Optus has announced it will participate in the Federal Government’s contentious Internet filtering trial.
An announcement from Senator Stephen Conroy’s department today said the telco had decided to participate in the controversial trial after previously expressing interest in signing on.
Last month, another ISP, iiNet, decided to pull out of the trial , which has drawn fire following the leak of the Government’s blacklist to Wikileaks.
Optus joins seven other ISPs in participating in the filtering - Primus Telecommunications, Highway 1, Nelson Bay Online, Netforce, OMNIconnect, TECH 2U and Webshield.
Despite iiNet’s withdrawal, the other ISPs have remained supportive of the initiative.
The Government release states that for the purposes of the pilot, Optus will filter the Australian Communications and Media Authority's (ACMA) existing blacklist of prohibited and potentially prohibited content for a selection of its customers who volunteer to participate.
Check out ARN’s slideshow on the content filtering debate here.
Have your say on the contentious issue on our forums.