Weekly Roundup: The iPhone arrives ... and some other stuff

Optus and Macquarie Telecom have both filed an access dispute with the ACCC over Telstra’s Unconditioned Local Loop (ULL) service. This puts the number at a total of 35 access disputes that the ACCC is currently arbitrating against Telstra.

Pioneer claims it has developed a 16-layer optical disk that can store up to 400GB of memory. Each layer has a capacity of 25GB, the same as a Blu-Ray Disc. It is expected this new technology will be utilised more for large volume data archiving, rather than consumer use.

Nasa said it will retire its entire space shuttle fleet by 2010. The fleet will make ten more flights before its retirement, mainly to the International Space Station or the Hubble orbital telescope. The early retirement will leave the US without space flight ability for about four years until a new fleet is planned to debut.

It's been iPhone mania this week, as Aussie Apple lovers anticipated over yesterday's launch and readied themselves to lay down the big bucks for the little device. They finally got a complete idea of how much that may be when Vodafone finally announced its pricing plan, although perhaps a bit prematurely. Optus announced that it would cater to the night owls and open its doors at 12am Friday, while Telstra and Vodafone chose instead to keep it at normal hours. By the time the day finally arrived, a few poor souls had waited for almost three days to get their hands on the phone, but were probably too stuffed to get any use out of it for days.

A group of Aussie university students took home the title at Microsoft's Imagine Cup competition, beating more than 200,000 other students from around the globe. The team designed a mechanism that would help farmers keep their crops alive during times of drought while still conserving water.

iphonerounduptelco/ispweekly