Telstra Next G4

We are at Daylesford caravan park. On the Bendigo news today the report was that it will be for capital cities and major country centres. Bendigo does not have it yet but should in a couple of months. There should be about 80 or so G4 centres by the end of the year.

4G rolls back to 3G if no 4G is available.

Im with you Kris and Kev, how fast do people need to update their facetweet or download a movie in the city ?.
Having pulled up at accidents with people standing around because they do not have a Sat phone it brings it home. Living in the Kimberley I always take the Sat phone on the road.
Towers spread along the major roads would be a good start to saving more lives. Not enough votes in the country though for that to happen.
And having an alternative carrier to Satan would be nice for people who live outside the cities. We might get some semblance to service then that city dwellers take for granted as normal.

The already have a phone system you can use anywhere...it's called "SATELLITE".

We do a lot of travelling for pleasure and with our company doing field service work on heavy vehicle and earthmoving equipment, there are some places we can not get normal phone coverage and it's mostly remote areas... we use satellite phones for those areas.

Honestly I can't complain about coverage.

Why should the government fork out money for better coverage when it's not up to them..... maybe they could use some of the 36 to 50 billion dollars they are spending our money on the National Broadband Network to subsidise petrol prices or maybe even the weekly shopping bills.... why not subsidise people who buy a new car valued over $85000.... or help out the smokers by lower the price of cigarettes....

It makes me laugh how some think.

"or help out smokers by lower price of cigarettes..."

Wha? That would be strange 'help'. Smokers are helped by being encouraged to stop.... surely?

Think you will be lucky there. Telstra is a public listed company and they have resonsibilities to their shareholders to make a profit not to customers to extend services. The responibility to their customers is to provide reasonable service in the coverage area. Telstra is unlikely to make an investment that has little prospect of a return. If we wanted mobile services everywhere Telstra should not have been floated. There is already a sat service and subsidy to cover non coverage areas. If a low orbit mobile sat could work you may get your wish as it is only $100m for the launch plus the sat cost say $1b in round figures.

As for the smokers that would actually reduce the Health spend. If we really wanted to make health cheap make cigs $1 a pack, remove 0.05 blood alcohol limit, remove mandatory seat belts and scrap PBS. It will be really cheap as no one will be able to pay for the medications, particularly those with lung cancer. Fatalities from car accidents will go through the roof. End result will be decresed life expectancy and less long term demand for hospital and nursing home beds. Harsh but true.

Basically for the size of Australia and it population we have good and affordable health care and reasonable infrastructure. It can always be better but at a cost. There is only one bucket of money to spend. Increasing spending in one area decreases spending some where else, unless you have continual deficites. At least this country has not been that stupid. We could be just like Greece where they are decreasing public sector salaries, health spending and pension/social security payments. I hate to say it but our pollies got one thing right.

Steve