BigPond

BigPond is an Australian Internet service provider and is a product of Telstra. BigPond is Australia's largest ISP and based in Melbourne. The BigPond brand is in the process of being discontinued.^[1]

Internet

BigPond offers 5 types of Internet access;

• Cable – BigPond is Australia's largest provider of Cable Internet access, which covers parts of Australia's main cities (Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Sydney, Adelaide and the Gold Coast). Speeds available are 'Turbo' (8 Mbit/s downstream, 128 kbit/s upstream), 'Elite' (30 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up) and 'Ultimate' (100 Mbit/s down, 2 Mbit/s up).

• ADSL – BigPond provides both ADSL and ADSL2+ services where available, with speeds ranging from 256 kbit/s down/64 kbit/s up to 20 Mbit/s down/1 Mbit/s up. The current speeds available on ADSL plans that BigPond offers are "up to" 1.5 Mbit/s down/256 kbit/s up, "up to" 8 Mbit/s down/384 kbit/s up and "up to" 20 Mbit/s down/1 Mbit/s up.

Naked DSL – A six-week trial of two kinds of naked DSL to "assess customer demand" was launched on 1 June 2010. 'Pure DSL' having the ability to receive incoming calls and make emergency calls, and 'Naked DSL' being offered without a dial tone.^[2]

• Mobile Broadband – Through Telstra's Next G network, BigPond provides the largest wireless network coverage in Australia, reaching 99% of the population.^[3] Download speeds on the 3G network range from 256 kbit/s to 3.5 Mbit/s in regional and interurban areas, and "up to" 21 Mbit/s in metropolitan and city areas. Download speeds on the 4G Network are "up to" 40Mbit/s. BigPond also provides wireless 'hot spots'.^[4]

• Satellite – Bigpond provides Satellite internet mainly for regional customers who are too far away from the exchange to get ADSL, and cannot get Cable. Satellite is delivered via 2 way Satellite with speeds ranging from 256 kbit/s down/64 kbit/s up to 800 kbit/s down/128 kbit/s up.^[5]

• Dialup – BigPond has moved customers off dialup to a broadband platform, and in 2006 its broadband customers surpassed the number of dialup customers.

Customer Service

In 2007 a survey of 14,000 people by PC Authority magazine found BigPond users rated poorly for customer service, and less than a third considered their service value for money. However, BigPond argued that the survey's structure had encouraged people to provide extreme opinions.^[6]

The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) reported 14,692 complaints against Telstra BigPond for the period 1 January 2009 – 31 March 2009.^[7] This reflected 47.5% of all complaints against all internet service providers reported to the TIO in Australia in that period. Customer Service, Complaints Handling, Faults & Provision accounted for 8,103 complaints in that period.

BigPond uses offshore call centres to provide most of their technical support. The Technical Support 133933 number connects through a VoIP line to support staff based in The Philippines, by call centre outsource companies, TeleTech & Teleperformance.^[8] Technical Support officers have limited ability to resolve issues and cannot refer any issue to a Complaint Handling Officer or Customer Advocate. If the support call relates to network issues the Technical Support team cannot take any action to resolve the problem.

In November 2009 Telstra chief executive David Thodey promised a "new Telstra" which will be much more responsive to its customers in a bid to improve the telco's corporate reputation, stating that the new mantra at Telstra would be "customer service, customer service, customer service", and announcing increases in speed and data allowances for BigPond customers.^[9]

Services

BigPond Music

BigPond operates a music download store, offering 15 million tracks encoded at either 256kbit/s or 320kbit/s in MP3 format.

In April 2012, MOG announced a partnership with Telstra to bring MOG to Australia, the first region outside of the US to have access.^[10] Telstra and MOG launched under the BigPond Music branding on 21 June 2012.^[11]

BigPond Games and GameArena

GameArena is the name of BigPond's free online games service, The service is managed by Mammoth Media and based on the east coast of Australia. Use of the file library, public servers and booking service is freely available to anyone, but provides specific advantages to Telstra customers such as preference in downloads and unmetered usage, as well as various bonuses in competitions. In order to gain access to a majority of game servers, the clientThe Arena, must be installed to connect through the firewall. This means that GameArena administrators can ensure troublemakers are consistently dealt with.^[12]

The site provides news, downloads and servers primarily for the PC, and Mac, though it has recently also branched out to include console sites. GameArena also provides an online game shop GameNow, which again sports various benefits to BigPond customers.^[13] GameArena recently went through a new shift with the merging of GameNow and Gameshop into itself. The new name is simply BigPond GameArena.^[14]

GameArena currently operates over 100 gaming servers, which are monitored by a volunteer force of administrators, known as GameOps. GameCreate is a service offered free of charge where users may book a server for a specific game for a 2 hour period of time. This server is private and can be used for either ladder training or social events.^[15]

The Pond in Second Life

Telstra BigPond owned and operated a number of virtual islands in the online game Second Life^[16] for approximately three years. BigPond closed its Second Life presence in December 2009.^[17]

References

External links

• BigPond official site
• BigPond Music

Internet service providers of Australia Economy of Australia Internet Censorship Current Adam Internet Amcom BigAir BigPond Chariot ClubTelco Connexus Internet Dreamtilt DeVoteD NBN Eftel Exetel Grapevine Highway 1 iiNet Internode M2 Group (iPrimus, Dodo Services) NBNSP Optus Pacnet SkyMesh TPG Telecom Virgin Broadband Westnet Former Connect.com.au Neighbourhood Cable Netspace OPEL Networks OzEmail Pacific Internet Pegasus Networks People Telecom Related topics Internet in Australia National Broadband Network