MyNetFone

“Sharks, crocodiles, wipeouts, it’s all part of it. It was never going to be easy. It’s a highly ambitious project, no one has kitesurfed this part of the Barrier Reef before.” - Kite the Reef co-ordinator Alex Unsworth

MyNetFone is proudly sponsoring 'Kite the Reef' - a record breaking kitesurfing expedition, comprised of 10 members who are attempting to kitesurf 1,000km to raise money for Motor Neuron Disease. The Kite the Reef team have so far traversed over 850km, been involved in shark attacks, supported by Sir Richard Branson, and had the event pre-approved by the Guinness World Records!

Here’s a few facts about the kitesurfing journey:

• The team are already over 850km down, and are on track to reach their 1000km goal today – you can follow their progress via the live GPS
• When they complete the journey the team will make it into the Guinness World Records and hold the longest kitesurf journey record. In fact they have already shot through the existing record of 830km.
• Fundraising for the Kite The Reef's MND cause has so far received $88,000! Well done team! There is still time for donations, so hopefully that figure is still to climb. 
• Jess Digs, a member of the team, has now broken the female world record for the longest continuous kite surf journey. 
• Sir Richard Branson, is backing the Kite the Reef crew and wrote a personal article about it - read Richard Branson's post 
• A shark attacks one of the kitesurfers on the journey and takes a bite of her iPhone - read the news article

Today is the predicted D-Day for the crew, expecting to reach their 1000km goal. Nature has sure thrown some spanners in the works for the team, supplying setbacks due to a lack of wind on their first day, shark attacks, and delivering a wipeout so fierce it broke trip co-ordinator Alex Unsworth’s leg and four places and pulled him out of the expedition.

Natural forces, world records, celebrity endorsement and safety threats have all been part of this inspiring MND fundraising journey for the team, who have remain unshaken in the midst of it all.

Good luck reaching your 1000km goal today Kite the Reef team! You have truly inspired us with your humility and tenacity, MyNetFone is proud to support you and the cause you are fundraising for.

There is still time to donate…click the link here

MyNetFone is proud to again be supporting the Kitesurfing crew in their most recent, and record breaking expedition ‘Kite the Reef’. Previously MyNetFone has supported the kitesurf team in their ‘Pink Torres’ expedition, which raised funds for the McGrath Foundation, a foundation which supports over 20,000 Australian families experiencing breast cancer. We are proud to be backing the kite surfing crew again, this time with an entirely new mission at heart.

The expedition

Kite the Reef is aiming to raise funds to cure Motor Neurone Disease (MND), through supporting the Macquarie University Motor Neurone Disease Research Centre. The expedition team made up of 10 ambitious kitesurfers which will attempt to traverses 1,000km of the Great Barrier Reef, covering Cairns to Cape York. To achieve this world record breaking kiteboarding distance the team will have to tire their arms for around 7-10 hours each day for 10 day straight!

Conservation

They will not only be aiming to raise funds to help fight Motor Neurone Disease, but they will also be doing their part for conservation; tagging tiger sharks and raising awareness for Great Barrier Reef. As the reef's ecosystem and beauty is under threat from coastal development, reduced water quality, overfishing, climate change and large scale mining activities, the team has decided to use this opportunity to showcase it's wonders and increase international appreciation.

MND

Kicking off on August 10^th, the 'Kite the Reef' team will be attempting to tackle this huge distance and big issues, but will need all the support they can get. Every single dollar raised goes to fund MND research (equipment, regents, researcher salaries) to understand and hopefully find a cure for Motor Neurone Disease. Recent advancements mean scientists could be on the verge of finding a treatment but, equipment and genome sequencing needs funding. 

Updates to follow

We will keep you posted as the kite surfers send photos and videos of their journey, the beautiful coastal life they are bound to encounter and their attempts to tag tiger sharks on the way. No doubt their drive to help fight this life altering disease will see their jelly arms take them over the finish line at Cape York on the 20th August. Good luck to the Kite the Reef team!

Read more about it on their website or visit the Kite the Reef facebook page

Donate to this fantastic cause, support the team & help the put an end to MND!

The prevailing reliance on international innovations, particularly in the telecommunication industry, as the 'go to' solution has resulted in a concerning depletion of Australian talent. Innovation is at the heart of national evolution, yet it seems Australia is moving further away from our own inventions, and becoming increasingly dependent on international services. Why are we constructing a societal paradigm in which we feel more comfortable accepting the ideas of international powers rather than having faith in the success of our very own innovators.

Rene Sugo, MyNetFone's CEO, has contributed his thoughts on this challenging issue in a recent BRW article, reproduced below for your convenience.

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How Australia’s lack of support for innovation fuels the brain drain

The lack of support for start-ups in Australia, especially from the technology sector, is simply reinforcing the much discussed ‘brain drain’ problem. We are not investing enough in research and development at the grass-roots level and Australian businesses are failing to make jobs attractive enough for our brightest home-grown talent, as highlighted in this insight from Mumbrella.

But pumping investment into tech start-ups is only half the problem. The other part of the problem stems from our over-reliance on overseas innovations to drive growth.

The telco industry is particularly guilty of this – adopting innovations from overseas rather than investing in developing locally. Decades of throwing money – overseas – to solve problems instead of seeking an answer from our own industry has led us down a dangerous path. We now find ourselves in a situation where hardly anyone is creating ‘new stuff’ and the majority of significant breakthroughs are coming from overseas. Even when we see innovative breakthroughs being implemented in Australia, if you scratch the surface you’ll find it is often foreign firms that bring the ‘innovative’ part of the project to the table, and the local providers are simply implementing it.

While there is nothing wrong with taking up innovative products, services and software developed internationally, I think we are missing a great opportunity by not challenging ourselves to come up with solutions. The mentality to ‘buy’ our way out of problem, instead of ‘solve’ is driving our best and brightest offshore.

True, the exodus is due in part to the path of deregulation that has occurred within the telecommunications sector, which at its core simply entailed the incumbent provider opening their services for resale. The model provided no impetus or incentive to innovate, and as a result companies have become resellers rather than innovators. Of course the telco landscape is not all there is.

Where innovation is happening more now, is in the app space, where cost and barriers to entry are much lower than in the telco industry itself. Take the example of mobile game Crossy Road, developed by two Australians. The game earned them $10 million in three months!

Key to driving local innovation in the telco sector is understanding and anticipating what the market needs, ensuring the education system is more innovation-focused and putting in place an environment that will nurture our talent. After years of neglect, only then will the right talent be in place to develop products to support our evolving requirements.

At MyNetFone, we promote an innovation-driven culture. Staff are encouraged to submit ideas. Thoughts put forward by staff have resulted in the development of new products and enhancements to existing products. We were the first to develop and launch a cloud-hosted PBX service and more recently we added SIP trunking to our iBoss aggregation platform after our team saw an opportunity to open another avenue for provision of voice services in the NBN world.

Both of these innovations started with an idea, and the willingness to invest our own IP and resources in something new. Ultimately, innovation does not thrive in solitude – companies have to empower all their staff to drive innovative influence and generate new ideas.

Despite actively advocating an innovative workforce, I have found it challenging to find good talent locally with the right skills to work on our projects. Whilst SMEs have traditionally lost out on obtaining the ‘brightest and best’ recruits to larger corporates - that are seen to offer more prestige and benefits – I believe SMEs are in a unique position to provide rapid career progression for the best talent and present opportunities to get stuck into innovative and market-leading projects.

For far too long the chase of short-term profits within the information technology industry has been a killer of innovation. Whilst it is hard for established sectors to compete with the buzz that cloud, apps or social media companies generate, now is the time for the telecommunications industry to pause, take stock and re-energise the sector by investing in true blue-sky projects, using local talent.

MyNetFone is committed to Australian innovation - and reaps the rewards

As strange as it sounds, high speed internet has a direct correlation with profitability.

Communities that have fibre internet connections had 1.1% higher GDP (Gross Domestic Product) than the similar communities with little to no availability of gigabit services, according to a recent study by the Fibre to the Home Council in America. Might not sound like a lot… until you see it in dollars: $1.4 billion additional production across just 14 US communities, to be exact.

According to the survey, out of 55 communities across nine states in the US examined, all 14 communities with widely available gigabit services had higher GDP than the 31 communities without fibre connections. Coincidence? Extremely doubtful.  

What does all this mean for a community? Well higher GDP means higher infrastructure investment, increased spending and creation of new jobs and industries. All top-priority issues for communities of any size.

Now dare to imagine the potential that is currently sitting on Australia’s door step with the rollout of the NBN fibre optic service....across the entire nation! Although the majority of Australian NBN services are not quite in the gigabit speeds range, it will be very interesting to see what benefits our own communities achieve from fibre internet – for both businesses and residents.

Profitability, efficiently, and societal advancement awaits…

Click here to review MyNetFone NBN plans

Ever wondered where Australia actually ranks on the international scale of internet performance? Are we as much of a connectivity vanguard as the media asserts? Well bubble bursted. The most recent ‘State of the Internet’ report from Akamai exposes the harsh truth that we only ranked a mediocre 42nd globally, with the nation’s average connection speed coming in at 7.6Mbps.

In fact, the rural, nature focused, and sheep booming landscape of New Zealand is surpassing us on the internet performance front. New Zealand’s average connection speeds of 8.4 Mbps, placed it 40th globally, two places ahead of Australia. In terms of high broadband adoption (above 10 Mbps), Australia again fell behind attaining a 44th position globally, whereas NZ was ranked 41st globally. The largest performance disparity however, was experienced in the ‘broadband adoption above 4Mbps’ category, where NZ was ranked 28th, well above Australia's ranking of 50th.

Top 10 list of countries with the fastest Internet speeds on the basis of average connection speed:

1. South Korea 23.6 Mbps

2. Ireland 17.4 Mbps

3. Hong Kong 16.7 Mbps

4. Sweden 15.8 Mbps

5. Netherlands 15.3 Mbps

6. Japan 15.2 Mbps

7. Switzerland 14.9 Mbps

8. Norway 14.1 Mbps

9. Latvia 13.8 Mbps

10. Finland 13.7 Mbps

...

42. Australia 7.6 Mbps

However there is hope looming that we may be able to overtake our backyard rivals and increase our international broadband ranking soon. The NBN initiative brings with it a bright bag of performance potential which could enable us to climb the ranking ladder and become better internationally acclaimed for our internet performance. With the fibre optic roll out offering download speeds up to 100Mbps, Australia is looking more of a fierce contender on the ranking list. It will be interesting to review Australian’s international ranking once the NBN roll out has be deployed across Australia.

Is NBN coming your way soon? Follow the links in our help centre here to find out.

If NBN is due at your residence soon, it's probably time to decide on a plan.

Check out the NBN plans MyNetFone offers. 

The Mitron MV1 has been a MyNetFone adaptor staple for the last seven years, and it's with nostalgic sentiments we announce we have just sold through our last stock. An end of an era indeed. In our loving seven year relationship with the Mitron MV1 we have seen around 10,000 units leave the MyNetFone nest to find good homes helping our customers achieve low cost, reliable calling.

You may remember the Mitron MV1 from features such as:

• MyNetFone $9.95 Starter Pack special
• Free Mitron Phone Adaptor special
• Basic Gift Pack offer
• MyNetFone VoIP regular adaptor range

However, never fear, there are already contenders in the running to take the place of the Mitron’s popular position.

The most promising candidate looking like the Cisco SPA122, which offers an inbuilt router and 2 VoIP Lines amongst an array of other features.

Learn more about the up-and-coming Cisco SPA122 here 

The best thing since sliced bread? 

Introducing MyNetFone's latest creation: TollShield - ranked as one of Australia's top 100 innovations!  

TollShield is a unique, robust service which guards networks against toll fraud. If you think that sounds simple, think again. Globally, toll fraud is becoming increasingly concerning, translating into estimated losses of $46.3 billion a year for its victims. What's worse still, is there is currently very few to no services offered to proactively protect operators and consumers against toll fraud attacks. Cue the MyNetFone development team.

The MyNetFone group decided it was about time someone put a measure in place to arm service providers against this prevailing threat. After much hard work, plenty of research and development, and many many coffees later, TollShield was born. 

Unlike conventional anti-fraud measures, TollShield acts in real-time. Other solutions rely on after-the-fact analysis of call records, reacting after the damage is done and the customer bill has exploded. TollShield is a genius service which proactively scans, monitors and blocks most fraud before it has an opportunity to actually happen. It even self-learns to respond to new kinds of fraud techniques, making it increasingly difficult for criminals to exploit their tricks. Simply brilliant.

Apparently we are not the only one to think so. ‘Australian Anthill’ recently ranked TollShield in their Australia’s 100 biggest innovations‘SMART 100′ Index!

The MyNetFone network is already protected by TollShield, giving our customer more peace of mind. For those using other voice service providers – minimise your risk & check if their networks have TollShield protection.

Well done team, keep questioning, keep innovating. 

Want to learn more about TollShield? You can check out the website here

All hail the British monarchy for the long weekend is upon us! All Australian states, with the exception of Western Australia, will be recognising Monday 8^th June 2014 as the Queen’s Birthday Public Holiday. 

Our operating hours this Queen's Birthday long weekend are:

Residential Support & Customer Service 

• Operating at the reduced hours of 9am – 5pm AEST Monday 8th June 2015
• Operating during regular hours over the weekend (Sat and Sun 9am to 5pm AEST) 

Business Support & Customer Service 

• Will be open and operating during regular business hours (8:30am to 5:30pm Mon-Fri AEST)

Emergency support will continue to be available throughout the Queen’s birthday long weekend for all business customers with urgent matters.

Sales Team

Both Business and Residential sales will be CLOSED Monday 8th June 2015, however will be operating at regular hours outside of this date. 

Did you know...

The date Australia and New Zealand publically celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s birthday is not her real birthday. In fact it’s not even the correct month - Queen Elizabeth II’s actual birthday is 21st April!

The Queen’s Birthday is not recognised as public holiday in her homeland of England - they attend work as usual.

Queen Elizabeth II's birthday was celebrated on the second Thursday of June for the first seven years of her reign. When midweek became inconvenient, it was changed. 

Come along and see MyNetFone at CeBIT the world’s largest technology expo, 5 - 7 May at Sydney Olympic Park. Visit our friendly team at Stand E20.  We're showcasing a range of Business Communication Solutions, including:

• New mobile call inclusions for business
• VoiceLink - Unlimited SIP Channels for just $49
• YeaLink and Cisco office handsets
• 1300 Number services
• NBN and Broadband internet

And for those more competitive spirits, we also have a putting green! 

 Come and visit us at CeBIT to see, touch and try our simpler, smarter business communication solutions (and for a chance to play golf with MyNetFone!).

Register online for your Expo Pass: http://exhibitor.cebit.com.au/mynetfone.

Register your CeBIT 2015 ticket today.