NBN is (mostly) about having more bandwidth. Unfortunately the NBN cannot overcome the speed of light in a fibre. According to Wolfram Alpha, Sydney to LA is 12048km. This takes approx 56 ms (assuming amplifiers add no delay), one way. So absolute fastest would be 110 ms. However there are many more steps along the way.

Will Your Next iPhone Be Built By Robots? As explained in the summary and article, for the most part: NO.

http://www.watching-grass-grow.com/

But is that how it should be? The best comparison is Android to Windows/Linux, where we see old hardware being upgradeable, by the user, without rooting the device. There is no technical reason a one year phone cannot be upgraded to JB. But thanks to Google/device manufacturers handing so much control to carriers that does not happen. This is a situation where Apple really does lead the way.

I'm getting a "503 Retry request" error.

I currently pay $49 for 500GB of monthly data on my ADSL connection, which tops out around 11mbit. On my Telstra (Australia) phone I get around 6mbit (and better upload speeds than my ADSL connection). For the flexibility of using the data anywhere I'd be willing to pay a little over $60. But by unlimited, I presume we are talking about true unlimited data, not 'unlimited' until I pass 5GB of data: I already can do that on my phone.

The original paper was written at Eastman Kodak Research Laboratories. I am guessing we won't be seeing a follow up paper from him.