So last night I went to see Robbie Williams for his First Sydney Concert this tour at Aussie Stadium in Moore Park. Work had been given a number of tickets as two of our channels, [V] and MAX were sponsors.

I have to admit the only album of Robbie's I own is the Royal Albert Hall concert when he did all the swing songs. I knew it wouldn't be like that, but I didn't know any of his other songs well enough to even be able to name them. I'll admit it - I had fun.

We were in 'Oval A' which is the standing section directly around the stage. We managed to get fairly close, off to one side - we didn't want to be in the teen crush that would happen directly in front of the stage. As it turned out we had quite a good view, and were right near one of the big screens.

The set was amazing with hundreds of small screens set up as a video wall in a semi-circle behind him. At one stage he had climbed on top of the set and came down in a lift-type contraption - all very impressive. The other thing I loved was that it wasn't unbearably loud - the speaker set-up was very well done.

I unfortunately didn't take my camera with me, but I did get some shots on my phone which I have uploaded here.

In a long-overdue move that will finally allow American mobile users to join the rest of us in the 21st Century, the Copyright Office of the US Congress is finally to allow cellphone subscribers to unlock their handsets, thus at last letting them drive the equivalent of a squadron of virtual tanks through the walled gardens that have for so long kept them within the bounds of existence and service unilaterally defined by a single network provider.

US mobile operators, existing in a very different world from most other GSM countries, have been able to keep subscribers captive by dubious reliance on provisions contained in the US 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), a piece of legislation designed, drafted and enacted with very different purposes in mind.

In essence, the DMCA made it illegal to work around or otherwise circumvent any high-tech security that is in place to protect copyrighted works, and therefore, one would have thought, highly unlikely to be applicable to mobile phone services. However, US operators have thus far successfully prevented the mass unlocking of mobile handsets by invoking fear of possible prosecution under the DMCA, so keeping their subscribers hobbled and corralled.

So, the DMCA is now undergoing its third Congressional scrutiny and the administration has moved to make explicit that the unlocking of handsets is legally permissible.

In a filing the Congress writes, "Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network is lawful and permissible.”

US mobile carriers are fuming at the decision, but, like their cousins in Europe and the Far East, can do nothing to change it.

For supposedly free-booting capitalist enterprises operating in what is alleged to the world’s freest and most liberal economy, US cellphone companies have behaved in an overt and outrageously protectionist style from the first day that mobile telephony became a mass market reality. Subscribers are tied to a service provider in long contracts that provide penalties for those that might want to take their custom elsewhere or challenge the restrictive status quo.

Now though, things are about to change and the carriers are going to have to adapt to the new commercial reality, and treat their customers considerably better or face the inevitable consequences of even more, and even more rapid, churn.

-- TelecomTV