Hasta La Gadget!

Virtual carriers are only as healthy as the companies that provide their services — and Australia’s Kogan Mobile is learning this the hard way. Its wholesale cellular partner ispONE has just entered administration following a contract dispute with Telstra, ending all its deals for prepaid 3G services and leaving Kogan Mobile no choice but to wind down. Customers have already lost the ability to add or replenish services; they’ll have up to 60 days after a Telstra notice to use any credit they have left, and 180 days to port their numbers elsewhere. While Kogan’s shutdown may only affect about 100,000 people, it still represents an unfortunate loss of competition in a country with few major providers.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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Via: iTnews.com.au

Source: Kogan Mobile, Telstra Wholesale

Companies such as Apple and Adobe have been questioned by the Australian government in the past over why their products are priced higher in their country, even after conversion which makes certain products a lot more expensive than their North American equivalents. While Adobe has caved to the Australian government’s demands, could Sony and Microsoft eventually cave too? If you’re wondering what we’re talking about, Choice Online from Australia  has reported that it is possible that Australians can expect to pay a lot more for PS4 and Xbox One games.

The company has reported that based on their comparisons of prices from local retailers such as JB Hi-Fi and EB Games, they expect that Australians could pay as much as 37% more for PS4 and Xbox One games compared to those living in North America, where the games have be priced at $59.99. Naturally this is pretty unfair for Australian gamers, and while it is understandable that Microsoft and Sony might not price it at AUD59.99 as they could make a loss due to the USD being stronger than the Aussie dollar, pricing it 37% higher seems a little extreme. It will be interesting to see if the Australian government has anything to say about this.

Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It | PS4 And Xbox One Games Could Cost 37% More In Australia original content from Ubergizmo.

After going through a year-long rigmarole of summonses and interrogations to find out why Australians are being overcharged by as much as 66 percent on digitally-distributed Apple, Microsoft and Adobe products, and how the practice of “geo-blocking” prevents customers from seeking fairer prices elsewhere, an Australian parliamentary committee has finally hit on a solution. In the words of committee chairman Nick Champion, speaking to ABC News:

“What we want to do is make sure that consumers are aware of the extent to which geo-blocking applies to them and the extent to which they can lawfully evade [it].”

Now, if you were hoping that the Australian government would somehow force these companies to drop their prices down to US-equivalent levels, then this quote may admittedly sound a bit weak. It might also seem impractical, since geo-blocking is designed to be difficult to evade, by binding a customer’s IP address, credit card or other details to their home market. Then again, things start to make more sense when we factor in the committee’s other suggestions.

In particular, it proposes that the country’s Copyright Act be amended to make it clear that an Australian won’t be prosecuted just because they annoyed a multinational tech company by circumventing its geographic restrictions — and, indeed, the population as a whole should be taught “tools and techniques” to achieve this wherever possible. The committee even recommends that Australians should have a “right of resale,” such that they could legally remove locks on digital content that limits it to one user or one ecosystem. We have no idea how seriously the government will take these ideas, or how quickly it may implement them, but the committee’s defiant tone makes for some good reading at the source link.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio/Video, Internet, Software, Mobile

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Via: ABC News, HotHardware

Source: Committee report (PDF download)

Australia’s Outback is a forbidding land, and many of its dinosaur bones remain unexcavated. But in the early 2000s, a small family of cattle ranchers discovered a bone gold mine on their land. They set out to build a structure for their ongoing find—and their sheer enthusiasm convinced a group of architects and contractors to build the museum pro-bono.

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Steam Australia has a “low violence” version of Saints Row 4 available for pre-purchase.

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