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what only $700 / Month

(warning the prices on this webpage will shock many americans)
Telstra Bigpond Direct Pricing

You cannot pay your Telstra internet bill on the internet.

https://www.billpay.telstra.com.au/telstra/

Damn. I guess they added this facility to get around your clever loophole... if you can't pay on the internet you don't have to pay.

What are you on about?

You mean you can't pay your Telstra bill on the internet except for here, right Perry? Oh, or by using "BPay" with your online banking service, huh Mr Mason. Apart from that, totally impossible, right?

I was wondering if members of the Slashdot community know of more examples of community networks...

Telstra Research Labs did a little bit of an information session/recruitment drive at my university a few weeks ago. One of the things they said they were working on was a community network in Launceston. Sounds like the kind of thing you're talking about. There's a link to the community's page but nothing about the results of the research as yet. Not that I could see anyway.

> To name a few, the virtually only ISP in Australia under any of it's 3 major names

are you refering to this Telstra Bigpond Direct Proxy

and a bit of info about how to connect your (squid) proxy to it

and i get a 72% hit rate on the bigpond direct cache. but due to a new proxy server here my own server is only getting 8% compared to around 20% on the old one.

the direct proxy is also used by those on bigond broadband cable to avoid hitting the transperant proxies on the cable network which don't work

> To name a few, the virtually only ISP in Australia under any of it's 3 major names

are you refering to this Telstra Bigpond Direct Proxy

and a bit of info about how to connect your (squid) proxy to it

and i get a 72% hit rate on the bigpond direct cache. but due to a new proxy server here my own server is only getting 8% compared to around 20% on the old one.

the direct proxy is also used by those on bigond broadband cable to avoid hitting the transperant proxies on the cable network which don't work

I just signed up on the Freedom plan, before they have even INSTALLED it they add this insulting restriction on monthly bandwidth. In my opinion Telstra have a long track record of over charging Australians for the internet and especially for their business internet. In fact I heard they were only using 0.5% of their network capacity a few years ago and they were still making companies and business BLEED big dollars for anything better than dialup. I reckon this is the very first time they have offered a half decent product at a reasonable price and they HAVE STUFFED THAT UP. DON'T let them get away with it. Don't mess around. Voice your opinion directly to www.telstra.com.au at their web site Telstra online complaint form choose a service area (pick one you like the sound of) and shoot them an email. If you have multiple objections then it may pay to send them a few separate emails directed to different service areas to ensure that you convey all the aspects of your objection whether it be - you feel they have used deceptive and misleading advertising - you feel that they are abusing their position as market leader - they are letting their existing ADSL customer down - their excess per meg charges are far to high - others I have sent a couple of emails to them and hope they get back to me soon. I have requested they increase or remove the limit for all users. Just doing my bit for the cause. I'll let you know how we go. thanks falsemover Viva la revolution - drive around in your BMWs and ROCK the system.

4 139.130.82.57 serial5-1-3.wel5.telstra.net
5 139.130.238.230 fddi0-0.wel-core2.perth.telstra.net
6 203.50.113.39 gigabitethernet4-0.wel-core3.perth.telstra.net
7 203.50.113.18 gigabitethernet4-0.wel-gw1.perth.telstra.net
8 203.50.126.30 pos1-0.paix1.paloalto.telstra.net
9 209.1.169.97 paix-f2-5.exodus.net

If you look at http://telstra.com.au/bigpond/direct/aboutnet.htm, you'll see that Telstra's fattest link to the US is in fact from Perth. So given that you're using Telstra, that's quite a reasonable routing. Presumably, Telstra not being part of this alliance, they're not yet using any of this fat new pipe.

And, hey, routing can be pretty f***ed up. I've sent packets from iPrimus in Perth to iinet in Perth, and had them go via Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. (For US readers, that's about 5000 miles for a 5 mile straight-line journey.)

Also, cable is pretty cheap compared to launching and running a satellite.

A map of Australia's links to the US and the rest of the word is here.

Not so, we are currently one of the most internet-connected countrys in the world.

Adsl is coming REAL soon and there are already 4 companys that have setup web pages on adsl access

Telstra ADSL

Sign up for Adsl trial here:Pilbra Mines

I'm sure there are others too, but i cant be bothered searhcing for their links.

The cable situation in Australia is interesting. Initially cable was laid by Optus to give them access to the local loop so they could totally bypass Telstra. At the moment Telstra owns the local loop and other telcos don't have access to it, so Telstra gets a slice of every call made in Australia that involves a fixed line phone.

To protect its Telephony business Telstra rolled out cable to pretty much exactly the same places Optus did.

Both Telstra and Optus laid digital cable, with the aim of providing phone, internet and pay TV services on the cable. Optus made a lot of hoopla about 20c local phone calls across their cable network, but ran into technical problems and IIRC only in recent times has voice over cable worked for them. They had some similar problems with their cable internet service, which has been in beta for over a year. Telstra have never tried to carry voice traffic on their cable network -- they don't need to because they have the local loop.

Cable in Australia is about to change with Optus@home, a partnership between Optus and @home. They will be offering a cable internet service targeted at home and small businesses, with prices more competitive than those offered by Telstra.

AAPT are introducing satellite soon, which will also add pressure to the high bandwidth internet market.

And I thought 35 cents for a public telephone local call was a rip off...

Australia has flat rate local calls. Optus charges 20c (US 12c) per call, Telstra seems not to be telling... I think it depends upon your pricing plan.

There are two major problems we face with local calls to service providers - the first is the large land mass/small population, meaning that people not living in a city often don't have local call access to an ISP and have to pay long distance rates. The other is that if phone calls drop out while the modem is connecting, thus running up a large bill (our call waiting tends to kill a connection too), then Telstra, who own the lines, and the ISP can bounce the blame back and forth between each other.

When telstra was a monopoly, it was 100% government owned.

Being government owned, it did not make profits as big as it does now.. The company often had to provide services that resulted in very low profit margins, particularly for services that were provided for the rural and outback of australia.

Low profits from the rural australia didn't matter to Telstra as much as the extra votes the government would get in favor during the next election! Usually, the extended coverage and affordable costs kept the voters happy..

Since telstra has recently started to privatize, there is growing fear that competition might actually be bad..

To compete successfully with other tel-co's, telstra would have to cut back on spending on those low profit margin services, and divert the funds to more needed paces so that they could be used to curb competition.

In this case, telstra might cut spending on the rural / outback service, in order to to decrease the cost of a local urban call, so that it would match the competition.

As for now, competition is mainly in urban areas

Luckily, telstra still remains 50% government owned, so that low profit services can still operate.. Recently 400 million dollars has been set aside for telstra to install the CDMA cell phone network. Why CDMA? I don't know.. we already have a GSM network covering over 90% of the population... I guess the farmers have been complaining again..