Australia’s had a long time to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of technology and services, but they’re hampered by one crucial problem: the rest of the world doesn’t notice and doesn’t care. When services are launched for a (Western) tech-hungry public they’re developed for the US first and then Europe and then ‘everywhere else’. I specify ‘Western’ because the Asian market is so different and separated from our techology, it’s hard to discuss parallel timeframes when they’re using 1000Mb internet connections whilst we’re excited about 8Mb. In the UK and Europe we moan about the gap between service provisions for the US market and here. Australia has so much more to gripe about: their Apple iTunes Au store isn’t even running yet.

And so we turn to New Zealand, behind even Australia for technological progress. It’s ironic that they’re ignored because, as a far-flung nation who are separated by mountains and valleys and islands, the population have had to develop and rely on communications technology much more than we do in Europe, and yet they don’t get the services they deserve because their population is so tiny.
Peter Griffin at the New Zealand Herald is annoyed: link

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