Blag o' dkam

Telstra’s monopoly over the fixed line copper pairs which come to your house has allowed them to charge monopoly prices for what should be a cheap service. Unlike other countries which have privatised their national telco, Australia, for some reason, didn’t split the telco into retail and infrastructure. Cable aside, Telecommunications and ISP business have to pay the Telstra tax for access to the market — somewhere between $20 and $30 AUD. Well with luck, no more. Wireless ISP services have been growing steadily cheaper, faster with more quota. Mobile carrier Three has mobile internet access via their 3G network — in some cases providing 5 times the quota for the equivalent Telstra fixed line ISP. Virgin is the latest Telco to enter this market — and it looks like they’re serious about it.

Virgin’s products are a little different to other offerings. They’re offering a mobile and a home based ISP service, with regular telephone service via the home based service. The Home service is interesting for it’s novelty in the Australian market. For around $60 per month, you get a regular phone service, with a normal land line number for people to call you on, unlimited, free local, long distance and virgin mobile calls, and a 512kbps, 4GB internet service, all provided via Virgin’s ( Well, Optus’ network really ) 3G network. Calls are made via circuit switched 3G network — not VoIP. This provides what seems to be a very good value phone and internet service, avoiding Telstra’s fixed line tax.

This service appears to be the market working around Telstra’s monopoly — providing services like this via mobile technology must be more expensive than the land line cost to Telstra — but not to the other competitors in the market. Further more, fixed services like this will affect the capacity planning for mobile networks by providing them with a fixed usage + mobile usage, rather than simply mobile usage. This fixed “base load” if you like should allow higher return on the infrastructure investment.

Time to sell your Telstra shares? With luck, we’ll see more of this sort of market “work around” for Telstra’s monopoly.

…about being able to add video content so easily to a web page now days.

I know that’s a little 1.0, but it used to be very difficult. Now, you just paste in the html directly from the video clip and Bam! You’ve got yourself some sweet video.

There’s an interesting new video service called VideoJug — it’s been described as the Wikipedia of video sites. Mostly HowTo and ‘Ask the Expert’ type videos. It’s fun watching new entrants into what must be an already overcrowded market. There’s quick videos such as reading body language, making chocolate eclairs and how to be a stand up comedian. Here’s an example of an “Ask the Expert” with Stephen Fry, or Jeeves as I know him best.

VideoJug: Stephen Fry: The Internet