Monthly Archives: April 2008

Pipe International Cable Blog

Pipe International has launched a blog to be as open and honest about the entire process of running their first international cable link from Sydney, Australia, to the United States Territory of Guam. I previously bloged about this cable back in January when it was announced.

The purpose of this blog is to track the progress of the PPC-1 submarine cable as it is surveyed, installed and delivered. Wherever possible we will provide documents, photographs and possibly video clips of various parts of the project.

Personally I hope they can get a good move along with this cable as it stands to put a big dent in the cost of data in Australia.

Pipe International PPC-1 Blog

Google Adwords Spam

Just a quick one here today, for some time spammers have been using Google adword URLs to perpetrate their spam.

Example:

http://www.google.com/pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai=ukeaFe&num=65293&adurl=http://westphoto.org/redir.html

This is pretty much what they do below:

http://{google domain}/pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai={6 random letters}&num={5 random numbers}&adurl={http://www.example.com/}

NOTE: Everything inside the {}, including the {} are no what you will see in the URL

While you can see the URL at the end that they are trying to get you to see, most anti-spam systems will thinks it Google and will resolve it as Google.

Senator Conroy Gets Things Rolling

Senator Stephen Conroy has started the process to build Australia’s new national broadband network. The Request for Proposals has been released and in it are a set of guidelines that are intended to aim the project in the desired direction.

The Request for Proposals details the scope of the National Broadband Network, which will:
  • deliver minimum download speeds of 12 megabits per second to 98 per cent of Australian homes and businesses
  • have the network rolled out and made operational progressively over five years using fibre-to-the-node or fibre-to-the-premises technology
  • support high quality voice, data and video services including symmetric applications such as high-definition video-conferencing
  • earn the Commonwealth a return on its investment
  • facilitate competition in the telecommunications sector through open access arrangements that allow all service providers access to the network on equivalent terms
  • nable uniform and affordable retail prices to consumers, no matter where they live

The federal government has allocated about AU$4.7 billion to this project.

Articles

New Submarine Cable to Link Australia & New Zealand

Kordia Group Ltd and PIPE International (Australia) Pty Ltd have announced (Pipe Announcement) their intention to build a new submarine cable linking Australia & New Zealand.

Mostly I think this is good news for people in New Zealand this will pretty much mean they will have access to PPC1 Pipe’s other international link that they are building to Guam. Not to mention the most likely improvement in ping time between Australia and New Zealand, great for gaming.