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The federal Coalition announced today that it would not support Labor's flawed mandatory ISP filtering policy. Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey said on Thursday a Coalition government would abandon Labor's "flawed" filter policy. The Coalition is set to announce its security policy in the coming days, saying they prefer the onus to be on the parents to decide what their children should have access to, not the government.

The move by the Coalition has been welcomed by the Greens who have been a staunch opponent and voice of reason against the proposed filter since its inception. The current proposal is undergoing a series of reviews and now looks almost certain to be scrapped with little to no chance of it ever passing into legislation should the Greens be able to hold the balance of power after the election.

"The coalition's announcement ... effectively draws the line under the hugely unpopular plan," Greens communications spokesman Senator Scott Ludlam said. "Tonight belongs to the huge number of people who contributed to a tenacious self-organised campaign that stretched from online civil libertarians all the way up to the US Department of State."

The move has also been welcomed by Electronic Frontiers Australia who have been running a vigorous campaign to educate the public on the flaws of Labor's proposal. "We applaud Mr Hockey's announcement that the Liberal Party will vote against Labor's filter," said EFA Chair Colin Jacobs. "The Opposition are very welcome among the ranks of those many organisations and individuals that see the filter as a policy failure."

The policy had never been popular since being announced with the likes of online giants such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all opposing the idea. More recently ISP's Internode and iiNet came out to say they would not support a voluntary introduction of the filter. Saying that the current ACMA blacklist has been thoroughly discredited and there is no peer review process in place for how and what is added to the list.

Australia's largest ISP Bigpond has once again revised its pricing on ADSL and cable, stunning the competition with some of the best plans on the market just months after releasing its last set of plan revisions. There had been rumours flying that Bigpond was looking to refresh and simplify its existing line up and today's announcement seemed to confirm most of the speculation.

There are now 3 succinct quota levels and 2 speed choices to choose from, removing any confusion for the average home user. Combining home phone, mobile and Foxtel can also bring considerable discounts to the monthly fees of up to $30 per month. (Source: Bigpond)

"Turbo" plans are provided at a speed of 1500/256k or up to 8000/384k in Cable areas. Elite plans are provided at ADSL speeds of up to 8000/384k in 'OPEN1' areas or up to 24000/1024k in ADSL2+ enabled areas and 30000/1024k in Cable areas.

• Bigpond Turbo 2GB Liberty is Bigpond's entry plan, offering 2GB of data starting at $39.95 per month.

• Bigpond Elite 2GB Liberty offers 2GB of data starting from $49.95 per month.

• Bigpond Elite 50GB Liberty offers 50GB of data starting from $79.95 per month.

• Bigpond Elite 200GB Liberty offers 200GB of data starting from $99.95 per month.

A recent ACCC enquiry brought forward by ISP's Internode and iiNet into Telstra's Bigpond pricing has argued that Bigpond is offering these products at a lower cost than the competition can source them from Telstra Wholesale. Internode and iiNet argue that Telstra is effectively re-monopolising many regional and rural areas where there is no competing infrastructure installed in the local exchange ahead of the National Broadband Network (NBN). (Source: IT Wire)

The recent $11 billion non-binding agreement between the Government, NBN Co. and Telstra recently paved the way for Telstra receiving considerable windfalls for transferring customers from its copper network onto the NBN as it was built. Telstra appears to be poaching customers back in order to get them on board for the NBN. (Source: ZD Net)

I for one never thought I'd see the day where Telstra actually started competing on price and would actually be offering deals better than the competition. It certainly is refreshing, even if the plan revisions have an anti-competitive undertone, to see some decent pricing for all Australians on broadband.

I'll be awaiting with baited breath the outcome of the forthcoming ACCC enquiry to see whether wholesale prices will be reduced for the competition. I fear however, that by the time an outcome is reached, Bigpond will have had enough time to poach back lost customers and lock them into contracts before the competition can react. It certainly is an interesting time in Australia's communications.

With Prime Minister Julia Gillard calling a federal election for Saturday August 21st there are some key technology issues that will effect you and both the major parties have differing opinions. Here are the big topics that will shape Australia's future IT and communications.

1. National Broadband Network

One of Labor's promises at the 2007 election was to build a national broadband network and bring Australia's communications in line with other technology advanced countries. At the time, details were thin and we only knew that it would consist of connecting fibre optics to "communication nodes" in neighbourhoods.

Going into the 2010 election, the plan has since been revised and we now know that the NBN will offer fibre optic, capable of up to 100 megabits per second, to ~96% of Australian households, businesses, schools and universities. The remaining ~4% will be covered by next generation satellite and 4G wireless.

Phase 1 of the NBN went live in Tasmania at the start of July with the first customers being hooked up to their choice of several ISP's participating in the trial. Phase 2 is currently in build and several mainland sites have been chosen to participate in the trial which should commence by the end of the year.

Labor has said it is committed to rolling out the NBN at a cost to taxpayers of $43 Billion over the next 8 years. The plan was recently strengthened with a non-binding $11 Billion deal with Telstra for exclusive access to Telstra's ducts for laying new fibre and the handover of laying all new fibre in greenfield estates starting 1st January 2011. Essentially the deal is the beginning of the end for Telstra Wholesale and its obligations under the universal services obligation which will in effect be handed to a new division under the NBN Co.

The Coalition has been a staunch opponent to the NBN and Tony Abbott has publicly announced that if elected they will halt the NBN and instead revive the Howard government's communication fund. At the 2007 election the Coalition's plan was to fund the upgrading of nearly every exchange in Australia with the help of Optus and Elders (OPEL) to enable better competition for regional areas.

It's still not entirely clear what the Coalition is bringing to the table at this election but it certainly is clear that if they're elected they will immediately down tools on the NBN.

UPDATE: Since writing this article it has come to light that the Coalition is planning to revive the $1.9 Billion OPEL contract and fund a further continuation of installing fibre optic backhaul into known blackspots currently without any competitive wholesale connections. The Coalition also plans to give more discretionary powers to the ACCC to resolve disputes. (Source: The Australian)

2. Mandatory Internet Filtering

The Internet Filter has been a serious source of contention amongst tech circles since it was announced by the Labor government at the 2007 election. At the time the filter was to consist of two parts, a mandatory component that would block child pornography and an opt-in/opt-out "Clean Feed" that consumers could choose to subscribe to. The Clean Feed was to block anything unsanitary for children's eyes.

Since the 2007 election, the Labor government has pushed forward with a new form of filter proposal, one that would block all Refused Classification material. This new proposal has drawn extensive criticism and has since been put on hold pending a review until after the election, should Labor be returned to power. (Source: DBCDE Website)

The Coalition remains divided on internet filtering with the former Howard government having set up a program offering free filters to any Australian home for free. Labor dismantled this program calling it a failure.

The National Party recently voted to oppose the filter saying it had been inundated with complaints from constituents. (Source: APC Mag) In Cairns on Sunday 18th July, Joe Hockey let slip that the Liberal party's position on the filter was one that they could not support. Whether this is true or was just banter to a question asked by the member of the public is yet to be determined. (Source: No Australian Net Filtering Blog) 

Warren Entsch, the Liberal party candidate for Leichardt has publicly condemned the internet filter and says he is opposed to any form of internet censorship. To date, Mr Entsch appears to be the first Liberal party member who has gone on public record opposing the filter. (Source: Cairns Blog)

The Greens have publicly opposed the net filter from the very beginning arguing that net censorship should never be enforced on a free society and will block any move by Labor in the senate should it be introduced as legislation. (Source: Greens Official Website)

3. Telstra

Still an ongoing issue is the discussion on whether to separate Telstra, either structurally or operationally. The Labor party has said they're in favour of separating Telstra in one way or another to encourage competition, but as it stands with the latest deal on the NBN it may not be required any more. (Source: News.com.au)

The Coalition has said they're reviewing the discussion but stopped short at saying anything that effects the shareholders in a negative way could not be supported by the party. (Source: Liberal.org) It was of course the Howard government who privatised Telstra and it appears the Coalition would rather distance themselves from the issue as much as possible.

You'd be mistaken for thinking that the iPhone is the be all and end all to smart phone technology with the amount of media attention it receives. While it is a very nice piece of hardware there is a major competitor nipping at its heels. Google's Android mobile operating system has been making tracks in recent times since being released in 2007 to developers.

Android is an open operating system and as such any mobile manufacturer can use it on their devices should they choose to. HTC, Motorola, LG and Sony Ericsson have taken up the call and have developed some unique handsets to cater to the functionality of the Android operating system. This is a very distinct contrast between Apple's iOS mobile operating system and Android as Apple does not allow any other manufacturer to use their proprietary system.

Last week I picked up my first Android based smartphone, the Telstra HTC Desire. After hearing nothing but good reports about it, I caught up with a friend who had acquired one and asked if I could check it out. I played around with it for about an hour and I was instantly sold. While I loved my iPhone, I believed it was time to move on to greener pastures. Apple's closed system meant that iPhone users were at the behest of Apple to fix problems or release new features. Apple's application store was also very tightly controlled, meaning that if apps did not meet Apple's strict and sometimes undocumented rules they were often rejected without any real reason.

I admire Steve Jobs as a business man, he runs a very successful company, but his arrogance towards what his customers want versus what he ultimately decides we need just didn't wash over well with me. Apple was built upon values that characterised its uniqueness to think differently, a value that many of its long time fans bought into and propelled the company to what it is today. Apple was the poster child, the underdog, battling against the supreme overlord of IBM and Microsoft back in the late 80's and 90's. Some say that Apple has since morphed itself into the very thing it was battling and now controls everything to an extent that makes it just as uncompetitive as its adversaries of the past.

So with that being said, here's my initial thoughts on the Android operating system, the pros and cons and the challenges facing someone coming from Apple's iPhone iOS.

Initially I was a little perplexed by the user interface of the Android OS, it appeared a little clunkier to use than Apple's refined interface but I soon realised that the near infinite amount of ways you can customise the home screen and side screens made it far superior to what Apple offered. For starters, all the installed programs are listed under a menu, so if you didn't want that application icon showing on the screen, you didn't have to have it there. This was in stark contrast to Apple, which places and icon for every installed application on the home screens, including system tools, regardless of whether you use them or not.

Other functionality also included the ability to use widgets on a home screen, this feature is nice for when you don't particularly need to open an application but would like it to continue running in the background. There are a plethora of widgets for just about every application and each is as customisable as the next, allowing the user the ability to change how they want their phone to look and feel. For instance, if you don't use email on your phone you can simply hide it away and put up a Facebook widget to quickly access your news and friend feeds.

Being an open operating system, the customisations to built in applications are almost limitless. I didn't quite care much for HTC's SMS messaging application and instead installed ChompSMS to take care of the SMS functions. ChompSMS displays messages almost identical to the way iPhone's SMS application does, with the added bonus of a widget for quick access on one of the home screens.

I also installed an alternate web browser called Dolphin that offered more functionality than HTC's browser. I've since learned that Mozilla is developing an Android based version of Firefox called Fennec. I had a quick look at it, but due to it still being in Alpha release it was extremely buggy and used an incredible amount of system resources just to run. I'll keep my eye on this one for future developments.

There are a few tiny cons of the HTC Desire and Android. The first thing I find myself doing after having used the iPhone for a few years is pressing the optical trackball a lot as it is positioned in the same place as the home button on the iPhone. It's a little annoying, although I'm getting used to it, pressing the lock button at the top of the phone to engage the screen when it has gone to sleep. Ordinarily I would just press the home button on the iPhone to wake the screen up but none of the front buttons do this on the Desire.

The other challenge of the Desire is that it leaves all the applications running in the background once you've opened them. It wasn't immediately clear how to actually close them once you're done but thankfully there is a third party application called Advanced Task Killer that does a good job of closing applications when you're done with them.

Because Android handles SMS's and emails as notifications, there is no way to distinguish between the two when they come in with a unique sound tone. This is something I hope they'll fix in later revisions as I like having different tones for email and SMS to signify what type of message has just been received.

The iPhone4 has now pretty much matched most of the other specifications, both the HTC Desire and the iPhone4 have a 5-megapixel camera capable of focusing, zoom and video recording. They also both now have an LED flash for taking pictures in low light or dark. The Desire does not have a forward facing camera, whereas the iPhone4 does, this is something I hope HTC will add in the next release of the Desire. There are already several HTC models that do have a forward facing camera already.

Other benefits of the HTC Desire is that its memory is upgradeable with an SD card supporting up to 32GB. It comes with a 2GB SD card as standard. It also has a removable battery, something the iPhone lacks. It's also far easier to transfer files to and from the Desire, simply plug into a PC with the USB cable supplied and the phone appears as another drive under My Computer. No longer are you confined to using iTunes, which in my opinion is a piece of software I'd rather not be using.

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the switch so far and I'm looking forward to what the future will bring in the smartphone space. The competition between the mobile manufacturers and software developers can only lead to more innovation and better devices for everyone and that's a good thing.

UPDATE: I mentioned in the article that there was no way of changing the SMS and email tones to differentiate from each other. I've since learned that this problem seems to be confined to the HTC Desire as the mail application is different from other Android models. I've found an alternate mail program called K-9 Mail that offered a little more flexibility in changing settings. As a result I now have a different tone for the SMS's and emails and a few more little features that have come in handy. Yet another tick in the positive column for Android and my HTC Desire.