Friday fragments - comms news from around the web for 11 October 2013

A weekly round-up of critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 11 October 2013.

ACCC seeks NBN change. The ACCC has released a Notice to Vary, seeking changes to the Special Access Undertaking (SAU) offered by NBN Co in December 2012. The SAU is part of the framework that governs the terms, including price, under which NBN will supply services. The SAU, which runs until 2040, is supposed to ensure that prices do not increase by more than CPI -1.5% per year. The ACCC's Notice to Vary includes price reviews and limitations on NBN varying products.

Compliant telcos. ACMA reports that 224 telcos submitted code compliance statements to CommCom (Communications Compliance), a body set up to encourage industry to comply with the Telecommunications Consumer Protections Code 2012 (TCP Code). The 224 telcos cover about 95% of Australian consumers. This has been the first year of operation of the TCP. ACMA made 99 breach findings and issued directions to comply.

The chips are up for China. According to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Chinese manufacturers used more than half of the world's semiconductors in 2012. That year saw the country's semiconductor use rise by 8.7%, to reach 52% of the worldwide total. The rest of the world experienced a 3% decline. China now produces 90% of the world's PCs, more than half of the world's TVs and more than 75% of the globe's mobile phones and digital cameras.

CSIRO wins engineering award. The CSIRO has been awarded in the Innovations and Inventions category of the Engineers Australia 2013 Engineering Excellence Awards for technology developed for the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), located in Western Australia. The key new technology is a patented, wideband, low-noise, room-temperature, phased array feed analog receiver and an associated high-rate digital beam former. It was developed by CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science in conjunction with CSIRO Computational Informatics