While Optus slowly continues to roll out its 4G network, and Vodafone continues to promise its 4G network will launch soon, Telstra has zoomed ahead of rivals in getting customers onto its next-generation network.

In a presentation today at the Macquarie Australia Equities Conference, Telstra’s Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Mark Hall, confirmed that the company now has more than 2.1 million customers on its 4G network, up from 1.5 million devices in February this year.

Telstra’s 4G network is expected to cover nearly 66% of Australia’s population by the end of the financial year, with the company investing more than $1.2 billion to continue expanding the network.

“We are broadening the scope of our 4G network by adding a second wireless frequency, 900MHz spectrum, to better cater for increasing mobile use in regional areas,” Hall said in his speech today (view in full on the ASX), before mentioning that the carrier is trialling LTE-advanced technology that uses two spectrum bands to deliver data faster.

As part of the expansion, the previously one-person team will grow to three, with Rick Gleave to become Business Development Director for Australia and New Zealand and Hazel Savage joining as Community Manager for the region.

They will join Jane Huxley, who was previously the sole Pandora Australia employee as Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand. Huxley will remain in this position.

“The last six months have been an amazing time of growth, challenges and most exciting of all, positive feedback from listeners,” Huxley said in a statement today.

“The Australian and New Zealand market has taken to Pandora with a passion, which has created the need to expand the team quickly.”

Pandora is one of the more recent music streaming services to enter the Australian market, following an influx of previously US-only services launching Down Under including Spotify, Rdio and MOG.

It was available in Australia prior to 2007, but due to licensing issues was forced to become US-only until earlier this year.

Pandora differentiates itself from other music streaming services in that instead of allowing users to choose individual songs to listen to, it streams what is essentially a tailor-made radio station – based on your likes, favourite genres and artists – of songs the service thinks you’d like to listen to.

On Saturday morning Australian time, LivingSocial – one of the leading daily deals sites in Australia, and second behind leader Groupon worldwide – confirmed it had fallen victim to a cyber-attack that saw hackers gain access to some customer data.

Information accessed by the attacker includes customer names, email addresses, date of birth for some users, and encrypted passwords. Financial and credit card information was in a separate database and remains untouched, the company said.

In an interview this afternoon, LivingSocial Australia’s Executive General Manager Adam Rigby confirmed Australians were amongst those caught up in the drama, which has seen the US-based company force all of its user to reset their passwords.

While it’s too early to say whether any Australian customer information was obtained in the breach, the company has taken immediate steps to ensure that no further damage is done. These steps include resetting all customer passwords worldwide – Australia included – and emailing all customers with LivingSocial accounts advising them of the attack.

In particular, LivingSocial Australia has taken immediate action in advising not only local customers, but also its merchant partners and charity partners to make them aware of the problem. Rigby said the company is trying to be “incredibly transparent” with its customers about the attack, however refused to go into the specifics of the attack while the investigation into the attack is ongoing.

Rigby did confirm that LivingSocial Australia has voluntarily advised the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and the Association for data-driven marketing and advertising (ADMA) of the attack. As the Australian LivingSocial office manages the New Zealand edition of the site, it has also contacted the New Zealand Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

News of the attack comes as the Australian Information Commissioner today released a new guide about taking ‘Reasonable steps’ to protect personal information. Celebrating Privacy Awareness Week, Australian Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim called on organisations to enhance information security procedures as more and more data is stored online.

“Information security is clearly a significant privacy issue and has emerged as a major challenge for us all,” Pilgrim said in a statement today.

“With the steady increase in the collection of personal information in the online environment and the reliance on electronic and online records, businesses and government agencies cannot ignore the need to take steps to protect the personal information of their customers or clients.”

In a lengthy post on his Facebook page, United States ambassador Jeffrey Bleich urged Australians to stop illegally downloading episodes of television shows – in particular those from the series Game of Thrones – following a report earlier this month by TorrentFreak that suggested Australians had one of the highest piracy rates for the show in the world.

“As the Ambassador here in Australia, it was especially troubling to find out that Australian fans were some of the worst offenders with among the highest piracy rates of Game of Thrones in the world,” he said in a post titled “Stopping the Game of Clones.”

“While some people here used to claim that they used pirate sites only because of a delay in getting new episodes here, the show is now available from legitimate sources within hours of its broadcast in the United States.”

Game of Thrones is now available in Australia just hours after it airs on iTunes, and Pay TV provider Foxtel also airs the show soon after, with the episodes available in its FOXTEL GO tablet app as well.

Bleich’s post – which came as the 17th annual UN World Book and Copyright Day was celebrated – highlighted the important role that copyright industries play, accounting for up to 8% of Australia’s workforce.

However, a number of commenters haven’t taken kindly to Bleich’s message, with one saying “I can assure you, Mr Bleich – and I’m speaking from personal experience here – the main concern of David Benioff and D B Weiss, and the host of wonderful actors and crew that make Game of Thrones, is for their show to be seen.”

“How about US companies stop ripping off Australians by charging us twice as much as they do everyone else?” another user added.

In a post on the company’s corporate blog, iiNet revealed it will soon join the rush of Australian carriers moving towards next generation, high speed 4G networks by offering its own 4G-capable plans.

“We will soon offer applicable 4G plans – so stay tuned for more details,” iiNet Communications Officer, Natalie Marinho, said.

iiNet doesn’t own a mobile network of its own, rather it resells services on Optus’ 3G and 4G network across the country. To date, the company has offered 3G mobile services, and a range of 4G mobile broadband-only plans.

Today’s comments come as the company announced its first Windows Phone device for sale, the Samsung ATIV S. First revealed by Samsung last year, it features a 1.5GHz Dual Core processor, a Super AMOLED display, 1GB of RAM and coming in 16 or 32GB storage variations, the device is the first to be sold by iiNet that doesn’t run Google’s Android platform.

Instead, the ATIV S runs Microsoft’s burgeoning Windows Phone platform – a rival to both Android and iOS that features a radically different user experience and design. iiNet are offering the device for $25 per month with a voice plan or $600 when purchased outright.

And iiNet has also added a new Samsung Android device to its range, offering customers the Samsung Galaxy Note II that was released late last year. Boasting a 5.5″ HD display, 1.6GHz Quad Core CPU, 533MHz GPU, 2GB of RAM and an 8MP camera, the device runs the latest version of Android – Jellybean 4.1.

It is available for $33 per month over a 24 month contract, or $792 outright.

Image Credit: Samsung

Keen Australian developers for Apple’s iOS and Mac OS platforms will need to be up early tomorrow morning, with tickets to the event to go on sale at 3am AEST Friday morning.

To purchase a ticket, you must be a registered iOS Developer Program, iOS Developer Enterprise Program, or the Mac Developer Program as of the announcement of WWDC (5:30 a.m. PDT, April 24, 2013).

If previous WWDC events are any indication, WWDC 2013 will most likely sell out within hours, with last years ticket supply exhausted in less than two hours.

Those attending the event will be able to partake in over 100 technical sessions presented by over 1,000 Apple engineers, participate in hands-on labs about how to integrate new technologies into apps, as well as attend the popular Apple Design Awards in which apps that have pushed the boundaries over the past year are recognised.

As usual, Apple is remaining coy about what exactly will be announced at the event, other than confirming new versions of its iOS and OS X platforms will be announced.

“We’re excited to show them [conference attendees] the latest advances in software technologies and developer tools to help them create innovative new apps,” Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing said in a statement today.

“We can’t wait to get new versions of iOS and OS X into their hands at WWDC.”

Last year, iOS 6, retina MacBooks, and other major software enhancements were announced at WWDC. This year, it’s expected more software-focused announcements will be made.

According to a statement issued by police, the alleged hacker - a 24-year-old Point Clare whom iTech Report has chosen not to name – had the opportunity to access and deface the site thanks to his placement ”in a position of trust within the company, with access to sensitive information from clients including government agencies.”

The Sydney Morning Herald, which has more on the alleged incident, says the site the man hacked was not a federal government website.

He has now been released on bail pending a court appearance at Woy Woy Local Court on May 15, but has been charged with two counts of unauthorised modification of data to cause impairment, and one count of unauthorised access to, or modification of, restricted data.

The maximum penalty for the offences are ten and two years respectively.

The man claimed to be a part of the ‘Lulzsec’ group, which promotes itself as a group that “taunts” organisations around the world for “lulz” and fame, through activities such as hacking and other online attacks.

However, Manager Cyber Crime Operations Commander, Glen McEwen, warned Australians considering joining such a movement should think seriously before engaging in any illegal activities.

“Those thinking of engaging in such activities should be warned that hacking, creating or propagating malicious viruses or participating in Distributed Denial of Service attacks are not harmless fun,” McEwen said.

“Criminal acts such as this can result in serious long-term consequences for individuals, such as criminal convictions or imprisonment.”

In a post on the company blog today, the company confirmed Australia would be one of 19 additional markets to receive the device before the end of May following high customer demand.

“We know it took us a while to get back to you, but we hear you, and are excited to be able to provide an update on the countries where Surface RT and Surface Pro will be launching in May and June,” Brian Hall, General Manager of Microsoft Surface posted today.

“Additional details on launch events, retail availability, and pricing will be provided in future posts to this blog and via twitter at @Surface ahead of actual launch dates.”

Microsoft’s Surface Pro follows the Surface RT, and unlike the RT offers a full desktop version of Windows 8. Sporting 128GB of storage and an Intel Core i5 processor, the Pro runs a 64-bit version of Windows 8 and can have all traditional Windows software installed.

The company stopped short of apologising for the delayed response after the Pro launched earlier this year in the United States, saying “we value every Surface customer. We’re passionate about the products we’ve built, and we appreciate your passion for getting Surface in your market.”

“Please understand that before making these announcements we make sure that we have the volume of devices in place and alignment with our retail partners to do each launch well. We value every Surface customer.”

Furthering on the success of its NOW Music streaming service that launched last year, JB Hi-Fi appears to have quietly launched NOW Books earlier today, as first spotted by local Android blog Ausdroid.

Sporting a similar design to that of its music counterpart, NOW Books is available online and through mobile apps for both iOS and Android. According to ChannelNews, at launch over 250,000 titles are available on the platform with “thousands” more added each day.

Pricing on NOW Books appears to be similar to that of rivals such as Google Play and Apple’s iBookstore, although at a quick glance in some cases appears to be slightly more expensive. For instance, on NOW Books Jodi Picoult’s “The Storyteller” costs $19.49, but on Google Play costs $15.80 and on Apple’s iBookstore costs $16.99.

JB Hi-Fi hinted at the move in its February financial results statement, saying at the time that “NOW Music continues to grow steadily. The NOW platform will enable the company to expand further into additional digital content categories.”

In a post on the Telstra Exchange blog on Saturday, Director of Mobile Broadband, Anthea Roberts, confirmed that Telstra will indeed be launching new mobile data plans within months that will allow users to share data allowances amongst multiple devices.

“New plans we will be launching in the coming months, which will let you share your data across a number of mobile devices (such as your smartphone, tablet or Mobile WiFi),” Roberts said.

“We believe these plans will be perfect for people who want to streamline and make the most of the data they pay for, without complication.”

No further information was provided within the post on what Telstra’s offering will entail, nor was pricing information revealed.

However, the data plans will likely mirror those already available overseas in places such as America, where the likes of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile both presently offer plans that allow users to share data allowances across multiple devices.

Presently in Australia, Vodafone offers business customers the ability to share a data allowance while Optus also offers a similar data sharing-style plan for businesses.

Telstra also launched a new range of mobile plans on Saturday – dubbed “Telstra No Lock-In Plans” – that allow users to commit to a month-by-month contract when they bring their own devices. Available from next Tuesday, 23rd April, the prices and value for money are comparative to Telstra’s long-term contract plans and will be available for both business and consumer customers.

Image credit: Telstra