Word: australian
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...world" is, you might expect to hear 'astronaut', 'movie star' or 'bed tester' thrown back at you. But for 34-year-old Englishman Ben Southall - and 35,000 other hopefuls - it was the six-month gig being offered by Tourism Queensland to be the caretaker of an Australian tropical island. And for the not exactly demanding 12 hours he's expected to work each month in Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef (key duties: snorkelling, feeding fish, blogging), he'll be put up in a three-bedroom oceanfront villa (with swimming pool just in case he tires...
...candidate search has also given an undeniable boost to Australian tourism, which has gone into considerable decline amid the current economic recession. Indeed, Southall's role is part of a wider $1.2 million campaign to publicize northeastern Queensland, which officials claim has already generated more than $75 million worth of publicity. The job itself requires Southall, a former project manager at an agricultural company, "to explore the islands of the Great Barrier Reef, swim, and snorkel, make friends with the locals and generally enjoy the tropical Queensland climate and lifestyle." But before his position kicks in on July...
...mantle of the country's most digitally advanced city. Yet new residents in Fernbrooke, a 1,000-home Brisbane suburb, are pacesetters for the rest of the country, enjoying Internet download speeds up to 100 megabits per second - around 100 times the speed currently available to the average Australian. (Read "A Blacklist for Websites Backfires in Australia...
...Fernbrooke goes, so goes the nation. In April, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced a $31 billion plan to build a National Broadband Network (NBN) that will bring fast fiber-optic connections into 90% of the nation's homes, even to towns with as few as 1,000 residents. In doing so, Australia may leapfrog South Korea, which is widely acknowledged as the world's most wired country but where just 44% of residences currently have fiber connections. Less than 5% of U.S. households are wired with fiber-optic cables. (See the 50 best inventions...
...Telstra's power stems from its stranglehold on the "last mile" of copper wiring to Australian homes, over which most telephone and Internet services are delivered and which rivals must pay to access. By building its own FTTH network, the government will bypass the copper and kick off a new era of competition where Telstra is an equal player on an open-access network. "This will totally change the telco industry and Telstra," says Budde. "Think if the road system was owned by one company that said 'you have to drive these cars.' Without open access to the roads there...