The Two Blokes Talking Tech podcast – Episode # 740 – Telstra’s Network Woes, NRL’s Big deal and Samsung folding!

Two Blokes Talking Tech — Episode 740

Telstra’s Network Woes, NRL’s Big Deal and Samsung Folding!
Podcast: Two Blokes Talking Tech
Date: 8 July 2026
Hosts: Trevor Long (eftm.com) & Stephen Fenech (techguide.com.au)

[00:00:00] Trevor Long: Just an average day here in the Two Bikes headquarters. Have you been busy?

[00:00:04] Stephen Fenech: It's been a bit of a light day. Not.

[00:00:11] Trevor Long: Look, ladies and gentlemen, we normally do 4 or 5 shows a week. This is normally in the middle. This is the last one for us today because we've had to move everything around. We'll get to that. We'll get to why. But yeah, Big T is basically the reason. And that's not me. That's not me.

[00:00:28] Stephen Fenech: Not Big Trev.

[00:00:29] Trevor Long: No, Big T. Thanks very much. Anyway, um, basically pre-show-wise, this could be the quickest of all time because, yeah, we've covered a lot of what we would normally chat in the pre-show in the private, which we did early. So you're going to hear that later. If you're watching on YouTube, the Two Blokes Show, you can watch it. The private link is always down below. It's always remarkable how few people bother with that.

[00:00:50] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, and you can get it a day early. Hey, so yeah, you get it, you get it. This comes out on a Thursday, so you'll get it a day earlier than the audio version. Correct.

[00:00:56] Trevor Long: The audio version doesn't come out until If that's not an incentive, I don't know what is. If it's not an incentive just to hear me drop the F-bomb. I think in the first 4 weeks.

[00:01:05] Stephen Fenech: In the private, yeah.

[00:01:06] Trevor Long: Pretty early in the show.

[00:01:07] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, you let it go.

[00:01:07] Trevor Long: Yeah, pretty heavy.

[00:01:08] Stephen Fenech: You let it go.

[00:01:09] Trevor Long: And then we hear about Steven's love life. What? You love your grandchild. That's what I'm talking about.

[00:01:15] Stephen Fenech: Of course, yeah. And my wife, yeah, of course.

[00:01:17] Trevor Long: Yeah, her too. Yeah. You know, little Jack.

[00:01:20] Stephen Fenech: She's involved, mate.

[00:01:21] Trevor Long: She has been desperately involved, yes.

[00:01:24] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:01:24] Trevor Long: Steven can't wait to see Joe again. Yeah, she's looking forward to getting out of here.

[00:01:28] Stephen Fenech: She's home.

[00:01:28] Trevor Long: He's going to have to run straight upstairs and get ready for Sky News. Get a little peck on the cheek.

[00:01:33] Stephen Fenech: Woo! Hello.

[00:01:34] Trevor Long: Hi, honey. I've got to go.

[00:01:35] Stephen Fenech: I've got to keep working. Yeah, got to keep moving.

[00:01:37] Trevor Long: Got to keep moving. But then it'll all be okay. And then it's Origin night. We haven't talked about that in private.

[00:01:41] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, geez.

[00:01:42] Trevor Long: What's the prediction? Put it on the record. Mate, look. Because obviously we record this before Origin. You'll hear it after Origin.

[00:01:47] Stephen Fenech: Wishful thinking, New South Wales. I don't know, my gut's saying Queensland. But if Blues win, it'll be close. It'll be by 1 or 2 points. Yeah. Yeah, close gun, but you never know.

[00:02:02] Trevor Long: Team selection-wise, are there any players that you've lost or we've lost that is problematic?

[00:02:06] Stephen Fenech: Well, Laurie Daley made 6 changes to the game too. 6 changes, including dropping Brian Toto, the experienced winger. Now it's a decider.

[00:02:17] Trevor Long: Does he play for Panthers?

[00:02:18] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, Penrith. Still plays for Penrith. Nailed it. He's a decider and he's brought in a debutant on the wing. To replace Toto.

[00:02:25] Trevor Long: Who?

[00:02:26] Stephen Fenech: Shaw Stockwell, the kid, the guy from the Dolphins.

[00:02:28] Trevor Long: Never heard of him.

[00:02:29] Stephen Fenech: Oh, he's a Dolphin. And he's in great form. But do you make his debut on the deciding game? Arguably the biggest game in Origin history. Does he make his debut tonight? Wouldn't you rather an experienced guy out there?

[00:02:45] Trevor Long: Anyway, most people—

[00:02:46] Stephen Fenech: I hope he makes a goose of me and scores 3 tries and wins the game for the Blues. But time will tell.

[00:02:53] Trevor Long: I've really annoyed most of my family because I'm now leading the tipping comp. If you'll remember, I was coming last. So I played the—

[00:03:00] Stephen Fenech: You're ahead.

[00:03:00] Trevor Long: In this game, you can play jokers. So you get double points for a round. Now I was mucking around with that and accidentally left it on for the split round before last Origin. So I only had half a chance of getting double points. So I stuffed that up, but then I played it again a few weeks later and did okay. So I'm now, top of the table, but only Victoria has played a joker since. So yeah, you know, I'm leading by 3, which is not bad, but you know, obviously haven't been tipping Souths. Yes, but whoever's coming second, they just need to play their 2 joker rounds and they'll be 10 points ahead of me, right? But it looks good being on top of the table, I'll tell you that right now.

[00:03:41] Stephen Fenech: Take a screenshot, mate.

[00:03:42] Trevor Long: Yeah, I mean, no one, none of my family listen to this show. So my strategy of late is just, I'm just going with the odds. I'm just backing the team that has the lowest odds because on the ESPN footy tipping site it shows you the gambling odds and it shows you how many people have voted for a team, like a pick-a-team. But it also shows you the odds. So I go, well, you know, bookies—

[00:04:03] Stephen Fenech: You go with the flow or what do you do?

[00:04:04] Trevor Long: So I go with the flow. But here's this. So this weekend, that's a stupid question. Rabbitohs-Nights. Rabbitohs $1.95, Knights $1.85.

[00:04:12] Stephen Fenech: So yeah, they're favorites here. It's our home game.

[00:04:14] Trevor Long: But that makes sense.

[00:04:15] Stephen Fenech: That's what's brought us back because it's our home game and we've got Campbell Graham back, Cameron Murray. Murray back.

[00:04:21] Trevor Long: So yeah, you're on the Bunnies here.

[00:04:23] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, although they, they lost to the Knights when they played them up there a few weeks ago. Uh, I reckon, yeah, I reckon we're a show because having Campbell Graham back now, you're not serving Finnegan Trevor-Long.

[00:04:34] Trevor Long: Am I putting my tip against the Rabbitohs or the Knights?

[00:04:36] Stephen Fenech: Go Souths. Oh man, they're going to come good. They learned a big lesson last week.

[00:04:41] Trevor Long: Can the Sharks beat the Dolphins?

[00:04:43] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, is it— where is it?

[00:04:45] Trevor Long: Dolphins first, so it must be Moreton Bay Stadium.

[00:04:48] Stephen Fenech: Oh, Mate, Dolphins are in cracking form. I'd go Dolphins.

[00:04:51] Trevor Long: Yeah, Dolphins.

[00:04:52] Stephen Fenech: Okay. We're doing your tips now.

[00:04:53] Trevor Long: Well, I was just quickly checking. I thought I'd better log them in, so I've just gone with the favorites except for the Souths.

[00:04:59] Stephen Fenech: Well, it's their home game.

[00:05:01] Trevor Long: But interestingly, in the Footy Tips app, ESPN, most people have picked Souths and they're going to have a big Jai Arrow celebration out there. He got married too. Good on him.

[00:05:10] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, they're going to try to break a world record of the party hats out there.

[00:05:15] Trevor Long: Oh, really?

[00:05:15] Stephen Fenech: And yeah, that's all. I reckon that'll be sort of create a nice vibe for Souths too.

[00:05:19] Trevor Long: Oh, lovely. Yeah. All right, well, enough of my footy tips. Time for some of this.

[00:05:25] Stephen Fenech: Welcome to Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:05:27] Trevor Long: Not a bad price.

[00:05:28] Stephen Fenech: With Trevor Long from eftm.com. Really handy device.

[00:05:32] Trevor Long: And Stephen Fenech from techguide.com.au. Thank you for listening. Uh, thank you for downloading episode 740 of Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:05:41] Stephen Fenech: Thanks. 740.

[00:05:42] Trevor Long: 740. Um, thanks to the great people at Arlo for all your home security needs. If you're in the market, you're looking for cameras, when you're standing in front of all the options in store. Make sure you look at the Arlo, pick up the box and look at the features and consider them. They've got some great features like Arlo Secure, which we'll tell you about a little bit later. And of course, Netgear for your home networking needs. Again, just want you to consider them when you're, when you're overwhelmed by options. Just know the two blokes have been using Netgear products for a very long time. Episode 740, and thanks very much to Telstra for just absolutely ruining our day. We spent a bit of time on the private feed explaining how a thing like this can upset our day. Yeah, it doesn't upset me, but it upsets our day. Yeah. And I don't mind that normally on any given day, but today is a tough one because we have such a regimented plan for Wednesday.

[00:06:30] Stephen Fenech: We had a lot to record. See, we're heading OS soon and we've got to bank some shows.

[00:06:36] Trevor Long: Basically, we're getting ahead of ourselves pretty as well we can. So the news is Telstra went down pretty heavy yesterday at the time you're listening to this. So to be clear, we're recording on a Wednesday, the day it went down. If anything comes out about the outage, we don't know it. Okay. So if it comes out overnight on Wednesday into Thursday, We didn't know it, so take it with a grain of salt that this was recorded on that, on that day. I would think about publishing this a day early.

[00:07:01] Stephen Fenech: Should we? Today? Tonight?

[00:07:03] Trevor Long: I could push AFTM back to Thursday. Oh, you know what, because I don't have to go out tonight, yeah, I don't have to go away, I could— I'll try and do that. Okay, okay, I'll try and do that. Push it out early, pump it out early. Okay, which means you'll get the private feed 2 days, 2 days.

[00:07:16] Stephen Fenech: Oh folks, ladies and gentlemen, phone, ring the newspaper.

[00:07:19] Trevor Long: I also realized that the movie shows are ahead, so I can worry about them on Monday. I can edit them on Monday and V Show. So of course I can do all that on Monday. Well, I'm just going to focus on tech.

[00:07:27] Stephen Fenech: Yep.

[00:07:28] Trevor Long: At 4:30 Wednesday morning, Telstra identified, according to their own website, identified an outage affecting some mobile calls and data services. Most calls and data connections are now working correctly, and our teams are working urgently to restore the rest. Now I want to be clear, Telstra's first statement was, and they still are talking in really, really kind of lame terminology. In reality, they're not being super clear about what's happening. Their first statement was, and I got this at, how do you look at time on Apple, at 6:30 AM, we're looking into an issue affecting some mobile calls and data connections. On their website, it's when you looked at the outages, it said possible outage for some calls. Dude, it wasn't a possible outage. It was an outage. And I quickly learned that it was Boost, Belong, Aldi, Everyday Mobile and everyone else, anyone who uses the Telstra network. I think a lot of people today found out they're on the Telstra network.

[00:08:28] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that's right. They're on Boost and Belong and Aldi.

[00:08:30] Trevor Long: Like, I think if you're found out the hard way today, Woolworths, or it's called Everyday Mobile customer, I don't think you knew you're on Telstra. Some, some do, some would have known, but you know, you now realize it because you were out. Absolutely. And the thing was, it was absolutely not the entire network. There was definitely in my anecdotal data set, I'm going to say 10 to 15% of people were fine.

[00:08:51] Stephen Fenech: So there were pockets that were still working.

[00:08:53] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:08:54] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:08:54] Trevor Long: Now we can say what Telstra has been saying is that at approximately 4:30 we affect— we identify issue affecting a number of nodes that help keep time across our mobile network. When the nodes are not operating as expected, other parts of the network can be affected. Now, this is not an unusual thing in the world of computers.

[00:09:14] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:09:15] Trevor Long: The clock, as it's often called, on a network. So 2GB, for example, when we first moved to that building that they're in now, the CLODs, the computer system that was the desk, the buttons and everything. Yeah, it was, it was a nightmare. Like it had some huge issues and a lot of it was, I think they call it a word clock. But anyway, it's, it's a single device that is, it's the master, it's a clock. And we don't mean, hey buddy, what time is it? Even though that is exactly what the thing is for. It's there because every computer on the network reaches out on a regular basis, potentially every millisecond to say, what time is it? What time is it? And going basically goes, what time is it? Oh yeah, that's the right time. So every computer goes, what time is it? That's the right time. And it checks its own watch. And if the computer yells out, what time is it? So one of the nodes in Telstra's case is, what time is it? And it reports back a different time. The node goes, hang on a minute. And that's when things— that node might go into a shutdown mode. It might take itself off the network for safety reasons. Who knows? Like a number of potential reasons. I'm making this broadly up, right? Which is what we do as commentators when we don't have anything more than a couple of lines from Telstra, right? And so that actually makes sense to me that essentially their computer systems were not in sync.

[00:10:30] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:10:31] Trevor Long: That's probably the best way to say it.

[00:10:32] Stephen Fenech: And when it sensed that, it saw, well, something's wrong and I'm gonna close down.

[00:10:37] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:10:37] Stephen Fenech: That's kind of the, it's the natural reaction of the system to say, well, if we can't operate properly, we're not gonna operate at all. That's right.

[00:10:43] Trevor Long: And that's, And not safety as in, you know, human safety. That's for the safety of things like, you know, routing a phone call. Does it know where to send it? The logs of a phone call. If the time is extremely wrong, then the logs are wrong and the logs don't match up when they try to synchronize together. So there's a lot of reasons why computers need to be in sync.

[00:11:04] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:11:05] Trevor Long: Now, if they detected this and things were going down, it was really— I'm going to say by 8:00, 8:30, I started to see people going, mine's back down. But then they go, it's gone again. So there's a little bit of mishmash. But by 9:30 we had the shadow—

[00:11:20] Stephen Fenech: I connected at about 9, quarter to 9. I was connecting to someone on Telstra. Right.

[00:11:25] Trevor Long: Yeah. About by, I think 8:30 actually.

[00:11:30] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:11:30] Trevor Long: No, it was by 9:30. Yeah. The shadow communications minister had gone on with Ben Fordham's show. Was it James on this morning?

[00:11:37] Stephen Fenech: Yep.

[00:11:38] Trevor Long: And said—

[00:11:38] Stephen Fenech: 9:30 would have been—

[00:11:40] Trevor Long: No, no, no. It was— I'd been on the Ben Fordham show and said that that it's, um, 90% had been rectified. So Telstra had told the communicator, the shadow Communications Minister, that things were coming back up, but they weren't telling us this. They had no— nowhere have they said 90%.

[00:11:53] Stephen Fenech: Have you received an email from Telstra today?

[00:11:55] Trevor Long: Uh, yeah, I got one. I got one about this with this link.

[00:11:58] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, okay, nice.

[00:11:59] Trevor Long: But you know that— do you know what, that's a great point, Stephen, because we all should have learned the lessons of Optus, the very first Optus drama, right? And one of the learnings was communicate. Now, do you know why I got the message? Because I've been texting them since 5 o'clock this morning. So they obviously keep people in the loop. But if you hadn't messaged anyone— and by the way, the main man you're thinking of that you would message has been in Vietnam for a week.

[00:12:22] Stephen Fenech: Yes, I know. I was gonna— and I knew, so I didn't message him. I knew he was out of the loop.

[00:12:25] Trevor Long: Poor bastard landed today, was meant to be heading— was he meant to be heading to a Telstra event which has now been postponed? So can you imagine being poor old Steve, come back to a flood? He's landed and, wow, oh no, what's happened?

[00:12:36] Stephen Fenech: Right in it.

[00:12:37] Trevor Long: But why Oh, why? They've got a media list. They've got your email address. Yeah. Why wouldn't they have sent an email with the statement?

[00:12:45] Stephen Fenech: Why not? You know, we had to go to the Telstra— did you send me the link?

[00:12:49] Trevor Long: They sent me that link because I kept saying, have you got any new statements? Right.

[00:12:53] Stephen Fenech: They should have. They could have handled that better.

[00:12:55] Trevor Long: It's the PR playbook of, you know what, don't tell unless they ask. So Trev's asked 6 times, so tell him what he needs to know. Stephen hasn't asked, so don't tell him. That's stupid.

[00:13:05] Stephen Fenech: That's ridiculous. But anyway, we, uh, they, they— you're right, if anyone, if, if these other networks haven't gone to school on what happened with Optus, uh, and not improved and checked, triple-checked their systems, then I think they're failing at their jobs. They've got to— if you can't learn from those examples, then it's a big worry.

[00:13:28] Trevor Long: Isn't this a fascinating, um leveler because for years people have gone, "Oh, Vodafone, wouldn't go there," despite the fact that was 15 years ago. For the last few years, people have gone, "Optus, bugger that," you know. Yeah. And everyone, "Oh, Telstra." Well, you know, they've had outages before where cables were cut and they've had problems before, but this appears not to be one of those things.

[00:13:48] Stephen Fenech: This appears pretty— would you say major? This is major?

[00:13:51] Trevor Long: I think this is— I think their language— I think their language does— Not outrage as some has reported in the Newcastle Times or wherever it was we saw a video of. Their language does not give that impression on the website, but I would absolutely describe this as major.

[00:14:06] Stephen Fenech: Would you say they're playing it down a little bit? Yes, vastly playing it down.

[00:14:10] Trevor Long: Yes. And what's really interesting is it's only recently that the new ACMA outage reporting rules came into force. So it's going to be interesting to see whether they met the requirements of those rules to advise ACMA.

[00:14:24] Stephen Fenech: Is that including informing the government?

[00:14:26] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:14:26] Stephen Fenech: And the minister?

[00:14:27] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:14:27] Stephen Fenech: They did that?

[00:14:28] Trevor Long: Well, what else is it? Did they do it early enough? At what point did they do it? Yeah, that's going to be really interesting to find out.

[00:14:32] Stephen Fenech: What time was it, about 8:30 they did that? 8 o'clock?

[00:14:35] Trevor Long: It was about 8 AM. I'm not the minister.

[00:14:37] Stephen Fenech: I think it was about 8 AM. They, they, that's when the messages came through that they had been informed, right? Yeah.

[00:14:43] Trevor Long: Well, the question is, is there— at what time did the National Register of Telecommunications Outages list an outage from Telstra.

[00:14:55] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:14:56] Trevor Long: Okay. Because that's, that's the— it's a public website apparently. I don't know where to find it, but I can only find links to the proposed register. But I'm sure it's on the ACMA website.

[00:15:09] Stephen Fenech: But Telstra stood up and gave it— they just basically just talked about the nodes and what was affected. Was that the person?

[00:15:15] Trevor Long: 9:45, the CFO, Michael Ackland, who I think he's been part of Telstra for a very long time, made a statement a very quick statement and then took a lot of questions. That's where the timekeeping came up. And look, inside baseball, but you can demonstrate best how a journalist who doesn't fully understand this will latch on to the thing like timekeeping or time as a real, yeah, a point of understanding. They're trying to understand what that really means.

[00:15:42] Stephen Fenech: Absolutely. Yes, it's— well, I think the explanation that Telstra gave —people in the industry and in the know would understand what that means, but lay people were thinking, well, what's the time got to do with it? And where can— how does it all work? But as you said, computers are often checking in with each other, and that's one of the ways that they know is by checking the time, by checking that they're on the same sequence. Yeah.

[00:16:11] Trevor Long: So yeah, so it's a leveler because now You know, Telstra had a big outage, Optus had a big outage, Vodafone had a big outage. Actually, Vodafone's probably looking the best right now. This is the furthest.

[00:16:22] Stephen Fenech: They've been pretty aggressive in their advertising and everything lately too.

[00:16:25] Trevor Long: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, and you know what's also interesting? The— oh, it's probably not listed anymore. I might find it on my article because I, I took a screenshot on AFTM of the— what Telstra had put on their website originally. It said potential issue affecting some customers, and I'll read this out. This is very early, so we're talking 7:30 AM. We're looking into an issue affecting some mobile calls and data connections. If you have— having trouble connecting, try again as it may work on a retry. We're on it and we'll share an update as soon as it's fixed. Thanks for bearing with us. Um, we're on it. Yeah, where's that from? That's, uh, Optus. That's Optus's new marketing slogan. We're on it. We're on it.

[00:17:04] Stephen Fenech: They've taken a leaf out of the playbook. They've nailed their, their little slogan.

[00:17:10] Trevor Long: It's very funny.

[00:17:12] Stephen Fenech: Maybe that's sort of— that's network jargon, is it? We're on it. I don't think it's network jargon. No, they reckon they've sort of— they're relating to Optus. They feel their pain. Yeah, that's an interesting choice of words actually, isn't it?

[00:17:26] Trevor Long: It is. It's hilarious because then they also— because they also say, what is it? Thanks for bearing with us. You know, that's— that's— so it's interesting. I'm reading up on this transparency rules from the Australian Communications Bureau Authority. It says the Outage Register rules require telcos to provide Public registers of resolved major, major outages. Okay, so it's on the Telstra website. They have to provide that. Now, a former colleague of ours, Campbell Simpson, has been pretty active on Instagram today. Oh, talking about the fact that there was actually not very clear information on the Telstra outage website. Okay. And I agree with him. I didn't keep a clear record of it, but, but I don't think they, they made it easy for people to find the outages that they have. I agree.

[00:18:11] Stephen Fenech: I think In the— and again, something they should have learned from the other telcos during their dramas. People think customers want to know is what's wrong? Yes. Yeah. I can't use my phone. Is it just me or is there an outage? Yeah. Number one. Number two is, well, some may think, well, what caused it? What happened? But the most critical thing is when is it going to be back up? Right. So I think that there, that's the information that people, customers would be seeking. So why not supply that information as quickly as you can? I know it's hard. I do know that even the first couple of hours Telstra hadn't worked out what was wrong. Of course. So there was still troubleshooting, scrambling, trying to find what was going wrong. Yeah. So again, probably the reason why they didn't report it early is because, well, what do we report if we don't know what's wrong? Yeah. So that's, I think that's always a similar thing.

[00:19:05] Trevor Long: That's always their nervousness. But I would always argue just the more information, the better. Just, you know what, we know it's— we know there's a problem. We're working on it. Like their current outage report: we continue to make good progress restoring services. If you're still experiencing issues, we'll share another update once all services are back online. We'll update you again before 4 PM. So like, it's okay, it's just open-ended. It doesn't— I don't know, I guess that's what they're required to do by law, is list that there is an outage and let people know.

[00:19:37] Stephen Fenech: So do you think people at Optus are thinking, hey, Telstra, how do you like them apples? Or they think, how do you like it?

[00:19:43] Trevor Long: I think it's a bad day to be a Telstra executive because they always, they pride themselves on, yeah, you know, the power, their uptime and performance of their network. They always have.

[00:19:54] Stephen Fenech: Look, rightly so. I don't think for a minute Optus would be, you know, savoring their pain.

[00:19:59] Trevor Long: There's no other telco. That's not how it works.

[00:20:01] Stephen Fenech: None of them would be like, we know exactly what you're going through.

[00:20:03] Trevor Long: They'd be sympathizing with them. None of them ever do. Yeah, but here's the thing. Let's look at it from a customer point of view. Consumer point of view, there's two types of customers. There's average person, there's business. Now business, it's another wake-up call that that little payment terminal at your coffee shop, it's got a SIM card in it. If that's the only SIM card, you're screwed in the case of an outage. So do you have Wi-Fi in your business that that thing should be connected to as well? Yeah, spare. Do you have a spare SIM card in the top drawer?

[00:20:28] Stephen Fenech: What is that called? It's sort of like preparing for the— what do they call it? Redundancy. Preparing for the worst.

[00:20:33] Trevor Long: You should have redundancy. So you look at it as a risk chart. You know, you're in business and you go, okay, risk is EFTPOS goes down or Tyro, whatever you want to call it, right?

[00:20:42] Stephen Fenech: I think they made a statement too, Tyro.

[00:20:44] Trevor Long: Mitigation is we need a second service.

[00:20:48] Stephen Fenech: Well, you think, imagine how many, well, it happened right in the morning, early in the morning, right? So imagine how many people would've gone into work today wanting to buy a coffee. None of them have got cash. They wanted to use the EFTPOS terminals, touch and tap and go or their phone. And sorry, can't have it. Yeah, imagine that literally would have been millions of dollars across Australia that was lost to these cafes because they couldn't pay for their coffees. Yeah, and how many people carry cash?

[00:21:16] Trevor Long: Not many. So then we had trains. Now the train, let me be clear, V/Line trains and the Hunter Express trains and things like that that were down, the trains will work, okay? Trains will drive, there's no problem. They don't rely on 4G, but the communication systems that exist for a train to show the network where they are on the network and for drivers to communicate communicate with other drivers and things that obviously with those ones there on Telstra. That's it. Now my brother's a paramedic, an AMBO, and I know that in the ambulance they've got computer systems that have Telstra SIMs because that's the smart thing to do. Biggest networks, not a stupid idea. All right. Okay. But I'm very confident they also have a second system that has the Optus SIM card in it and or just Starlink on the roof just in case. So the emergency services have built redundancy into their systems to go, well, what if this is down? Well, we've got that.

[00:22:02] Stephen Fenech: Well, a question for you. Telstra have satellite messaging. Yeah. So could potentially, if you have been a customer today who's affected by the network outage, could you have then bypassed and gone a message via satellite?

[00:22:17] Trevor Long: I think that would work. My guess is yes. My guess is you probably could have sent a message to someone on another network, maybe not on the Telstra network. Ah, because how's the other person going to receive it? But at the same time, The bottleneck is the network. They receive it by satellite. But no, because they're not on satellite. Like, if you're— if you've got to be an iPhone 13 user or an S26 user, so it's a very small—

[00:22:36] Stephen Fenech: and you've got to have a certain level of Telstra account to be able to have that as part of your deal.

[00:22:40] Trevor Long: Like a Boost customer said to me this morning, why can't I do this? I'm like, because you're not— you're not on Telstra.

[00:22:44] Stephen Fenech: I understand.

[00:22:44] Trevor Long: They haven't given it to you. Because— but I also, in thinking about it again, I think the core network is problematic and down. I don't think the satellite SMSing would have worked.

[00:22:52] Stephen Fenech: So, like, but can we look into the future with, with the, the deal— these, these telcos making deals with Starlink and all that? Is it possible that in this, in the event of something like this happening, that they can go flick and then everything goes through satellite?

[00:23:07] Trevor Long: I know it's only messaging at the moment because, because it all still needs traffic for their network. It still needs to— at some point it needs to come into the Telstra system to go, it's a message from Steve, it's going to Trev. Like, yeah, it still needs the computer in the middle.

[00:23:20] Stephen Fenech: So this wasn't then a, a, um, tower, a radio, like a— no, a tower issue? No. It was a core network issue. Correct. Right.

[00:23:31] Trevor Long: Yeah. And so, so for me, again, we had this conversation during Optus outages and stuff. If you're a human being who had a Telstra SIM card this morning and it failed and you're filthy about it, you're blowing up a treat, then you've got to invest in a second card. You've got to get a SIM, eSIM, if you need it, with 12 months. Yeah. And, uh, you know, you can just go into your settings and turn it on.

[00:23:50] Stephen Fenech: So does that work then with, with these retail terminals? Is it just a matter of changing a SIM?

[00:23:54] Trevor Long: Is Yeah, okay, so I'm talking about average people. And you're on your phone, if you're whinging about your phone not working for 3 hours this morning, get a second SIM card, stop whinging, because this is going to happen again.

[00:24:04] Stephen Fenech: That's right, because like, to defend those people, a lot of people, they rely on that for their work.

[00:24:09] Trevor Long: Of course, I mean, no, but that's what I'm saying, relying on it for our jobs. You know, I pay for a SIM card in the Content Phone that we use to make calls and that I use to go overseas. I pay for a second SIM card in— I pay for a SIM card in America and a second SIM card in America so that if just in case one of them is down, I've always got connectivity. I can't broadcast without it, right? So if your life relies on you getting calls, taking calls, and making calls, you need a backup SIM, you need an emergency SIM. I believe that. If you're a business, you had a Tyro thing— I don't have a Tyro terminal, but a Square terminal, Square have those little terminals, they can have Wi-Fi. So if a Tyro doesn't have Wi-Fi, I'm signing up with a different platform. Yeah, that's insane. Yeah. If your payment system doesn't have a potential for you to put a redundant in or for you to take out the Telstra SIM and put another one in, then get rid of it because it's reliant just on an internet connection.

[00:25:03] Stephen Fenech: Not that it's just Telstra, it's just an internet connection.

[00:25:05] Trevor Long: Doesn't matter.

[00:25:06] Stephen Fenech: It's just the internet.

[00:25:07] Trevor Long: Same as the trains. They don't need to be on Telstra. They just need to be able to communicate with a network.

[00:25:12] Stephen Fenech: So what— and he is like, some issues could be resolved if there's a fallback SIM card or—

[00:25:19] Trevor Long: Everyone should be talking about what their fallback redundancy is.

[00:25:22] Stephen Fenech: I remember learning from the other outages, the Optus CEO, when there was a drama, had a Telstra SIM card to be able to make calls and connect with people. Yeah. So that's— yeah. Well, do you think then the train systems that would have that kind of redundancy? Would you?

[00:25:38] Trevor Long: I mean, I think they're probably going to have to look at it now and the unions will go mad because they'll want that. But Look, I mean, the difference between a paramedic being able to be dispatched to an emergency and a train pulling up on the siding and going, you know what, we're just going to wait here until the network is resolved and everyone can catch buses in the meantime. I mean, you know, it's an inconvenience, but it's not the life-threatening end of the world, right? And like, how much— can you imagine there's, I don't know, I'd say there's 4,000 train drivers, I don't know. And they've got to get there for every phone they've got, they've got to buy a second SIM card for, like It's a lot of money. Perhaps, yeah. But see, if I'm a coffee shop and I lost $300 revenue this morning— you'd lose a tonne. For $300, you could have a 12-month SIM card with a different telco that sits in the top drawer, and you pull it out and you put it in the box. Yeah, boom. That simple.

[00:26:28] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I think, and also too, carry cash. Have cash. I know a lot of people don't like it. All the early morning radio that I did today, I was saying, if you're heading out, take some cash, you might not be able to pay for stuff. So Although, would the ATMs be affected? Do they use a connection?

[00:26:45] Trevor Long: Again, of course they use a connection of some sort.

[00:26:47] Stephen Fenech: Imagine that, I'm gonna get cash but I can't because there's an outage.

[00:26:50] Trevor Long: I mean, it's probably the ultimate irony. What a number. And you would hope they're hardwired into the end because most ATMs are actually in a shop or a facility or a business that probably has it hardwired.

[00:27:00] Stephen Fenech: It might be hardwired in. Okay, okay. So, and it would, just to be clear, it was their network, their mobile network.

[00:27:06] Trevor Long: NBN network were not affected. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So dark day for Telstra, folks.

[00:27:11] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. And yeah, when's the last time they had an outage? It was a while.

[00:27:15] Trevor Long: I feel like 2016. They've had one where a cable was cut. They've had that one where the staff member pulled the plug or something. Remember? Whoa. So he's still working for Telstra? I doubt it.

[00:27:25] Stephen Fenech: They still working for Telstra?

[00:27:26] Trevor Long: They might have gone to Optus under Kelly Bay or Osmara. Wow. What leadership. Well, what happened?

[00:27:32] Stephen Fenech: Looking back at Optus, that was last year. Yeah, yeah. Last year. Oh, the triple zero in September.

[00:27:37] Trevor Long: So, and also let's touch on that. Yeah, the Optus drama has made everyone ask the question, is 000 okay? Everyone relax, okay? That was a very unique circumstance. 000 is working fine, but, and this is the point you made in an interview that'll be on Channel 10 tonight, um, if they use it, because they should, it's a very good point. People will report, there are reports that 000 didn't work. Yeah, but the thing is, when Telstra's down and your phone shows no bars, it says SOS only, and you dial 000. Your phone doesn't just go ring ring and, you know, you just use the Optus network. Your phone goes, let me just try Telstra, let me just try Telstra. Okay, it's not working. Let me, let me work out where I go. I've got to go. And it spends up to 60 seconds going, I need a network, before it finds it and it works. And 60 seconds is a long time in an emergency.

[00:28:20] Stephen Fenech: It seems like an hour, I guess. But that was, I think that, and that was, I think, reported as a part of the issue of Optus when the Optus dramas happened. Yes, people were reporting it wasn't working. It was actually working, they just weren't waiting that 60 seconds. 60 seconds of silence is a long time.

[00:28:35] Trevor Long: When you've rung 000. Yeah, if you're ringing triple— this is our community service message to everyone, and this applies every day of the week no matter what happens. If you're in an emergency and you're trying to call 000 and your phone is showing SOS only, not because the network's down, but because then because you're in a remote area, whatever it is, if your phone is showing SOS and you're trying to call 000, it could take up to a minute to connect. There will be silence. Take your time. Yeah, have patience. I know it sounds ridiculous because someone's hurt, fallen, injured, blood, who knows.

[00:29:07] Stephen Fenech: Wait the 60 seconds. Take your time.

[00:29:10] Trevor Long: It may connect. It should connect. If it says SOS, you have absolutely every reason to believe it will connect. And that's what you're saying at Optus. It's quite likely that a lot of the 400-odd calls that didn't connect would have connected if people had the patience. And waited. Maybe that's what they should change.

[00:29:26] Stephen Fenech: They should sort of say, have something there to say, hang on, stay on the line, stay on the line. Just a voice.

[00:29:31] Trevor Long: You're not on the network. Yeah.

[00:29:33] Stephen Fenech: You're not connected to anything. Like contact. I'm okay to go. Okay to go.

[00:29:36] Trevor Long: Okay to go. It needs to be built into the phone. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

[00:29:39] Stephen Fenech: I think it should be like something to say, okay, like a progress bar, an audio progress bar, perhaps.

[00:29:46] Trevor Long: No one's going to put their money on a progress bar that they can't actually back. Because is it 30 seconds or 60 seconds? Is it 63 seconds? You know, who knows? So it's of course something. It's something for us. And look, we, uh, Inside Baseball, we, we talk with companies all the time about content we could be making for them. And one of the pieces of content we have talked about recently is for, for a telco. And one of them is messaging about things like this, you know, safety and updates and things. And it is essentially incumbent upon us, which is why I made the point about very clearly about the wait. If you're calling 000, it's an SOS-only zone. Wait 60 seconds, give it time before you hang up and try again. Because hanging up and trying again might make it faster. It'll be the same 60 seconds.

[00:30:26] Stephen Fenech: Starts the clock again. Yeah, hang in there, hang in there.

[00:30:29] Trevor Long: But, you know, no triple zero issues today. There will no doubt be people who did fail to connect, and Telstra will be making welfare checks. I hope that, you know, Telstra is open about what went wrong.

[00:30:41] Stephen Fenech: Why, why did this happen? Yeah, well, I think like, like Optus—

[00:30:45] Trevor Long: was it a software update?

[00:30:46] Stephen Fenech: Uh, I don't know, what do you It was no—

[00:30:49] Trevor Long: how else does a, a computer sync clock get out of sync?

[00:30:53] Stephen Fenech: There's an update gone wrong. Yeah, something corrupted.

[00:30:56] Trevor Long: They did say, um, let me find it in their statement because I had someone say to me, can you rule out Chinese hackers? Yeah, we have no reason to believe there has been a cyber security incident. Now I'll tell you this, Telstra isn't going to write we have no reason to believe there's a cyber security incident. Yeah, unless they're very confident it's not a cybersecurity incident. Absolutely. They would have checked their logs for denial of service attacks, for external access, all that kind of stuff. Their initial assessment would be pretty spot on there, but you can't rule it out, which is why they need to be clear. We were performing a software update, this happened. Someone did a network update, this happened. Someone pulled a plug, this happened.

[00:31:35] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I think it could well be someone pulled a plug. Yeah, well Well, we have seen in the past transparency matters. It's very important. Optus, to their credit, during the last triple zero dramas were transparent as glass. They were very, very clear with what happened. Yeah. No hiding anything. Telstra hopefully is going to be just as forthcoming. I hope so.

[00:31:59] Trevor Long: We'll see what happens anyway. If it affected you, you should be fine by now. If you haven't, do a full reboot, full restart. And obviously the Telstra website has a banner with the information on if you're looking for the latest as at the time of listing as opposed to the time that we're recording this, uh, here on Two Blokes Talking Tech. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech, and we do it all thanks to the great people at Netgear, netgear.com.au, for all your home networking needs. Wi-Fi is the most important part of your home network. It is a utility in your home. Internet, water, electricity, gas, whatever you're using, and internet. And if you've got internet coming into your home in that little brick wall NBN box, there's no point having that if you don't have internet throughout the whole home. And that's where Netgear's Wi-Fi systems can help you, from their Nighthawks all the way through to their Orbi mesh systems. It's a great range of Wi-Fi solutions for your whole home, uh, and that's the way to get the best connection in every room in your home and the best speed that you're paying for in every room in the home. Whatever speed you're paying for is the speed you should be getting, or relatively close to that, in every part of your home. So don't settle for second best. Check out Netgear's full range, and you can do that right now at netgear.com.au. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech. I'll play the same one. I feel like the same one. I need a button that randomizes that. Oh, you know what I mean?

[00:33:14] Stephen Fenech: Just to throw— it might put the intro up by mistake.

[00:33:17] Trevor Long: No, no, though, it just stinks because I feel like I've hit the same one again. All right, that's all right. Silly me. So it's a landmark week for the National Rugby League. Yeah, and a big middle finger to the AFL if you're a bit of a Landies.

[00:33:29] Stephen Fenech: That's funny. I love— I love— Feed of Landies has got a funny turn of phrase. Is when he's referring to the game down— yeah, he mentions the guys down south. He's referring to the AFL if you haven't worked it out. But yeah, what's the deal with $5.3 billion? A lot of money. $5.3? It is $5.3. So solid clip for 7 years of the rights. So Channel 9 has the free-to-air rights, 3 games a week. Foxtel has every game and, and So it's pretty much business as usual with the previous arrangement.

[00:34:04] Trevor Long: They're just paying a bit more for it now. Exactly. Channel 9 retains the State of Origin and the finals. And the finals. Yeah. But it's, it's an interesting one. The reason we want to bring up here, because we've talked about rights for a long time and I feel like there's a missed opportunity. I'm glad, very glad. We talked about once recently NASCAR or NFL, the right. It's a different broadcaster every, every night of the week. You know, you've got to be a subscriber to 6 different services to get that. And I wish Peter Velandis had acknowledged the customer experience of that by saying, you know, we obviously achieved a huge deal here and we could have pushed for more perhaps and done a deal with 6 different companies, but we wanted the customer to have the best experience, the NRL fan. That would have been a really smart thing to say. Yeah, but in fact, I just don't think that Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney or whoever else might have been.

[00:34:54] Stephen Fenech: So do you think like they were like, he mentioned Amazon, Velandis mentioned Amazon. Yeah. So who else do you reckon? Netflix would have thrown their hand in.

[00:35:01] Trevor Long: I think Netflix would have. So what happens with— and look, I speculate only based on my own experience in a small way with the radio rights to the NRL. And when we were renewing in like 2006 or 2007, I remember getting a document. It was a document from the NRL saying, this is what we expect to happen. You know, we're wanting to do this on Friday nights and da da da da da. And so that we— I was at 2GB at the time. We would come back and say, well, here's what we want to do. And you counter it or whatever. I would imagine that there was a document and I would imagine it had a number on it too. And I would imagine that Netflix, for example, went, well, show us the document. Did they actually put in a proposal? Maybe not. Amazon, you know what I reckon Amazon did? Amazon went, we'll take a Monday night game or a Friday night game. We want our flagship thing to be on Amazon Prime. I've got no doubt they would've bid for one thing and one thing only. And I also think that there's no question that, and let's just remind everyone, I don't work for Channel 9. I just appear on the network talking rubbish about technology.

[00:35:59] Stephen Fenech: Okay.

[00:35:59] Trevor Long: I'm not an employee. Yeah, I don't have any inside knowledge. Okay. But as someone who's worked in sports media and dealt with these things over many years, this is my interpretation. I am confident that the Nine Network would have gone to the NRL and said, listen, DAZN, get rid of them. We'll take it all. You name your number, we'll take it all.

[00:36:18] Stephen Fenech: So you reckon Nine would— that would have been their bid?

[00:36:20] Trevor Long: They absolutely initially would have gone in and said, we will put on Stan Sport every game live, right, along with simulcast on Channel 9, all the free-to-air. Yeah, they would have wanted to have State of Origin on both Nine and Stan simulcast. They would have gone in, they would have, they would have written a check, they would have said, you know, let's say $3.5 billion or like, would have come up with a number, right? And then Patrick Delaney from Foxtel would have gone, hang on a minute, because he would have known that's happening. But he would have gone, listen, it's going to be very simple. We want it all. Yeah, and because what, what Foxtel, DAZN now has the ability to do is say we want it all. So this is what happens with the Olympics. You go in, so Channel 7 or Channel 9, you go to the IOC and you say we'll pay you $5 million for the whole thing and then we'll go and sell the little stuff. So we'll sell the radio rights, we'll sell the pay-TV rights, right? So what Foxtel would have said was Patrick Lane would have said we'll give you $4 billion, everything. And then they would've gone, so if we get it all due to anti-siphoning, these things have to appear on free-to-air. We'll offer Channel 7 the State of Origin, we'll offer Channel 10 the final series. And they would've made their own, you know, couple of hundred million dollars back every year out of that, right? And then it was just me speculating. Peter V'Landys would've gone, listen, you're both out of the ballpark. So why don't you go and crack your heads together and come back on a better deal. Come back with a real number. So V'Landys wants to get, 'cause what did the AFL get? $4.7 billion or somebody think. He wants $5 billion. $5 billion. That's what he wants to say. So he said to Nine— was AFL really $4 point something? Something huge. Yeah, right. Because it was like a 7-year deal again, right? Okay. He wanted a big number as a check, but also a big annual number. So Nine and Foxtel have tried to go on their own. Yeah. And Patrick's— sorry, Peter V'Landys has gone, yeah, you didn't, you didn't get there, so go and work it out. Go work together. So they would have sat in a room and gone, right. Should we just do the same thing again? How much have you got? How much have you got? And, and sounds about right. V'Landys would have screwed Patrick Delaney big time. There's no doubt Peter V'Landys is basically a used car salesman done good. Yeah. Like he strikes me as a brilliant, brilliant businessman from the old school. But he would have rung Patrick Delaney, he would have rung Channel 9, he would have played the phone.

[00:38:37] Stephen Fenech: But he's, he's coming though from a position where 5 years ago, this is what he said in his press conference when he came in to take over and Abdo's there as CEO. They improved, they increased the audience. They reckon they doubled the audience in the last 5 years. Yeah, I don't know. So that happens. How? Yeah, well, that's a pretty solid badge of honor for when you're flogging the TV rights to say to people, well, okay. And I reckon what helped Foxtel, I reckon, is the fact that they are DAZN, which is a multinational company, has given them the ability to, 'cause he kept saying, "We're going global. We want this to be a global game." And so part of Foxtel's commitment would've been, "Right, this has to be shown in other markets as well." Let me just open up my favorite little travel app that I have called Zones, not DAZN, Zones.

[00:39:33] Trevor Long: What this allows me to do is go, what time is it somewhere else, right? So it's 3:34 PM as we're recording here, it's 1:34 AM in Sydney. In New York City, 6:34 AM in Dublin. Now what time is kickoff for State of Origin tonight?

[00:39:45] Stephen Fenech: 8 PM. 8 PM. 8:05 PM.

[00:39:48] Trevor Long: It's 11 o'clock in the morning in Dublin, 6 AM in the morning in New York City, and 3 AM in Los Angeles. Right, mate.

[00:39:56] Stephen Fenech: So they play like the Olympics. They'll play the State of Origin at 9 AM.

[00:39:59] Trevor Long: This game's not going global, right? The 5:30 afternoon game. Yeah, might be good in small part of Europe, Yeah, but like America and other places, it's in the middle of the night.

[00:40:09] Stephen Fenech: But they've got day games too. They play like earliest game is at like a 2 o'clock game and, you know, 5:30 game.

[00:40:16] Trevor Long: All right, so 2 o'clock game is 7— is 9:30 in Los Angeles and midnight in New York and 5:30 AM in Dublin. Okay, mate, I know Velandys wants to call it a global game. It's not. What about in India? Get that India.

[00:40:28] Stephen Fenech: That's what you say next to that. Well, that's— it's— the globe is more than just Europe and America.

[00:40:32] Trevor Long: This money from DAZN is not because of the Globe. You think so? It's because DAZN, if they lose—

[00:40:39] Stephen Fenech: Are they a German company? Is it German?

[00:40:41] Trevor Long: I've got no idea. Some stupid billionaire. If DAZN— He's not stupid if he's a billionaire, mate. I hate billionaires because I'm not one. That's all. It's pure, pure— what's it called? Jealousy. Yeah, totally. If DAZN doesn't get the NRL rights, Mate, they may not survive in Australia. Yeah, that's right. Even with the AFL. You're not wrong.

[00:41:04] Stephen Fenech: Kayo can't survive because you got what you got called Kayo is basically—

[00:41:07] Trevor Long: if they've got 1.5, 2 million paying customers, mate, they lose a million of them. Yeah. If they don't have the NRL.

[00:41:14] Stephen Fenech: Absolutely. And you know who—

[00:41:16] Trevor Long: and that million goes straight to Stan Sport or—

[00:41:18] Stephen Fenech: Peter Velandys knew that. Yes. Yeah.

[00:41:20] Trevor Long: Which is why he had them over a barrel. Exactly. Yeah. He knew. Patrick Delaney couldn't blink. Yeah, he couldn't bluff because he can't lose it. His brief from head office would have been, mate, get it, you lose the NRL. Yeah, don't come back to work on Monday. I'm telling you. Yeah, there's no way. DAZN KO is dead without the NRL. They can have the NASCAR and the Formula One and some little bits of soccer and some— no, Stan's got rugby. AFL, it doesn't pay the bills. Exactly.

[00:41:52] Stephen Fenech: Well, I think Peter Vlanyk is very proud to say that it's the biggest rights deal in Australian history for the— for— and helps us 7 years.

[00:42:01] Trevor Long: I mean, if it was only 5 years, it wouldn't be the biggest deal. Do you see what I mean? Like, he's literally— but also this is through to 2034. Yeah. Can you just imagine? Think about how far you're going to be so old then.

[00:42:13] Stephen Fenech: And so will you, mate. You will be too.

[00:42:15] Trevor Long: Oh, I know.

[00:42:16] Stephen Fenech: By exactly the same amount of time as me.

[00:42:18] Trevor Long: I know, but how old will you be in 2034?

[00:42:21] Stephen Fenech: I will be, um, uh, 60— 66. Wow. So it's in 8— that's 7 years' time. I'm 58 now, so do the math. 65. Wow.

[00:42:36] Trevor Long: Yeah, I'm just going to search our archive.

[00:42:38] Stephen Fenech: I'll be retiring then. 64.

[00:42:41] Trevor Long: For Wrights and Stan, because I feel like we've been talking about this, we've been doing this for 15 years. Yeah.

[00:42:48] Stephen Fenech: And I feel like I can remember the episode where we were talking about Netflix and, and, and Stan and Prime. And because remember Paramount Plus, they've got soccer, so there's sport on Amazon, they're scattered around. And Netflix, remember they had the big, those big events, the boxing and all that as well. And they've had MMA on there recently, so it's a viable option to broadcast sport is live streaming.

[00:43:13] Trevor Long: Well, so NASCAR on Amazon Prime is pretty— yeah, well, it's doing very well. In fact, I see a lot of comments online going, this is so much better than what the other rubbish, you know, what they used to be doing. And they do it like they go hard. They, you know, they, they— the last day they had a race at San Diego on the naval base and they were broadcasting from the deck of an aircraft carrier.

[00:43:33] Stephen Fenech: I mean, it's crazy. Crazy. Well, it's like the Pearl Harbor premiere. Pearl Harbor was premier.

[00:43:38] Trevor Long: As a Nine loyalist, I would have loved to have seen Stan's take on the NRL coverage. It would have been amazing.

[00:43:45] Stephen Fenech: But they were quick to point out that it's Nine and the free-to-air, but also Nine Now. Yeah, of course. So the catch-up app had it as well.

[00:43:55] Trevor Long: They've retained that because remember Seven didn't have that on AFL. They only got it like last year.

[00:43:58] Stephen Fenech: It was crazy. That was weird. But that was important. Important. But, um, yeah, I think the— yeah, this is, this is, mate, massive, massive numbers. But, um, there also, there was talk too of a 20th team. So you just imagine how, of course, Patrick Delaney and Channel 9— Patrick Delaney in particular would love it for DAZN, Foxtel— if there is 10 games a week. Yeah, not just 7, not just 8. So because you've got to remember, next year you've got the Perth Bears coming in. Year after that you got PNG coming in. That takes it up to 19. Yeah. So 20th team is thinking Queensland, New Zealand. Where's it going to be? And so having 10 games— It's going to be New Zealand.

[00:44:41] Trevor Long: You think so? Well, Phil Landy said that on the Today Show this morning. Well, no, he said—

[00:44:45] Stephen Fenech: he also said on the Today Show that the Queensland juniors, they can't keep up with the demand. There's not enough ovals for them to play junior footy in Queensland as well. Do you believe that? I don't know, but there is already— how many Queensland teams? There's already Broncos, Cowboys, Dolphins and Gold Coast. 4 teams already. It's a lot. Would you have a 5th? I don't know. A second New Zealand team I reckon would work. Or maybe even a Pacific team. Imagine Samoa, Fiji or something like that being involved. Yes. And how many talented players have they got? Crazy.

[00:45:17] Trevor Long: You know, I reckon so. I've gone to the archives. Yeah. Thanks to Claude and our beautiful transcripts. NRL Digital Rights. Two blokes talking tech. Episode 9, right? 2011. 9. In episode 9, you flagged that BigPond was already eyeing NRL streaming rights. Boom. Okay. In 2016, so 10 years ago, in episode 250, the episode was titled Digital— talking digital sports, right? We covered the NFL Twitter deal, Optus EPL, and you explicitly called it the future of broadcast. The Nine NRL streaming conversation was formed here. 10 years we've been talking about it. The forward, big forward-thinking call was yours. You mapped out exactly what was coming with the NRL and AFL rights up in renewal for 3 to 4 years. You said the negotiating table would include all the big players, telcos and everyone. And you also floated Stan, Netflix, and what you called Presto.

[00:46:12] Stephen Fenech: Presto, wasn't that the Seven's?

[00:46:14] Trevor Long: As new seats at the table. Yeah. Was that Channel Seven? Yeah, that was Seven and, was that Seven and Foxtel? Yeah. Joint venture. Bye-bye. That went poof, not Presto.

[00:46:22] Stephen Fenech: See ya. Hey Presto.

[00:46:24] Trevor Long: So there you go. I mean, we have been talking about this. Yeah, for a long time. And so my point is, I'm kind of disappointed that it kind of, you know, it's the same, same, same, same, same, but more money. Same deal as the last 30 years.

[00:46:38] Stephen Fenech: Same, same, but more money.

[00:46:39] Trevor Long: Yeah. Well done. When you're on a good thing, you stick to it.

[00:46:44] Stephen Fenech: Exactly. Kick and stick. And that's what they did.

[00:46:46] Trevor Long: Keep it very, very simple. So there you go, folks. Nothing changing with the NRL anytime soon. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:46:59] Stephen Fenech: Two Blokes Talking Tech proudly supported by Arlo. And Arlo is all about security cameras. If you don't have your own security camera, you haven't got any setup at your place, I believe you should get into it. And Arlo is a great place to start, whether you want to start just with the essential. So start cheap, under, under $100, you can get a camera connected to your Wi-Fi and boom, you've got a security camera. You can then grow your system if you want to, more cameras. You can even go, uh, even better, more features, better resolution. There are plenty of options. They've got a pan and tilt version now as well, so they've got something for everyone. If you want to keep your home more secure, you'll get all the, uh, all the notifications on your app. You'll also, if you take up the secure plans, you'll also get the smart notifications, up to 30 days of storage of your videos, which is handy if you need to go back and look at something. It's all AI-powered now, so you can easily search for what you're looking for and find it right away. I think this time of year, I know there's a lot of people maybe heading over to Europe for a holiday. They want to maybe keep an eye on their home, keep an eye on your holiday home, keep an eye on your office, the best way to do it is through the Arlo security cameras. Really easy to set up, really easy to start, and also very easy to build as well. If you want to expand the, your ecosystem of cameras, it's really easy to do. Then there's also too, if you go directly through the Arlo site, they do have a bundle and save option. If you are spending a certain amount of money, you get up to a 20% discount depending on how much you spend. So check it all out for yourself, arlo.com.au. Everything about tech you never wanted to know. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:48:33] Trevor Long: I can tell you quickly, Telstra CEO Vikki Brady is overseas. Ah, that's why Michael Ackland was the press conference.

[00:48:40] Stephen Fenech: Right. Okay. Here's the thing.

[00:48:42] Trevor Long: How dare she go on a holiday if you're a telco? Well, we don't know if she's on holiday.

[00:48:45] Stephen Fenech: She's very tired as well.

[00:48:46] Trevor Long: If you're a telco, don't let your CEO go overseas. Remember Kelly Bayh-Rasmara was overseas.

[00:48:50] Stephen Fenech: She was away when it all went down. Is that the data breach?

[00:48:52] Trevor Long: She was away. Just don't let them go. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. Anyway, we, we are time sensitive today, so we will wrap up the show with this. And if you feel like you've been, you know, let down by the amount of time we've dedicated to this show, we'll give you a full refund. Link, link in bio, refund below.

[00:49:11] Stephen Fenech: You can also listen to EFTM, you can listen to Tech Guide, you listen to the new show, EV Show. So, you know, plenty to keep you occupied.

[00:49:18] Trevor Long: We're not really letting you down anyway. That That being said, we may make it the same amount of time.

[00:49:23] Stephen Fenech: And sorry, you never mentioned, we did also have a Sunday release this week. Oh yeah, how was it? Two blokes talking Amazon. Yeah. Did you watch it?

[00:49:30] Trevor Long: Yeah, I did. What did you think?

[00:49:32] Stephen Fenech: I thought it was really good. Yeah, happy.

[00:49:33] Trevor Long: Mate, what's remarkable— B-roll and everything. I should have not— I just used it in the stings. I thought that was a good place to put it. And at the very end with the water wipes, I should somehow publish this, but you could not— Jackson, where Jackson was sitting, he could not hear us. Because the audio from the cameras was just—

[00:49:52] Stephen Fenech: yeah, it was crazy. Yeah. Well, could we have got him a mic from— or headphones from the RODECaster back?

[00:50:00] Trevor Long: Okay. If we'd have originally planned to have him there, I would have probably said that.

[00:50:04] Stephen Fenech: Last week we released a show every day of the week. We had 7 days of new shows.

[00:50:08] Trevor Long: We did not rest on the Lord's day.

[00:50:09] Stephen Fenech: No resting. That's right. So we've been going straight because that's Sunday with then normal Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. We'll give you a break this week, folks.

[00:50:16] Trevor Long: We'll give you a break.

[00:50:17] Stephen Fenech: You'll get Sunday off this week.

[00:50:18] Trevor Long: Yeah, yeah. All right, so take it easy, you'll get a day off.

[00:50:20] Stephen Fenech: That's up on YouTube if you want to check it out. Yeah, best to watch it rather than just listen to it, there's a lot to see.

[00:50:24] Trevor Long: Yeah, I thought it was, I thought it was a really, really fun show.

[00:50:27] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, yeah, I think you should do that more often.

[00:50:29] Trevor Long: I, well, we've got ideas. Yeah, put it that way. Um, we're in, we're in talks. Uh, so finally, this unbelievable, unbelievable— I've got flights to London booked and Samsung's just announced a bloody event there. That's perfect.

[00:50:44] Stephen Fenech: What a coincidence. That's perfect timing. So is it official? It is.

[00:50:49] Trevor Long: Are we allowed to say Samsung Galaxy Unpacked is official? Yes, it is happening, uh, very, very late at night Sydney time on Wednesday the 22nd, 11 PM. Um, so you'll see me on the Today Show Thursday morning, uh, 23rd of July.

[00:51:04] Stephen Fenech: Mind if you get up in the middle of the night to do lunchtime Channel 10 News as well?

[00:51:08] Trevor Long: So we, we now have an Unpacked event. It's a very I'll tell you why this is strange. I'll be honest with you. I texted someone—

[00:51:14] Stephen Fenech: it's less than 2 weeks away.

[00:51:15] Trevor Long: I texted someone at Samsung last night. I said, listen, you're starting to take the mickey. When are we announcing this thing? Because honestly, it's like I've got to plan things. We got to tell our audience what's happening, you know? So I don't know. It's just they normally announce them really, really early. And I was worried that the event was going to be in bloody August and, you know, screw all our travel plans or something, right? Oh, nervous? Anyway, a little. There's a lot going on. So Galaxy Unpacked at this time of year means foldables, right? And I think it's really interesting because it was last week or the week before, it was probably 2 weeks ago, we did glasses. Yes. And you declared it the year of the smart glasses. I think it's a challenge between the year of the foldable and the year of the smart glasses.

[00:51:55] Stephen Fenech: On Tech Guide this week I did mention, uh, because I'm using the Honor, uh, the Magic V6 right now. Yep. And, uh, Motorola's also made an announcement. Samsung has announced the— this Galaxy Unpacked, we're assuming is going to be all about— turn it upside down— all about their foldables.

[00:52:13] Trevor Long: Look at this, folks. Let's go top down. Look at these for foldables. This is the—

[00:52:19] Stephen Fenech: what's this called? Honor Magic V6.

[00:52:21] Trevor Long: This is the new Motorola Razr Fold. This is a new Motorola Razr 70 Ultra, right?

[00:52:28] Stephen Fenech: So the flip phone. So the Razr still is the Razr. Okay, this is the Razr Fold. Yes. Why don't they just imagine a different name? Name. They're all called Fold.

[00:52:36] Trevor Long: Yeah, that's true. It's pretty, pretty lame. Although that is—

[00:52:39] Stephen Fenech: that's called the Magic V6. Oh, true.

[00:52:41] Trevor Long: Yeah, the, the Motorola device is super slim.

[00:52:44] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, so is this one.

[00:52:45] Trevor Long: It's bloody amazing how well— how quickly all these companies seem to be able to churn out— I'll read you a thin device, put them closer— at the same time that Samsung's very closely due to having one themselves. Check it out. Look at that. Put your finger against it so people can see. You've got fat fingers though. So look at my little tiny, not man hands. Anyway, so if you're not watching on YouTube, you don't know what we're talking about. I get that. You have yours back. But look, so it's fascinating to me because, so Motorola's gone, this is like a $2,700 phone. This is not cheap. None of them are. I still argue Motorola does beautiful design. Like this almost fabric-like back to this thing is unbelievable.

[00:53:24] Stephen Fenech: So that's the Moto. Can I have a look at that? I'm getting that. I haven't got it yet. You obviously got it for me. Funny that.

[00:53:29] Trevor Long: Okay, okay, so the screen, front screen, similar to the other 6.6 on the front, 8.1 on the inside. Not a bad size, uh, inside.

[00:53:39] Stephen Fenech: Oh yeah, pretty similar to— let's, let's open them up.

[00:53:41] Trevor Long: And very, uh, visible crease, um, on the, on the Moto. Let me go top down again, are we? Um, oh, that just showed my email address, but who cares. Uh, moving on. Uh, so if I— if you put in the light, you can— oh, where is it? There it is. You can see the fold on this one pretty well.

[00:53:58] Stephen Fenech: Yours is much more reflective than mine. Look at this, the honor.

[00:54:00] Trevor Long: Yeah, twist it into the bloody light, mate. There you go, there it is. So you can see it. And I don't— let's put them down. I don't think they're anything like the Oppo in terms of, um, fold feel.

[00:54:10] Stephen Fenech: Actually, look at yours, it's just slightly taller. Slightly. Motorola's slightly taller.

[00:54:14] Trevor Long: Ever so slightly. Is it slightly wider?

[00:54:16] Stephen Fenech: Give me a look at the width.

[00:54:17] Trevor Long: All right, there we go.

[00:54:19] Stephen Fenech: I know the, the Magic is slightly wider.

[00:54:21] Trevor Long: I think they're the same. So you got a bit of—

[00:54:23] Stephen Fenech: you'll be taller. How about closed? Is it taller? I think the Moto's a bit taller.

[00:54:29] Trevor Long: No, they're about the same, same thickness. Oh, you mean that's taller, mate? Look, yeah, well, it has to be. If it's closed taller and open taller, it's gonna be the same. Yeah. But yeah, it's kind of fascinating because these are not cheap phones. So we've now got— we spoke months ago about, or weeks ago, about the Oppo, Motorola, Honor. Yeah.

[00:54:48] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, Samsung, Google Pixel phone. Yeah, but I haven't released one this year. Well, not yet. They're not due to do that until October normally. I just got an email today about a briefing.

[00:54:57] Trevor Long: Okay. Yeah, okay, that might be— hey, that's good, excellent. I don't know, uh, let's give it up. And then Apple, that's like 6 different foldable phones.

[00:55:07] Stephen Fenech: That's crazy. Well, you know what, the war is on, and I think companies like Motorola on a They're sort of— they're getting in ahead of Apple. Yeah, uh, they're also getting in ahead of Samsung. Samsung, we're assuming— okay, if, if we assume that this Unpacked is this time of year, is normally the foldable launch. No. Yeah, are we safe to assume it's the Fold— next Fold, which if you can count, we're up to what, 8? A Fold 8.

[00:55:33] Trevor Long: So Flip 8. I don't think they'll do that entry-level Flip. Remember last year there was like a Flip Lite? Yes, yes.

[00:55:39] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, well, you know, and the rumors are— we're allowed to talk about rumors, okay? The rumors are that Samsung has a different type of folding.

[00:55:47] Trevor Long: Yeah, remember when we had the dummy? We brought it on, on the show, a little shorter to go up against—

[00:55:52] Stephen Fenech: exactly. They did the same thing with the iPhone Air, remember? They released the S25 Edge and then Apple released the Air. This year they released the wide, or if that's what it's called, the passport-shaped foldable for— to go against Apple. Now Looking at it a bit longer, and the longer I use this device here, I think having that passport size, that slightly wider front screen, is smart because you can do everything on that wider screen. Here you can do 90%, 80% of things on the front screen, and then you've got to open it up. So I reckon that's really clever of them to give— well, Samsung, you've got the option, right? You've got the inside screen. If you've got a bigger inside screen, you'll go go, I'm assuming, the Fold 8, whatever it's going to be called. But if you want the bigger front screen and the reasonable size inside, then you'll go the Passport shape or the wide or whatever it is. And again, a straight shot across the bow for Apple, who's like, uh, a month and a half, 6 weeks later, are going to be stamping, fronting up an announcement which is all but confirmed that they will have a foldable, and they're going to be showing off a similar shape product.

[00:57:01] Trevor Long: It's pretty much the entire market going, we need to be ready in case Apple really does lift this rising tide.

[00:57:06] Stephen Fenech: I think that it's going to have— we've said it many times, I said it on Tech Guide this week, I said if Apple getting in the game is going to help everyone, everyone's going to say that's amazing and validate— it's going to validate what the— what Samsung's been doing for 10 years.

[00:57:22] Trevor Long: It's Motorola, isn't it?

[00:57:23] Stephen Fenech: You were right, you know, they were in a few years ago Obviously Samsung were the first, and how many others have we seen, other brands as well? You know, uh, you mentioned Oppo. Hey, Oppo got their, their device as well. So everyone's, everyone's putting their hand up, and now that Apple's going to get involved, it's going to really make it even more mainstream. The only thing against it, and I've heard a couple of things here, the only thing against it, it's going to be so expensive. Yeah. The Apple will be— it'll be maybe, I reckon, close to a $4,000 phone. Yeah, it's going to be very expensive. Yes. And we all know, uh, for earlier on, Tim Cook reported that— well, he basically prepared us for higher prices on the phones, which we discussed, which we have some other devices. Yeah. And so I think though, it's still going to be a draw, so much attention that Apple— and, and I, I said this in Tech Guide, I said, here's what they're going to to. They're going to say, we, we did it, which— it's the foldable done right. You look at it, it'll have it, it'll have no crease at all. You would not be able to detect a crease. And they're going to say, well, this is a real foldable phone. If you can't see the crease, it's not a foldable. So they are— they're going to have just like— remember when 5G— they may—

[00:58:40] Trevor Long: 5G is here. They may— how about this— they may not use the word fold. They might— we know in the name we think it's going to be the Ultra, but they may use the word transform. What's the thesaurus for fold, you know what I mean?

[00:58:52] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, yeah, like transform, um, they'll come up with, I don't know, some term, but I think other brands have to get looking at the thesaurus like you said and think of another name.

[00:59:03] Trevor Long: Open, close, transform. I bet they avoid the term fold in the keynote.

[00:59:08] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, they'll say open and close, they won't say fold.

[00:59:10] Trevor Long: Yeah, you'll open the, the iPhone Ultra, you'll close the iPhone or you'll transform it from being a small screen into a large screen.

[00:59:17] Stephen Fenech: We should play, uh, Apple launch bingo until every time they say fold, uh, you take a drink. I don't think you'll have one drink.

[00:59:23] Trevor Long: No, I think you'll be sober.

[00:59:24] Stephen Fenech: You'll be fine. Yeah, yeah. Soon.

[00:59:28] Trevor Long: That's a really interesting one. Yeah, yeah.

[00:59:29] Stephen Fenech: Oh yeah, look, that's called the Fold. The— what's the other one? The Oppo is called the Fold. Is the N3 Fold? Is it N3 Fold?

[00:59:37] Trevor Long: It's called Fold. Yeah, it's got that on there.

[00:59:38] Stephen Fenech: Samsung is called Fold. Pixel Fold.

[00:59:42] Trevor Long: Yeah, it's Fold.

[00:59:44] Stephen Fenech: So if you see what I mean, if I was another brand, I'd say, listen, can we think of something different to Fold? Come on. Yeah, think, what can we call this thing? Yeah, but now I think Ultra is the name.

[00:59:56] Trevor Long: I'm just saying, in terms of the announcement.

[00:59:57] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, mate, you weren't here. We should, we should count it and just should remember this conversation. And after the Apple event we should recall if that word was even uttered.

[01:00:09] Trevor Long: You heard it here first, folks. That, that's—

[01:00:11] Stephen Fenech: I don't think they will. I think—

[01:00:13] Trevor Long: all right, so we got 2 weeks and then Samsung's big event. You'll read all about it at techguide.com.au and aftm.com. We'll cover it. We'll do an episode of the podcast in London from the event. Um, we should be able to do it the day of because it's like a 2 PM event. So easy, should be able to do a podcast that afternoon. Lovely. You'll go to dinner, I'll go to Today Show, and we'll— happy days.

[01:00:34] Stephen Fenech: Okay, and now I've got to probably then wake up at 4 in the morning to do Channel 10.

[01:00:38] Trevor Long: Good luck with that. Yeah, um, all right, mate, uh, we gave him a solid hour. You didn't get your bonus 5 minutes this week.

[01:00:45] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that's about it. We'll make it up next week.

[01:00:48] Trevor Long: I won't. And I, uh, yeah, I'll try and remember. We'll pump this one out for Wednesday.

[01:00:52] Stephen Fenech: We'll make it up on one of the EV podcasts. And for all the people, there's a decent-sized EV podcast coming up.

[01:00:56] Trevor Long: Yeah, there is. Listen, just a message to everyone who was just hanging out for EFTM today. It's unbelievable. In this feed, it'll be available tomorrow. Great show. You'll hear from Margaret, who wrote a bunch of songs for the elderly in a nursing home, and I bought her 50 speakers so she could play them to them.

[01:01:12] Stephen Fenech: Have you got some operators for all the phone complaints you're going to get?

[01:01:15] Trevor Long: What? Oh, you know, we've manned the phones. We've upped the call. We've doubled the call center.

[01:01:21] Stephen Fenech: Hello, can I help you? Where are the phone? Where's your phone?

[01:01:24] Trevor Long: Your phone back, Given what I say to people who ring me from other countries, it'd be inappropriate of me to have calls. I literally said to one the other day, I said, listen, if you're prepared, if I could understand what you're saying, I'd take your call, but F off. Be a beep, beep, beep. I'm ringing about your energy plan. I went, do you know my current energy provider? And she goes, no. I said, well, don't ever call me again. See you later. See you later. But I don't even get that far.

[01:01:49] Stephen Fenech: I just hang up on them. I don't even say, sorry, I'm not interested. I just hang up on them.

[01:01:52] Trevor Long: Hang up. Is that rude? I think what I do is ruder.

[01:01:57] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. Okay. I just say— I don't even say a word. I'll go, what's ringing about from about your energy? And I go, boop boop.

[01:02:03] Trevor Long: I don't know why I said—

[01:02:04] Stephen Fenech: and I asked him, it's like a barrel phone. I asked him, I said, you know what the sound of a truck reversing sounds like? They go, no. And I hang up and it goes beep beep.

[01:02:11] Trevor Long: It's not bad for you. That's not bad for you. Yeah, you should use that one, mate. Yeah, but it doesn't happen anymore, does it? Does it actually get beep beep beep?

[01:02:19] Stephen Fenech: I don't think it does. Maybe Maybe not. Maybe not.

[01:02:22] Trevor Long: All right, see you next week, buddy. Bye-bye. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Stephen Fenech.