iiNet are buying Internode. iiNet has spent years scouring the country to buy up any smaller ISP they could to expand it’s subscriber base. For years the company didn’t even advertise. This strategy for growth, proved to be a winning formula, growing rapidly to be the 2nd largest ISP in Australia.

Today iiNet have announced they are acquiring Internode’s 190,000 customers. Internode customers are some of the most passionate out there and have been quick to raise their concerns. Known for their high levels of customer service, gaming servers and unmetered content deals and leading the way in IPv6, Internode customers are clearly concerned the good days are coming to an end.

The acquisition of Internode will cost iiNet $105 Million and contain more than 450 employees. It’s interesting timing for the purchase given the impending transition of customers from ADSL to NBN over the next few years. The deal is scheduled for completion by February 29th, 2012.

With a high profile acquisition like this, there is bound to be some anxiety, iiNet CEO Michael Malone attempted to address this in the press release  by saying Internode would continue to operate independently. Unfortunately the facts are often skipped over in people’s rush to predict the move a failure and bad for customers. He also said the two companies had similar backgrounds, similar values and similar service ethics.

In reality, the acquisition is likely to benefit both iiNet and Internode customers as the joint infrastructure can now be shared and optimised, hardware offerings like Fetch TV and Bob along with content partnerships should now spread to both sets of customers. There is yet to be clarification around any staff redundancies that may arise as an overlap of skills across the companies.

As a previous customer of both companies, I believe there is real parallels between the two and potential for them to compete with Telstra’s Bigpond for the top spot. Competition ultimately benefits consumers with prices being driven down and features up, but reducing the number by one is unlikely to have major impacts on local competition.

More information @ iiNet and Internode.

The NBN dream of delivering faster speed and better prices is finally being realised. This morning iiNet have announced their retail NBN plans. Earlier this year Internode took a lot of heat for their NBN offerings being too expensive ($189.95 for 100/40, 1TB plan). Internode pointed to NBN interconnect costs as the reason why, but since then Dodo, Exetel, but more importantly, iiNet have announced significantly cheaper plans.

At the time of the Internode pricing announcement, the Government’s Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy suggested competition would bring prices down and after today’s announcement, it seems he was right. Early reaction online this morning seems overwhelmingly positive for these prices. Not entirely surprising given moving to an iiNet NBN plan would dramatically increase speed and downloads – Win/Win.

While there may be 12 options, the top plan is most inviting. 1TB of downloads, at 100Mbps down and 40Mbps up for just $99.95 per month. All the iiNet NBN plans require a 24 month plan, but if that’s the barrier to entry, sign me up now.

iiNet’s plans don’t cater for the entry level pricing, look to Dodo or Exetel for that, but at the medium to top end of the market, iiNet are currently the cheapest. Your move BigPond and Optus.

The only problem with the iiNet NBN plans is that most of us can’t get them yet. Now the pricing is in line with what we expected to see, the only question left is how fast it can be rolled out.

Update
VOIP phone service can be added for $9.95pm. The NBN prices are also available to business but the top plan costs $30pm extra.

More @ http://www.iinet.net.au/nbn/

Breaking news fangirls, the iiNet TopGeek Top 6 are now decided. Last weekend the Top 10 competitors travelled to their state capitals to participate in a challenge #3 – The Game. This involved playing 3 games across 2 consoles in-store at EB Games. Taking turns over the course of almost 2 hours of intense concentration we played the following titles.

• River Rush on Xbox Kinect
• Forza 3 Motor Racing
• Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting

Turns out I did pretty well, after taking the #1 spot in the first challenge – The Invention, dropping outside the top 5 in challenge 2 – The Script, I’m back at the top after challenge 3 – The Game, so the journey continues… One step closer to CES 2012 !! The full round 3 results are displayed in the table below.

Unfortunately the announcement of the Top 6 means we’re saying goodbye to 4 of the Top Geeks. Over the course of this competition the Top 20 have become close, so while the rounds go by, new friendships live on.

Details of the next challenge are still coming together and will be made public shortly.

More information @ http://www.topgeek.iinet.net.au/

The lawsuit appeal against internet giant iiNet by the Film Industry has been dismissed in Federal Court today. This lawsuit has had the possibility of intensely effecting users and industry of the internet. If this lawsuit had passed ISPs may have been required to put harsh preventions in place to prevent its users from downloading illegal content.

Back in 2008 local and overseas studios sued iiNet, accusing them of not putting measures in place to prevent its customers from downloading and sharing illegal and pirated movies and content. In February of 2010 iiNet had won the original court case but the Film Industry appealed.

Outside federal court this afternoon chief executive of iiNet, Michael Malone said “All this legal action hasn’t stopped one customer from “illegally” downloading in Australia.” Also that the case has cost the company $6.5 million.

Malone also said in a statement “We urge the Australian film industry to address the growing demand for studio content to be delivered in a timely and cost effective manner to consumers and we remain eager to work with them to make this material available legitimately”

Neil Gane, executive director of AFACT said "this was a case where iiNet admitted to tens of thousands of copyright infringements occurring on its network". He questioned why they didn’t "have to lift its finger to prevent them".

The case now may move to Australia’s High Court.

Read more @ SMH and TorrentFreak

Competition 1
After dedication 25+ hours into the Upgradable TV concept for competition 1, I was over-the-moon to discover the judges had ranked my entry #1 in round 1. Founder and managing director of Internode, Simon Hackett even said “I’d probably buy one! It might actually stop people throwing out their old TVs to get new ones.”

The competition has been great for exposure, reaching Revision3’s GeekBeat.tv, Gizmodo Australia, a page 3 article in the Border Mail and now a Wednesday morning radio gig talking tech. I really do commend iiNet for running a competition like this to showcase amazing people who are passionate about technology.

So now with round 1 over, we’re now down to the top 15, this brings us to the next round in which 5 more will say goodbye. Below is what’s required for this round.. the skinny is – a lot more hard work. Let me tell you, the competition is fierce !

Competition 2
Prepare a basic premise for a new TV Show or Film. What will be the defining characteristic of your script?
- a love tryst between a human, a vampire and Dannie Glover
- an expected unexpected expected twist
- a fresh look at a well established genre
- an interesting combination of a few classics

Your submission needs to include:
- A story outline, as much as needed to convey your idea AND
- Preferably, a video acting out a typical or key scene from the script OR
- If you can’t do a video a storyboard, an animation or comic of the same ilk will suffice.

Judging criteria:
- Judges will award humour, originality and any clear effort put in.
- Flashy editing won’t trump originality, creativity and effort but it couldn’t hurt.

Winners will be announced on Wednesday 2nd March

More information at topgeek.iinet.net.au/

Almost one and a half years ago, I moved interstate, which means, I need to get the landline and internet connected. Because where I previously lived, Bigpond was pretty much the only option, I now had access to a wide variety of ISP’s. So I narrowed it down to two ISP – Optus and iiNet. My main criteria where cheap/free phone calls, and a reasonable amount of internet quota.

Optus offered me $129/month, free landline & mobile calls with 30GB internet and iiNet offered $70/month with Naked DSL, free landline calls and 50GB quota. I originally chose Optus, thinking they where offering a traditional landline (not VOIP) so I could use a fax machine (and plus there number was cool it had six 8’s in it). So I went online to order to get their 3 months free access. However, they couldn’t find my house, and I was to call them. Anyway, I put the order through, a few days later; they called me up (was a nice bloke) saying you have to pay $300 to put a line to my house. I said to them, there is an Optus line going to my house – I can see it. They said, sorry, there isn’t one. So I went to iiNet, put through the order and they rang me up, and they too said, you have to pay $300 to put a phone line to your house. I said the same thing. There is a power line, a Telstra line and an Optus Cable line. So both of us did some investigation and troubleshooting to see what the problem is.

A couple of days later, one of our friends said, “you know the suburb you live in was originally called this, not that”. “Oh”. I rang up iiNet, gave them the suburb other suburb name; and look, they can see a line to the house.

So, the order went through, I got Naked DSL with iiNet and the BoB modem. 10 days later I got connected, but didn’t receive my modem. BoB came a little later on, but didn’t come with a handset. In the end, it took at least 2 months to get the internet connected after going through both Optus and iiNet.

This week, I signed my mum up to a post-paid plan with Virgin Mobile. I ordered online to get the 3 months free access on Thursday. Put the order through, and got the phone on Tuesday. However, I cannot activate because Virgin Mobile is coincidently updating their systems and they’re offline – 24 hours over their original ETA it’s still offline, so therefore, I cannot activate the service. As I mentioned in my Blog, I went down to All Phone, purchased a phone there and then and it worked within a few hours, not 6+ days I have been waiting because I ordered it online.

So my question is to everyone, how long do you think an acceptable time frame to get connected? Is 2 months to long for internet; is 6 days to long for a mobile? Let me know.

Image Credit: Freeview & Virgin Mobile

We all know how frustrating it can be when your internet connection goes down and doesn’t seem to work. It’s even more frustrating when you don’t know why it’s down, or how to fix it because restarting your computer and modem/router didn’t solve the trick. So what do you do? Call your ISP and go through heaps of troubleshooting steps that seem like a waste of time.

The guys over at the iiNet Blog posted a list of some of the reasons your internet may go down, which can be either your fault, the ISP’s fault, or just mother nature disrupting the network (as we have seen in QLD).

But they have published an interesting fact that astounded me. In 2010, guess how many modems/routers that where returned to iiNet that were deemed faulty by the customer, but after thorough testing it, there was actual no fault? It is a staggering 97%. That’s right, only 3% of modems/routers returned to iiNet where actually faulty!

So before you start playing the blame game on your ISP, make sure you spend the time following their troubleshooting steps with them, because most of the time, it can be solved with a little reconfiguration or an update.

More info @ iiNet Blog

For the past week and a half, the top 20 finalists for iiNet’s Top Geek competition have been hard at work creating their own gadget or application. After submitting by 8pm Sunday night, entrants were prohibited from sharing their videos publically, that rule has now been lifted, so here they are:

Rosetta http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QAIP1V6Aus
Eco-Glo Tatoos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_0CweuTEsM
iScore http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J3AO6TJazQ
QuadCopter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIay_uIF8sM
me3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWyDk4JncIc
Herbalizer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDb62Okdd5c
Maximum Dog http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB0R7YvbzQw
GeekPS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnHgtygCiQk
Brain Freeze http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU5sEMn5P2I
The Machine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QujnTW2Esxw
IceBreaker http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FZlagc4m4A
The Ritz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e25wEY0kY4s
iStereotype http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqNqYxIE188
Upgradable TV http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq1snHs2YP4
PokeBall http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-vOhG-a1BE
Somnambulism Bot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG7rWxeqXuY
UControl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTOyhRH-tFQ
Snap Him Up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkA_Ad132Ik

Let me remind you, we’re competing for an all expenses paid trip to the US to one of 4 conferences. Results for competition #1 will be announced this Friday, 5 of the top 20 competitors will be left behind, while the rest continue to competition #2. The details of which were made available to contestants this afternoon, but are still shrouded by secrecy.

It seems the local media are paying attention to the challenge with a page 3 article in the Border Mail today. Read the article on Bordermail.com.au

More info @ http://topgeek.iinet.net.au/

A few weeks ago I stumbled across a competition iiNet was running called Top Geek. While I usually cringe at being called a geek (much prefer technologically-savy), the Top Geek competition could score me an all expenses paid trip back to the US, but this time for a conference.

Wether its SxSW, Comic-Con, CES or PAX this is a prize I want to win. On iiNet’s blog today they announced the finalists, 5 chosen by the public and 15 (including me) chosen by the star studded lineup of judges.

Simon Hackett, CEO of Internode now joins iiNet CEO Michael Malone, Miss Universe Australia Jesinta Campbell, Australian author John Birmingham and Vice President of sales at Facebook, Paul Borrud.

Now the first couple of stages are over, its getting to the pointy end where the top 20 will play off against each other in a battle to the death (not really). For this part of the contest I’ll be calling on all techAU fans to help.. stay tuned as the fun starts on Feb 4 !

Check out my profile in the iiNet Top Geek contest.

Update

Well the big decision is in, iiNet have won the case. Here are some quotes from the court room.

"iinet has no control over bittorrent system and not responsible for bittorrent system."

The fact there is worldwide piracy "does not necessitate or compel a finding of authorisation, just because it is felt there is something that must be done."

iiNet "was entitled to safe harbour" as it had a policy on infringement, even if its policy didn’t stand up to AFACT’s standards

"copyright occured as result of use of BitTorrent, not the Internet" said Justice Cowdroy

The end result is, the case is closed, AFACT has to pay for iiNet’s costs. 

Today is one of the most critical days in Australian Internet history. From the Federal Court in Sydney, Justice Cowdroy is set to hand down his decision on the iiNet copyright violation case. If you not familiar with the case, a collective of movie studios have banded together to create a law suit against iiNet, protesting that iiNet didn’t do enough to deal with ‘known offenders’. These are people who download and distribute movies and tv shows, of which copyright belongs to the movie studios.

Today’s decision, due at 9.30am AEDT, will set a precedent for how all Australian ISPs will prosecute offenders in the future. It’s also likely that today’s decision will be appealed from whichever side looses. Remember there’s billions of dollars at stake here, so it won’t be settled easily.

Personally I hope some kind of middle ground can be reached.

itnews is doing live coverage of the days events using cover it live. Follow along at http://www.itnews.com.au/News/166296,iitrial-judgement-day-live-coverage.aspx

You can also follow along by watching the #iiTrial hashtag on twitter.