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Telstra mobile network fails again

tlssystems2 So for the third time Telstra mobile network has failed. Many tesltra customers rely on Telstra’s wide coverage and feel cheated that the premium they pay for this seems to be as the expense of reliability.

So why is this occurring, despite the cooperate hype Telstra systems are poorly maintained and often antiquated. This is due to managements obsession with cost cutting staff salaries and importing inexperienced young immigrant labor. As a result a strong disincentive among staff to document systems and procedures resulted. The conclusion was many systems became ‘black boxes’ of unknown function and contents. Of course eventually something will break down and when they do the technician who could maintain them has long since retired (or grudging took a pay out 20 years ago) and had no one to pass the torch to. Worse still many technicians were sacked in the prime of their careers and won’t help Telstra for love or money. As a result we are beginning to see the symptoms of this disease, unreliable infrastructure one might be more familiar with in third world countries, no surprise it is being run by third world people with absolutely no vision past their own KPI’s.

Of course legions of middle managers are happily finding someone to blame, and this is where their love of immigrant labor come in, immigrant are scared to lose their jobs and residency applications so they will take unfair blame along with poor pay and conditions. there’s no real competitor to Telstra for Mobile coverage, so nothing will stop the rot of network stability.

Welcome to the new normal. (You might want to print this out and pass it on, you can’t guarantee internet stability anymore.)

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Tags: cost cutting, fail, infrastructure, Internet, network, TELSTRA

IT students dwindle due to 457 Visa rorts

Sep 9

Posted by occupymelbournenet

The IBM 5150 released on August 12 1981, this is where we get the term PC from and much of the basic architecture still in use.

So a few days ago ‘The Age’ (our local rag) ran a story about High school student abandoning IT as a field of study.

The article was good enough, but the comments were an absolute goldmine of insight into the problems in IT in Australia

http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/expertise/it-crowd-shrinking-as-vce-enrolments-plummet-20140907-10dizx.html

I have worked in the industry for nearly 20 years. The jobs are slowly disappearing to overseas cheap labour pools and imported 457 workers who claim to have the skills and are willing to work for far less than is reasonable.

Why would anyone want to study a subject or career that clearly has a poor future in this country?

Ask Telstra for example how many jobs they plan to send to “Asia” over the next year alone.

Commenter

Martin

Location

Sydney

Date and time

September 08, 2014, 7:37AM
- Australian IT is a disaster, remember myki and hundreds of other projects paid for by taxpayers that are all over budget , late and don’t work well.
  
  Commenter
  
  preacher
  
  Date and time
  
  September 08, 2014, 8:09AM
- Ive been in IT for 35 years and its never been this bad, and its all a result of failed Government policies
  
  Offshoring and 457 visas have decimated Programming, Testing, Business Analysis, etc. The last project I was on there was a team of 20 people on 457 visas.
  
  Abbott has relaxed 457 visas so its only getting worse.
  
  If your thinking about a career in IT, you’ve got bugs in your head
  
  Commenter
  
  IT DOES NOT COMPUTE
  
  Location
  
  Melb
  
  Date and time
  
  September 08, 2014, 8:23AM
- Offshoring and 457 Visas are destroying/have destroyed the local IT industry. The hilarious thing is overseas workers come in on 457 Visas (weren’t they meant to be for positions where we don’t have the skills locally) and upon arrival they do not have a clue. They are shielded by the resident overseas workers to hide their incompetence. Projects are taking longer and have more bugs in them than ever before. And don’t get me started on their can’t say”no” issues.
  
  Commenter
  
  Gilly
  
  Location
  
  Melbourne
  
  Date and time
  
  September 08, 2014, 8:57AM
- +1 Yep its going down hill faster and faster. To anyone thinking of a career in IT forget it.
  
  Commenter
  
  Tim
  
  Location
  
  Melbourne
  
  Date and time
  
  September 08, 2014, 9:20AM
- Your right, overseas cheap labour, view source code and see note for example rajah said do it this way and that way etc, and upgrades to complex sites like TAB racing became worse and primate, upgrades to westpac BPAY atrocious enough for me to complain yesterday, but execs never check these upgrades nor are there customer complaint avenues. We see many script and hidden cache crashes via programmers not meeting updated flashplayer requirements and see new versions grow 10 times in size but do far less, excessive programming is excessive load. I think we need better quality training rather than worry about drop-out load
  
  Commenter
  
  Brian Woods
  
  Location
  
  Glenroy
  
  Date and time
  
  September 08, 2014, 9:57AM
- Yep, and as Telstra is trumpeting Magda Szubanski in its ‘we love our customers’ advert, it continues to ship customer support functions to Manila and elsewhere, and 457 visas appear to have become the latest immigration portal. Google, “457 visa to permanent residency” to see how much effort is being put into this channel. IT as a career choice in Australia? Only if you are really passionate about it, and prepared to fight to get ahead.
  
  Commenter
  
  OpenWindow
  
  Date and time
  
  September 08, 2014, 9:57AM
- The Department of Immigration and Border Protection’s most recent 457 quarterly report put the average salary for applications granted to 457 workers in the Information, Media & Telecommunications sponsor industry at $87,200 and for the Professional, Scientific and Technical sponsor industry at $96,500. I am unsure how those wages are unreasonable.
  
  Commenter
  
  teh krazy
  
  Date and time
  
  September 08, 2014, 10:13AM
- I agree with all of the above. As an employer who is looking for client facing web developers. What a joke the so called ‘education revolution’ sausage factory has produced a whole lot of It paper graduates who will never get a real job in IT. More quality less quantity required. The reason is the ‘education revolution’ desperately needs new foreign paying students. Everybody knows most are going to be useless in the workplace. But the carrot is handing out visa’s and ultimately passports via this useless education. So tell your kids don’t even think about a career the government has sold them down the river.
  
  Commenter
  
  DifferentLens
  
  Location
  
  Melbourne
  
  Date and time
  
  September 08, 2014, 10:37AM
- @teh krazy
  The point is not the salary per se. The point is a 457 Visa should NEVER be granted to an IT worker as we have a plethora of qualified people here in Australia. The salary point is a whole other issue. If you have ever had anything to do with the outsource industry in IT you would know what most posters here are talking about.
  
  Commenter
  
  Gilly
  
  Location
  
  Melbourne
  
  Date and time
  
  September 08, 2014, 10:46AM

Posted in 457 Visa, Corporations, Law & Government, Meme, Reblogged, Telstra

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Tags: 457 visa, Education, Industry, IT, Rort, TELSTRA

Telstra cynical FON plan

May 21

Posted by occupymelbournenet

http://gigaom.com/2014/05/20/fons-crowdsourced-wi-fi-network-spreads-down-under-with-telstra-deal/

You have not convinced this woman.

FON is a 9 year old technology from Spain which allows you to share your fixed line internet through its wireless antenna to anyone nearby. It was initially set up as a sharing and profit sharing system whereby you got a 50% commission for the data you gave to the user if you chose to. You could also do this for gratis in exchange for similar free WiFi of other users. Now the profit share plans no longer exist.

Telstra could have pushed this technology 5 years ago, but it would have meant they would have been allowing customers to opt out of paying for expensive 3G internet and would have had to pay customers for the data they routed for Telstra. Pay customers to compete with our 3G? No way!

Tesltra’s intentions with FON

Why is Telstra pushing the technology now?

3G speeds are considered mediocre and largely ubiquitous (in metro areas) with many places giving this away for free. At the same time there has been an explosion is the use of mobile internet meaning paid networks began to struggle under the weight of traffic. Building wireless capacity is expensive and Telstra needs to develop wireless capacity and drive down the price of wireless internet before the NBN arrives with its massive capacity fiber optic internet.

So in other words Telstra is scared of the NBN and is too cheap to build enough wireless towers and would rather use its customers home connections for free. NBN will likely destroy Telstra and Optus in the internet and VOIP markets leaving Telstra (and Optus) only a copper line / 3G carrier for the the extremely remote areas, which have never been profitable.

One of the reasons Telstra wants to make the wireless ‘free’ is simply to ruin the wireless market for the NBN by using FON. The NBN will find it harder to get customers in the wireless market as the price will be so low. Rather cynical considering Telstra didn’t want this technology to compete with their 3G but when someone else wants a piece of the market (3G/4G/4G+), they are literally smashing all of the toys so no one can play.

Ironically this is all happening in the country that did so much to make wireless internet a reality and we are among the last to benefit from it. Hats off to the clever people at CSIRO who made WiFi possible. No thanks to the corporates who sand bag every new technology developed.

Australians invent key aspects of WiFi in Australia working for the Australian government. Australians are among the last to benefit from wireless technology.