Optus has expanded the availability of 4G business services to Sydney and Perth. From today, customers will be able to utilise USB mobile broadband and mobile Wi-Fi hotspots in the two cities. [ + ]

Australian company Barbador has joined the Google Cloud Platform Partner Program as a services partner. The move will allow the company to help clients develop solutions based on Google’s cloud platform. [ + ]

A new report by professional services firm Deloitte explores how conventional payments infrastructure is changing with the emergence of a new generation of payments solutions using technology to interact and transact with people. [ + ]

The number of outsourced home agents will double by 2015 thanks to innovations around security, vertical market expansion and forays beyond the traditional US market, according to analyst firm Ovum. [ + ]

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is seeking comment on a proposed access determination for the declared local bistream access service (LBAS). [ + ]

The federal government will provide $15.2 million to 36 communities across Australia to help establish local NBN training services, as part of its Digital Hubs and Digital Enterprises program. [ + ]

Australian satellite company NewSat Ltd and Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems (LMCSS) have completed the preliminary design review (PDR) of the Jabiru-1 Program, NewSat’s next-generation Ka-band satellite. [ + ]

Microsoft has acquired Yammer for US$1.2 billion, in order to gain inroads into the enterprise social networking market. The move follows a recent trend in enterprise software, with many vendors adding social elements to their products, seeking to tap into the strong consumer appetite for social networking. [ + ]

MyNetFone has announced details of its residential and business NBN broadband plans, currently available in Armidale and Kiama. [ + ]

Australia’s National Broadband Network will grow increasingly important in the years approaching 2050, according to a new report from IBIS. The report, ‘A Snapshot of Australia’s Digital future to 2050’, also predicts the demise of newspaper publishing, free-to-air TV and the term ‘employee’. [ + ]

In 2011, IT analysis firm IDC estimated the Australian Business Intelligence (BI) software market generated $324.12 million in software licensing and maintenance revenue. This has resulted in a revenue growth of 5.4% from 2010 to 2011 and is forecast to grow at 8.0% CAGR between 2011 to 2016. [ + ]

Fujitsu has announced that it has been selected to supply one of the largest and fastest supercomputers in the world to the Australian National University (ANU), to be installed within the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), provider of high-end capability computational services to the Australian research community. [ + ]

Australian enterprises have started evaluating unified communications as a service (UCaaS) as a realistic alternative to on-premises UC, but most will choose some hybrid of unified communications and collaboration (UCC) and UCaaS in a phased migration, according to Gartner. [ + ]

Networking vendor Avaya has finalised its acquisition of videoconferencing vendor Radvision, as part of a US$230 million deal announced in March this year. Radvision will operate as an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Avaya, under the Radvision brand. [ + ]

The Communications Alliance has updated two industry guidelines on quality of service for IP networks and called for public comment on the changes. Changes include the addition of a new low-loss traffic class, suited to high-quality, ‘ultralow-loss’ video services, which the alliance says will help enable delivery of a range of new video services over high-speed networks. [ + ]