to IP and ATM technologies. IP technology - which forms the basis of
the Net - allows voice, data and video traffic to be carried over a single
network. By doing so, Telstra will be following the lead of several Scandinavian
telcos who already put most of their international calls over the Net. Telstra
has suffered a decline of up to 50% in its share of the mobile, long distance
and overseas call markets since its monopoly was broken by deregulation in
July last year. It also anticipates a similar backward slide as soon as its
remaining monopolies in local calls and Internet infrastructure are broken
in 1999/2000. As a result, the company said that it is is now looking for
alternate revenue streams and sees itself becoming an information and service
provider in the future.
Wednesday 28th
October 1998
INA ATTACKS NETREGISTRY OVER
.AU.COM
A spat has erupted between
Australia's official domain registry
Internet Names Australia and
its "unregulated" competitor
NetRegistry over the sale of
NetRegistry's .AU.COM subdomains. INA general manager Clive Florey has accused
NetRegistry of providing "false and misleading" information to businesses
trying to register domains, saying that INA have encountered a number of
instances where consumers appear to have been given misleading or incorrect
information about domains. He also accused NetRegistry of taking advantage
of the immaturity of the market to sell the controversial sub-domains to
companies who may be unaware that an .AU.COM purchase actually gives them
ownership of nothing at all. INA manages the official .COM.AU domain on behalf
of the Internet Assigned Names Authority (IANA). NetRegistry, set
up late last year in anticipation of am official broadening of domain registries
which has yet to occur, registered the .AU.COM domain on its own behalf and
then began selling subdomains (such as tourism.au.com) shortly afterwards.
In June this year NetRegistry sold
more than 1,100 of the .AU.COM subdomains to Sydney "net entrepreneur" Kerry
Henry for $200 each, and has now sold slightly more than 2,000 in total.
However, NetRegistry has refuted INA's claims and said that all the company's
customers have all domain name options explained to them at the time of
purchase.
Tuesday 27th
October 1998
NET PUBLISHERS REPORT MASSIVE
LOSSES
Many "name" sites on the Net
are continuing to clock up massive losses for their owners, according to
a flood of financial data that leaked to US markets yesterday. Earnings reports
show that the Disney
Channel has lost a staggering $US21.5 million since it began operations
18 months ago, while partner sports site
ESPN.com has lost $7.2 million,
presenting its owners ABC-Starwave with a combined near-$30 million black
hole. Meanwhile, Ziff-Davis yesterday
reported a loss of $US4.5 million on revenues of $US226 million for the latest
quarter operations of its magazines-and-web-sites empire, while music retailers
CD Now and N2K announced plans to merge yesterday following
the continued failure of both sites to turn a profit. Meanwhile,
TheGlobe.com, Healtheon and Net software company
Vignette have all announced plans to scrap proposed IPO listings in
the face of continuing bad profit figures from major Net sites and a general
downturn on Wall Street. In Australia, the
Sidewalk sites told the
media today that they don't expect to see a profit for at least 24
months.
Monday 26th
October 1998
COMPLAINTS AGAINST TELCOS
RISE
Complaints against the Australian
ISP industry rose marginally last year while complaints against Australian
telecommunications carriers continued to head for the stratosphere, according
to the Telecommunications Industry
Ombudsman (TIO), which released its annual report for the first year
of full telecommunications deregulation last week. According to the TIO,
who are responsible for processing complaints against carriers, there are
now 535 registered players in the industry (up from 19 in 1997). The overwhelming
majority of these new registrants are ISPs, who were required to register
with the TIO following legislative changes to the scheme last year, along
with several hundred more who have yet to do so. According to Ombudsman John
Pinnock, complaints against all registered Australian ISPs only accounted
for around 3.2% of all matters handled by the TIO last year, while complaints
against unregistered ISPs (which couldn't be investigated) accounted for
a further 7%. However, more than 89% of complaints were levied at the TIO's
19 registered telcos.Overall, the number of complaints to the TIO increased
by more than 19% last year to 52,138 investigations.
Friday 23rd
October 1998
INA TO OFFER INTERNATIONAL
DOMAINS
Australian domain registry
Internet Names Australia (INA)
has announced that it will expand its service to offer international domains
as well as the Australian .com.au, .net.au and org.au domains it presently
services. INA will now also offer domain registrations for the UK, Malaysia,
Germany and many other countries with the eventual aim of becoming Australia's
"one stop" domain shop. The moves follows parallel moves in the USA to free
up the international domain system and to expand the number of domain
registration agencies beyond the present small group that currently dole
out the world's domains. INA - formerly Melbourne IT - acquired Premium Partner
status this year with US-based global domain authority Network Solutions,
giving it access to a fast-track system for the registration of .com, .net
and .org domain names. INA claims that its registration system is totally
automated and provides the fastest turnaround times in the country, within
most domains now capable of being secured within 24 to 48 hours.
Thursday 22nd
October 1998
NETSCAPE 4.5 A RUNAWAY
SUCCESS
Netscape's
new 4.5 release of Communicator - which was officially unveiled on Monday
this week - appears to be a runaway success for the company. According to
Netscape officials, users have made hundreds of thousands of downloads over
the last 72 hours and the pace currently shows no sign of easing up. The
new release may also mark a distinct change of attitude in the formerly supine
company, which has lost as much as 30% of its overall browser market share
during the last two years in the face of Microsoft's unremitting assault
with its competing Internet Explorer product. The new Communicator now welds
itself as closely into the user's operating system as Explorer does, and
provides many features which have yet to be incorporated in Explorer itself.
These include a massively revamped email client, Smart Updates (which let
the browser automatically download small patches and fixes across the Net
to keep the browser perpetually updated rather than force users to download
the entire product every time it's updated), and Smart Browsing technology
which allows users to type any word or phrase into the browser and be sent
to a related site from Netscape's database. The new browser also extends
this model with Smart Links and What's Related, two other features designed
to speed up online searches.
Wednesday 21st
October 1998
PRICE - NOT SECURITY - DRIVES NET
SHOPPING
Internet-based research firm
Jupiter Communications have released
a report supporting many of Nielsen Media's
recent research findings about the growth of online shopping. However, Jupiter's
study concludes that price - not security - is the main reason more people
aren't buying online. Jupiter's study found that 65% of Net users have yet
to make an online purchase, but it also found that a large percentage of
their sample indicated they would purchase goods online if web sites
introduced more discounts. 77% of users who said they browse - but don't
buy -when they go to commerce sites said that lower prices would get them
to begin shopping online. The same held true for those who said they never
go to e-commerce sites, where 64% said that lower prices would entice them
to buy off the screen. Surprisingly, though, neither group rated security
as a central concern, indicating a growing acceptance of secure online trading
facilities amongst shoppers. In other news: Australian Cybermalls
affiliate
 Barnes and Noble expanded their
online inventory from 1.2 million to 4 million titles today. The giant bookstore
chain has also opened new sections for rare and vintage books and unveiled
a new, lightweight design for improved download speeds. In addition to books,
Barnes and Noble also retail online magazine subscriptions to a large number
of best-selling US titles and an expanding range of popular home and office
software.
Tuesday 20th
October 1998
NO NEW NET TAXES UNTIL
2002
After a
long debate, US legislators have agreed not
to reduce the proposed tax-free period for Internet commerce enshrined in
the Internet Tax Freedom Act, effectively giving the Net defacto global
tax-free status until 2002. In the meantime, US Government officials will
set up a commission to study tax issues and try to determine how much revenue
the Net may be siphoning away from traditional taxing sources such as the
US State and Federal Governments. In conjunction with many taxation authorities
around the world, the committee will then also try to determine what sort
of tax regimes may be necessary after 2002 to redress the leakage, and then
look at ways that Net taxes might be implemented. The move is a victory for
large US companies such as AOL and Yahoo, who argued that introducing taxes
on the Net at the present time would stifle the growth of e-commerce. These
companies have been taking advantage of the early US lead in the Net and
e-commerce to set up regional services in various parts of the world (such
as Australia) in an effort to ensure the absolute dominance of US companies
in the electronic commerce market.
Monday 19th
October 1998
25% NOW BUY ONLINE -
NIELSEN
Slightly more than 25% of all
the estimated 78 million US and Canadian consumers who logged onto the Internet
between January and June this year made at least one online purchase, according
to a new e-commerce survey released by
Nielsen
Media. The survey, which randomly sampled 5,000 US and Canadian online
consumers aged 16 or over, found that books were the most popular item for
online purchases, followed by computer hardware and software. Nielsen estimated
that 5.6 million people purchased a book online during the first half of
1998 (up from 2.3m), 4.4 million purchased hardware (up from 2.0m) and 4
million purchased software (up from 2.8m). Travel and clothing purchases
also grew well, recording 2.8 million and 2.7 million sales respectively
(up from 1.2m and 0.9m). Consumers aged 35 or less purchased the most CDs
(64%) and clothing (65%), while consumers over 35 bought 63% of all hardware,
59% of all software and 58% of books. Significantly, Nielsen also found that
men are still the dominant buyers on the Net, accounting for 71% of all web
purchases - the same consumer distribution pattern as 1997.
Friday 16th
October 1998
TELSTRA BEGIN SECRET EMAIL
TRIALS
Telstra
have begun trialing an ambitious scheme to provide an email address to every
one of the 3,000,000 Australian households which currently have a home computer,
regardless of whether they're one of the 800,000 currently attached to the
Net or not. The new Telstra EasyMail service would offer people with
a PC the ability to send and receive email for the price of a local call
regardless of where they live in the country - and subscribers with an EasyMail
address will also have the option of having it listed on the Telstra White
Pages site and in a printed directory as well. The new system is planned
to go on limited trial in Tasmania next month and is set for a national launch
in December. A Telstra spokesperson said that the company was keen to roll
out EasyMail because they believed email was an application that would benefit
most people - and they expect to have as many as 800,000 households using
the system by 2001.
Thursday 15th
October 1998
PROFACES OPENS ON OUR
MALL
Profaces
- a New York company which specialises in providing high-quality make-up
kits and brushes over the Net - opened at Australian Cybermalls today. Profaces
is jointly owned by fashion photographer David Stahl and his partner,
professional make-up artist Andrea McAleer. Both partners have extensive
experience in the industry and their site offers visitors the opportunity
to buy makeup kits and products across the Net at up to 45% below
normal retail. "We're able to slash costs because of the significantly lower
overheads involved in Internet trading," David Stahl said. "And because we
offer a 100% money-back guarantee, we know that many customers are willing
to try our range even though they can't directly see it - as you can in say,
a department store - because the savings are so compelling. Besides, all
the products in our range are excellent quality and offer real value for
money, and we know from experience that most people are absolutely delighted
when they receive their order from us!" Profaces - like all the online traders
in Australian Cybermalls - use secure SSL ordering systems and are happy
to ship orders world-wide.
Wednesday 14th
October 1998
AUSTRALIAN ISPs GAIN LIMITED
LIABILITY
Australian ISPs will only be
liable for the content they broadcast to the extent that they played a part
in the creation of any illegal or offensive materials under a new deal hammered
out this week between the Federal Government and the Australian ISP industry.
The agreement, which is expected to be passed into law during the next sitting
of Parliament, will provide formal legal recognition of the difference between
Internet service and content provision for the first time. It will also mean
that Australian ISPs will not be held liable if illegal materials are broadcast
through their systems without their knowledge. However, the proposed new
rules would impel ISPs to remove or otherwise disable accounts once they
became aware of illegal material being broadcast from their equipment or
face legal penalties. The deal ends a two-year struggle between the Department
of Communications and the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General, who had
been trying to frame the intent of the agreement into correct legal terminology
acceptable to all parties.
Tuesday 13th
October 1998
AUSTRALIAN IT INDUSTRY DECLINING
- OECD
According to the
Organisation for Economic Co-Operation
and Development (OECD), Australia is at risk of dropping out of the
Top 10 most computerised nations on Earth over the next decade due to lack
of Government support for the IT industry and the absence of any cohesive
industry plan. According to the OECD study - called Digital Planet -
which measures the contribution of IT to the growth of both domestic and
global economies, Australia currently ranks 9th in the world. However, it
predicts that developing nations with larger populations will surpass the
country in the next decade. Last year, Australian IT spending on hardware,
software, services, telecommunications and internal IT staff accounted for
8.2% of GDP (up from 7.2% five years ago). Most of this was spent on salaries
and consultant fees. Industry leaders say that the report provides a compelling
argument for the Federal Government to establish an IT Minister and department.
Monday 12th
October 1998
TELSTRA EXTENDS COPPER PHASE-OUT
PERIOD
In a move that will give some
struggling ISPs a year's grace and help the company itself avoid the censure
of industry regulators,
Telstra today extended its
planned phase-out period for copper wires by a year. The move will allow
smaller ISPS (who currently pay $1500 a year for Permitted Attachment Private
Lines (PAPLs)) along with other users like security services, fire alarm
services and some corporations an extra 12 months to gather the $15,000 a
year they'll need for the new high-speed digital services that will replace
PAPLs next year. According to Telstra, the gradual conversion of its network
to fibre-optics means that it can no longer guarantee the continuous end-to-end
copper connection that electric-current driven PAPLs require. This being
so, Telstra argue that the lifespan of PAPLs is at an end. However, critics
such as the South Australian Internet Association have pointed out
that Telstra is currently trialing ADSL
technology (asynchronous digital subscriber line) with a view to
rolling it out into widespread use in 1999. ADSL can deliver data at up to
6 megabits per second - but it also requires copper phone lines to function.
Friday 9th October
1998
AOL OPENS IN AUSTRALIA
America
Online, the world's largest ISP, officially opened in Australia yesterday
after more than a year's preparation. The online giant, which now holds the
Number 1 position the US and UK and strong positions in Europe and Japan,
believes that Australia is a highly attractive market as well because of
the high penetration of PCs and Internet usage amongst consumers. However,
industry experts believe that the company may find the Australian market
considerably tougher to crack than it expects because all its traditional
marketing tactics have already been copied by dominant local players
OzEmail and
Big Pond over the last two years.
AOL, which claims 13 million subscribers world-wide, have launched the local
service in conjunction with its European partner, German media company
Bertelsmann AG. It's also lined up a long list of local content providers
including Urban Cinefile, Outrage, NetRegistry, Greengrocer.com, travel.com.au
and hyper@ctive. Contrary to industry expectations, however, AOL propose
to offer only two options initially: a low-usage 3 hour, $9.95 monthly plan
and a slightly higher 15-hour $29.95 monthly plan, with excess hours on both
charged at $4. Given that most local ISPs in Australia currently charge between
$1 and $2 per hour for dial-up access and both OzEmail and Telstra now offer
generous flat-rate plans for around $45 per month, commentators believe that
AOL will be offering very little incentive for users to swap. AOL is nonetheless
confident that it can succeed in the local marketplace, and predicted that
its entrance into the crowded market would spell the demise of many small
Australian ISPs over the next few years.
Thursday 8th
October 1998
NEW PUSH FOR BROWSER
STANDARDS
The
Web Standards Project,
a new advocacy group formed in August to champion the standardisation of
browser feature sets - announced today that it will join forces with compliance
testing and standards consortium the
Open Group in an effort to
pressure Netscape, Microsoft and other manufacturers to abandon proprietary
extensions to existing web standards. The new coalition believe that rivalry
between the web companies and their unwillingness to adhere to the standards
set by the World Wide Web Consortium
are creating impossible workloads for Internet content developers and
seriously limiting the growth of the Net - and that things are getting worse.
According to an Open Group spokesperson, it has now become almost impossible
for advanced content developers to create truly portable content because
of the widely varying feature sets between browsers. This is compelling
developers to either create multiple versions of their sites, or simply sacrifice
parts of their audience on the altar of expediency. The new group's first
collaborative effort - which will be announced at Internet World in New York
- will be to make a testing suite freely available which will evaluate browsers
against accepted standards and formats including HTML 3.2, the .GIF and .JPG
image formats, .WAV and .AU audio formats, the Java Development Kit 1.1,
and HTTP 1.0 and 1.1. A second initiative will be a follow-up suite that
will measure support for HTML 4.0, CSS 1.0, the .PNG image format and the
.MPEG video format. The Open Group already licenses its seal of approval
for products that it deems compliant with industry standards and has not
ruled out creating a similar mark for web products.
Wednesday 7th
October 1998
SOUTHERN CROSS CABLE
"CLOSER"
The ambitious Southern Cross
cable project - which will allow
Optus to provide an alternative
network to compete against Telstra's current monopoly over the Australian
leg of the Internet - came a step closer yesterday when it secured Australia's
24th telecommunications carrier licence. The project (a joint venture between
50% stakeholder Telstra New Zealand, 40% stakeholder Optus and 10% stakeholder
Worldcom) will see the construction of an 80 Gb fibre-optic submarine cable
connecting Australia and New Zealand with the USA via Hawaii. The new $A1.6
billion cable will break Telstra's current stranglehold over trans-Pacific
Internet access and introduce full blooded competition for bandwidth pricing
in Australia for the very first time. At present, a number of Australian
ISPs who want to circumvent Telstra have begun buying spare bandwidth from
satellites - but because of the latency delay of 1 to 2 seconds inherent
in satellite communications, most of this is being used to refresh caches.
As a result, consumers have seen little real benefit from it, ensuring that
domestic Net access prices and hosting charges remain consistently high.
The cable is expected to be completed by the end of 1999.
Tuesday 6th
October 1998
AMENDED NET TAX BILL ON THE
WAY
The US Senate expanded the
Internet Tax Freedom Act today by including amendments aimed at protecting
the privacy of children and ensuring more open and accountable Government.
However, a final vote to pass the Act into law may not happen for another
day or two. The two major amendments made to the bill are the Children's
Online Protection Act, which will require parental consent before web sites
can collect information from children aged 12 or below, and the Government
Paperwork Elimination Act, which would require the US Government to post
documents online and allow US citizens to use digital signatures to sign
forms, giving legal standing to this formerly grey area. Two more much more
contentious amendments may also be added to the bill before final voting:
one that would limit minors' access to adult content on the Internet., and
a second that proposes a tax on domain name registrations. The Internet Tax
Freedom Act proposes to prohibit any new or discriminatory taxes on Net access
and e-commerce for 2 years - a move that would make the US a buyers paradise
for residents of countries operating under a GST or VAT.
Monday 5th October
1998
NET SLOWLY CHEWING UP TV
AUDIENCES
In what may be mixed news for
the television industry, two conflicting studies in the USA released late
last week have reported that Internet-enabled households either watch the
same amount of TV as non-Internet households or up to 15% less. The studies
- carried out by AOL and the
Discovery Network - polled
5,000 and 389 consumer households respectively. AOL's study (which, being
larger, may be more representative of true market demographics) reported
that US households with access to the Internet were 15% less likely to watch
TV. By contrast, Discovery's survey found that while households with Internet
access watched slightly more TV in 1997 than in 1996 as a whole, there was
a distinct drop of almost 7 percent in the amount of time that 12 to 24-year-olds
spent watching TV because of time spent on the Web. While both studies aver
that it is still too early to say if the decline in the number of young viewers
watching TV marks a turning point in media consumption habits, both agree
that if this is the case then the Net may well assume as dominant a position
in the everyday life of the 21st century as TV does today.
Friday 2nd October
1998
CSIRO NET MAPPING SERVICE "WORLD
FIRST"
Australia's
CSIRO has launched a new site
to provide a reference source that they hope will ultimately deliver detailed
information about land boundaries, water mains, electricity lines, property
easements and other spatial data directly from the Internet. The new service
- which is currently being trialed in the ACT under the name
ACTMAPonline - was
unveiled at Manufesto 98, the Science and Industry trade fair in Melbourne.
It allows ACT residents to call up detailed information on their city through
a map style interface directly from their browser without the need for plug-ins
of any kind, and is already being hailed as a world first. The project originally
began life at the CSIRO's Mathematical and Information Sciences division
and is currently being run in conjunction with the ACT Government's Land
Information Centre. It takes existing government data and transforms it into
a fully searchable map-based information system. ACT residents simply select
a location on the map and obtain information about the area. According to
a CSIRO spokesman, one of the most attractive features of the new service
is that zooming in on a map makes no difference to the quality, and future
expansions to include water and electrical data are now in the pipeline.
Thursday 1st
October 1998
AUSTRALIAN NET DIVES IN
SEPTEMBER
The Australian Internet sustained
another major dieback in September as the launch of new web sites failed
to overcome a seasonal cleanout of defunct ones from search engine databases.
According to the engines we monitor to construct our monthly Australian
Internet Growth Index, all capitals showed a significant decline in sites
during September. However, surviving sites are getting bigger. Our polling
suggests that there are now over 1.18 million listed Australian web pages
on the Net, with probably as many again on extranets and unlisted sites.
The October 1st figures (with September 1st figures in brackets) are as
follows:
Australian
Internet Growth Index September 1998
(Figures Show Estimated Sites) |
-
Brisbane - 2,043 (2,675)
-
Sydney - 7,076 (9,262)
-
Melbourne - 5,123 (6,679)
-
Adelaide - 1,843 (2,743)
|
-
Perth - 2,347 (2,921)
-
Hobart - 821 (1,192)
-
Canberra - 1,460 (2,250)
-
Darwin - 1,588 (2,425)
|
|
On September 1st Australian
Cybermalls relocated to new servers in Toronto, Ontario. Our new home provides
significantly better statistics than our previous one and we were surprised
to discover that we've been under-reporting our site visitation figures by
as much as 33% - probably for most of the last 18 months. During September
Australian Cybermalls hosted 67,291 visitors, significantly higher
than the 43,604 visitors who crossed our counter pages in August 1998. During
the month we also displayed 261,706 pages of information on our servers and
consumed 7.44 Gbytes of bandwidth. Our September 1998 traffic statistics
can be viewed
here.
|
