Australian telcos accuse NBN Co of delaying finalisation of the special access undertaking, while NBN Co drops $9 million on TransACT’s FTTP network. [ + ]

A US judge reckons that the country’s Justice Department has evidence showing that Apple conspired to raise e-book prices; and in local news, the federal privacy commissioner has launched an investigation into Telstra’s recent leak of some customers’ personal data. [ + ]

The plagues of natural disasters do more than devastate infrastructure, communities and local economies. In the age of the connected global economy, natural disasters have the ability to transcend much further than streets, towns and country borders to impact economies all over the world. [ + ]

Every CIO will, at some point, have to create or update a strategic plan for how technology will meet the needs of the business. This can be a daunting task. [ + ]

Cloud services adoption will accelerate the creation of smarter cities by overcoming organisational inertia and enabling more rapid propagation of innovation. Cities that remain bogged down with outdated ICT capabilities will fall behind their peers and be overlooked by globally mobile investment, businesses, events and citizens. [ + ]

The federal government has been caught quietly blocking access to websites, leading some to declare that it has attempted to sneak mandatory web filtering in on the sly. [ + ]

The Department of Broadband has warned the ACCC against interfering in NBN pricing and negotiations, while an ex-Google executive has blown the whistle on the company’s “immoral” tax avoidance. [ + ]

Virtualisation is the single biggest change to how we manage our systems for the last decade or so. As a result of virtualisation we have slashed the number of physical devices we have to manage, resulting in smaller data centres, lower power consumption, better business continuity and greater flexibility. But what about everything else? And does virtualising everything need a new set of skills? [ + ]

With the expectation, if the polls are to be believed, that we’ll have a new government installed in September, does the federal Budget mean anything to the IT industry? [ + ]

Lawyers of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom last week launched a white paper discussing America’s prosecution of Megaupload, in which they accuse the US of using “dirty tactics” and “due process abuses” in their case against the file sharing company. [ + ]

The New Zealand government has declared that software alone cannot be patented under NZ law, in a move it hopes will please local software developers. [ + ]

CeBIT StartUp 2013 is a dedicated three-day event for Australia’s vibrant and growing startup ecosystem. [ + ]

Researchers from the UK and the US claim to have found a link between reader activity on Wikipedia and subsequent falls on the stock market. [ + ]

Earlier this week at Interop in Las Vegas and to a small group of journalists in Sydney, ShoreTel announced a new product for its unified communications users. The ShoreTel Dock fuses the office phone with mobile devices. Is this a sign that UC is coming of age? [ + ]

The cloud gives unprecedented opportunities for IT to adapt to rapidly shifting business priorities. [ + ]