### Issue 2049 - Monday 18th March, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Government concerned about looming Optus & Telstra 3G shutdown
- Epic & Apple big dogs in Melbourne for Federal Court trial
- Uber coughs up $271m to settle class action with disgruntled taxi plate owners
- National Communications Museum opens in Melbourne on the 30th of August
- Cheap TCL TV, PCIe SSDs, USB-C charger, Mac Mini hub, gigabit switches, Bose soundbar, Sennheiser headphones, Pansonic camera, vidya games, TCN gift cards

## The News

### Government concerned about looming Optus & Telstra 3G shutdown

The communications minister seems to have suddenly realised that Optus and Telstra are shutting down their 3G networks really soon (TPG already has and nobody cared???) and is quite concerned about the ramifications, so they're setting up a Working Group to "formalise collaboration between industry to better identify impacted customers, improve the accessibility of public-facing information and contact points, and amplify messages to ensure the community is aware of the switchover". Their main beef is the ~740,000 4G handsets still in use that don't support VoLTE, so they fall back to 3G, creating an issue should one of those phones be used to call 000. I'd also be a little concerned about all the 3G embedded/IoT devices and all the spots around regional/rural areas without 4G coverage at all!

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### Epic & Apple big dogs in Melbourne for Federal Court trial

Epic's Tim Sweeney, plus Apple's Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi are currently in Melbourne for the commencement of a Federal Court trial between the two megacorps that was put on hold by the Australian court until the USA trial wrapped up. It's basically a repeat of what happened in the USA, with Epic having a problem with the fees Apple & Google charge being unfair, along with the "illegal monopoly over their app stores" (i.e: no other way to distribute apps except their stores). The trial will go for 16 weeks and how it will end up is anyone's guess. Australia's competition laws are very different to the USA's and now that we have the EU's DMA in action, that gives Epic a lot more ammo than it did back when they first sued Apple & Google many years ago.

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### Uber coughs up $271m to settle class action with disgruntled taxi plate owners

Uber has settled with a group of 8,000 upset Australian taxi drivers for a whopping $271.8m, the fifth largest class action in Australian history. They said that "Uber Australia and its parent companies knowingly operated illegally and therefore had an unfair advantage over taxi and hire car drivers who were complying with the law" back when Uber kicked off locally. While a massive portion of taxi drivers are shit (dodgy EFTPOS terminals, taking unnecessary long routes, refusing short fares, creepy towards women, etc. etc.), they are correct that Uber just waltzed on in, ignored the laws and then bent the laws to their will as more and more people preferred Uber to taxis. I wonder if Uber has even made $271m of profit in Australia over the years?

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### National Communications Museum opens in Melbourne on the 30th of August

The National Communications Museum finally has a opening date! Friday the 30th of August will see this museum in a former telephone exchange in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn open to the public. It's a "contemporary museum that connects audiences with stories about Australia's past and current communications technologies; inspiring futures by demonstrating their potential impact in enabling, building and transforming communities" - or in layperson's terms, a phone museum. I enjoyed visiting just before it was closed for renovations and I'm excited to see what they've done to the place. I really hope they haven't aimed it at children and tried to make it interesting for the nerds into Australia's telecommunications history.

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## Bargains

- TCL C845 4K Mini LED 55" TV - $1115 + delivery ($0 for some areas) from Buy Smarte
- SK hynix Platinum P41 2TB SSD - $215.98 from Amazon
- Crucial T700 2TB PCIe 5.0 SSD - $370.85 from Amazon
- Belkin 60W Dual USB-C PPS Charger - $39 from Amazon
- Satechi Mac Mini Hub & Stand with SSD Enclosure - $138.54 from Amazon
- TP-Link LiteWave Gigabit Switch 5-port or 8-port - $15/$23 from Amazon
- Bose Smart Soundbar 900 - $799 from Amazon
- Sennheiser Open Back Headphones HD 599 Special Edition - $125 from Amazon
- Panasonic LUMIX S5II digital camera body - $2,099 from Amazon
- Command & Conquer Remastered Collection for PC - $10.48 on Steam
- The Orange Box Bundle for PC - $1.47 on Steam
- EA Sports FC 24 for PC - $19.99 via Epic Games
- 20x Everyday Rewards Points on TCN Gift Cards this week at Woolworths

## Image Of The Day

Flyer / postcard, 'Self-serve computers workshops & design', promoting design software workshops, paper, maker unknown, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, c.1990-1998 (Powerhouse Museum)

## The End

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