Below is my opinion of what will happen in April as someone with a tech background and who has been keeping a close eye on various VPN's and their technologies etc.
Firstly the law only applies to VPN's that are hosted in Australia. Many VPN's that are hosted in other countries either have there own laws to follow or depending on jurisdiction may not have any.
Secondly the main counter point to the data retention is the fact the "govt" etc gets to see what you are doing. If you are using mobile data the carriers are already obligated to collect this data so WGL is doing nothing different. Yes, this would have caused problems for WGL because collecting metadata from compressed files is harder than uncompressed. I could go into it, but basically the easiest way to explain it is you have to un-compress and re-compress it at the server to get the meta data. Which adds significant processing power and latency to the whole process.
This last point is based on one assumption, a working VPN. No speed increase, or data savings or anything else. And assuming that, this is still a coin toss as far as I can see.
The Australian Govt, through WGL's application could be asking Apple to suspend sales of non compliant VPN services in the Australian App store. Now technically, none of these apps/VPN's are doing anything wrong as they do not have business entity's in Australia. They do not have to provide metadata to the government as they are based outside of Australian Jurisdiction. However, Apple, is providing Australian citizens a way to circumvent Australian law by allowing access to these providers in the Australian Market place.
**To be clear, Australian Gov't cant force other providers to become compliant, unless they are in Australia's Jurisdiction. **
This puts Apple in a tricky spot, as they are pro privacy but also will follow each countries law.... which way the coin lands I don't know, but, if I was in charge of getting these new laws in place, this would definitely be an angle I would be taking.
** If Apple closes the others out of the Australian Marketplace WGL will obviously be in a strong position, assuming a working app **
Of course for WGL to make money we need customers, and for customers we need a reason for them to pay. So the speed improvements and the data savings would obviously be nice as well.
Something else I would like to point out is that management have mentioned "New Features" quite a few times. The single biggest new feature I can think of that fits in with speed and data savings is an this word is not permitted in any form and suspensions may applyer. So if my hunch is right, and one of the new features is some sort of this word is not permitted in any form and suspensions may applyer, and then you get modest speed and data savings as well. I think a lot of people would pay $5 / month for that.
As i have stated before, I think management have done a pretty average job in explaining what is going on. However i think the basic principles of the app and what they are trying to do is there. Whether or not it comes to fruition I guess we will find out next week.
Expand
