Telstra’s bite at Apple
IF you’re in the market for a new smartphone, prepare to be wooed.
In addition to fierce competition between Apple and Samsung this month, Telstra will today reveal a comprehensive shake-up of its phone plans, delivering more downloads, a way to “bank” unused data, and free annual Foxtel subscriptions for the first time.
The leading telco’s move follows Vodafone’s aggressive moves to win customers last month, falling customer numbers for Telstra, and is timed to catch consumers before what the company dubbed “the year’s most hotly anticipated smartphone launches”.
Telstra mobile product executive director Michael Simpson said the telco would overhaul both postpaid and prepaid mobile phone plans to capture new Apple iPhone 8 and Samsung Galaxy Note 8 buyers.
Mr Simpson said customer demands for mobile downloads had risen 50 per cent every year since 2014, and demand for streaming video jumped 40 per cent as more commuters hit the play button outside wi-fi hot spots.
Apple is expected to unveil its latest iPhones on September 13 and Samsung will launch its Galaxy Note 8 for sale in Australia on September 22. WALTER Becker, the guitarist, bassist and co-founder of the rock group Steely
Dan, which sold more than 40 million albums and produced such hits as
Reelin’ In the Years, and Rikki Don’t Lose
That Number has died. He was 67. His official website announced his death with no further details. Donald Fagen said in a statement that his Steely Dan bandmate was not only “an excellent guitarist and a great songwriter” but also “smart as a whip,” “hysterically funny” and “cynical about human nature, including his own”. Although Steely Dan had been touring recently, Becker had missed performances in Los Angeles and New York. Fagen later said Becker was recovering from a procedure.
Becker met Fagen as a student at Bard College in 1967. They played with the 1960s pop group Jay and the Americans and penned the song I Mean to Shine, performed by Barbara Streisand in 1971 before moving to California and founding the band, which they named after a sex toy in William S. Burroughs’ 1959 novel Naked Lunch.