Australia hasn't had a POTS for a while now, since the National Broadband Network was "complete". They literally ripped the copper out of the ground and sold it for scrap, they even made specialised machines to make the task easier: https://www.rg.com.au/2022/09/29/telstra-mirait-take-deliver...
Hasn't really been much of an issue day-to-day. My mother for example still uses her landline phone on the same phone number she's had for decades via VOIP that the ISP operates. The vast majority of people use mobile phones as their primary voice service and it all seems to work just fine. But there has been a few notable outages (e.g: Telstra and their NTP mess, Optus and their emergency-call routing issues), and of course there's fringe issues with coverage gaps, but overall I'd say the mobile voice network is as reliable as the old POTS was (which was far from perfect).
Still copper up my way mate - Even though the pair gain technology improved things for a time, golden days would be 1990s here, the service rendered got worse and worse. Present times it's not surprising to see a simple phone only landline down for months. For example my Dad's line - Telstra can fix the landline and it'll be dead again within a couple of weeks ... if only reporting took a couple of minutes but Telstra has ensured it takes up a couple of hours for each instance by phone, even using the chat bot path, the last time a year ago it still took a couple of hours based on the repeated sessions to finally get a technician to arrive, confirm and head back down the track to bodge the line and get the service up ... it lasted almost a month ... a sibling got him a mobile phone (given location somewhat limited) in the end.
You're telling me your Dad has (or had - he got a mobile now) a home, in Australia that lets you plug a phone into the wall and make/receives phone calls, without an internet service, in 2026??
I know there's copper for FTTN internet - but not phone calls?
Still exists purely as a copper line - 16 km plus - I've forgotten the actually distance to the exchange, I used to know all the figures, balancers etc on the line having chatted many times with various line repairers over the last 30 years.
The area I'm around still has plenty of copper that can't even run asdl. If people are lucky they have a mobile tower in sight with good signal or spend their own money to erect a small tower with external antenna / amplifier. One of the issues way back when NBN was first implemented, telcos were much more focused on just moving everyone to mobile services, while they improved their own mobile networks as much as they needed to offer a bare minimum - they had the ears of some in the government.
I hope at some point most people have NBN fibre arriving close enough if not fibre, a node with the copper in ground to be able to run faster speeds than asdl2+ ... I say that in an odd way only for the fact I knew of one region that had good asdl2+ speeds ... one of the later iterations of NBN (brought copper back into the equation along with the not fit for purpose butterfly connectors which soon corrode in use) ... a cheat to look good with roll out it was decided to convert those quite capable asdl2+ copper lines to NBN ... the outcome was the speed delivered was slower ... much slower - dial up speed while paying through the nose. I'm not sure if those poor folks ever got real NBN later on.
Dial up was killed off some years ago, so yes, just phone.
There's so much domestic rooftop solar going to waste that it makes economic sense for these giant batteries to soak it up and sell it at night or during peak events. Love to see it.
Yes, but then they have other design flaws too. There's basically only 1 brand selling EVs in Australia that aren't a compromise (to me at least) in one way or another. Skoda and upcoming VW cars seem to be bucking the trend.
That correlates with my research too (which is at the end of the blog post if you read that far - fair enough if you didn't, it's a long post!). Skoda's design philosophy is "Simply Clever" and I guess they actually believe it rather than being a marketing gimmick.
This is correct (I'm the author the post). The EX30 could be a great car but the quality of the software really lets it down. Prior to this I owned a Tesla and while it was way better, it still had the occasional failure to recognise my iPhone as the key and wouldn't let me into the car. Maybe 1 in 10 occasions compared to 5 in 10 with the EX30.
It does if the person driving sucks at using it. I've been driving OPD since 2018 and friends that get sick in Teslas driven by Uber drivers have told me they didn't get sick and wondered what I was doing different. The difference is I know how to use it.
I would also like to find out what happened here. Here's a video with a BMW designer where they're asked point blank about some design aspects of their new iX3 (which seems like an impressive car, total clean sheet EV design) and when asked about the door handles - which are flush, but pop out, which isn't too bad IMHO - basically said they do it because it looks cool, any aero benefits are just the cherry on top.
I am the author of the blog post and yep, the Chevy Bolt is basically the perfect car (for me at least). Ticks all the boxes. Apparently the 2027 Bolt RS has driver's seat memory.
But the Bolt isn't available in Australia! GM abandoned us when they shut down Holden. Ironically, it was designed for production based on a South Korean prototype in Port Melbourne, 40km from where I live! https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/chevrolet-bolt-reveale...
Hasn't really been much of an issue day-to-day. My mother for example still uses her landline phone on the same phone number she's had for decades via VOIP that the ISP operates. The vast majority of people use mobile phones as their primary voice service and it all seems to work just fine. But there has been a few notable outages (e.g: Telstra and their NTP mess, Optus and their emergency-call routing issues), and of course there's fringe issues with coverage gaps, but overall I'd say the mobile voice network is as reliable as the old POTS was (which was far from perfect).
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