kate's infrastructure

I may not have particularly enjoyed my transition to being an Optus customer, but I thought the carrier didn’t matter too much in Australia.  I originally switched to Optus as the only Australian carrier with an Android handset. I think I wisely chose the shortest timeframe.

The Optus site is slow, confusing and painful to use, calls and smses are routinely dropped, but I figured I could work around these sorts of issues to a point.

What I didn’t consider was that while Optus was the first carrier for an Android handset, they’d done nothing really to support it as a platform.

My issues are:

• Promotion – This could have been a much more widely used handset had Optus made a push that lastest more than 48hrs.  They’ve now really lost any edge with Vodafone’s release of the HTC Magic.  A lost opportunity for Optus, particularly in their choice of a soon to be deprecated handset.  My concerns here lie primarily in building the local Android market, it’s pretty small at the moment and needs a big push to make Australia a good target for developers and handset manufacturers;
• App Store support – Up until very recently, I thought this was a centrally controlled Google decision and we’d just have to wait for the Android market to allow paid apps into Australia.  We get access to all the free apps, but you can’t begrudge a developer wanting a few bucks in return for hard work, and it means we’re missing out on the good stuff.  I’ve found out that Vodafone users of an Android handset have full access to paid apps.  Optus not only don’t have it, they can’t provide a response.
• Cupcake upgrade – I admit that I never really expected this.  If Optus havent built a market here it seems surprising that they’d bother with the investment of delivering an OTA upgrade to the OS.  That being said, it would be nice if they did.  After a few rumours around the web it seems we’re now promised this from late July.  I guess we’ll wait and see on that.

I didn’t stumble upon the above info through Optus managing their customer relationships or even providing me with useful content on their website.  Optus are now on twitter.  I’m kind of glad to see it, and they seem to be making a genuine attempt to work with people.  Time will tell.

I became an Optus customer about 6 months ago, it will be an interesting 6 months left on this contract.  I don’t expect to renew it.

Articles I found interesting today:

• Google Maps Adds Real Estate Search

- This is a pretty awesome use of Google Maps – and it works for Australia.

(via Lifehacker)

• NICTA Puts Open Source Projects In One Place

- National ICT centre of excellence Open Source Projects. Interesting links via LifeHacker

• Google's new data-center cools with weather prediction, not electricity

- Google’s energy efficient, smart data centre cooling strategy

• We May Need A Global Unit Of ‘Green’, But It Won’t Be Easy Or Clear

Articles I found interesting today:

• Gov 2.0: Where to begin – Part 1 of 3

- Exciting first steps towards Australian Government 2.0, and embracing Open Government. Well worth a read.