Further to my rant about Optus@Home and corporate marketing instincts, I
want to add that I think the service will be a Very Good Thing and will
be widely adopted (translation into the language of many marketers:
"achieve high penetration").
While I am critical of overly-narrow definitions of "consumer" and
over-emphasis of their purported "viewing" and "compelling experience"
TV-like desires and needs, I think that Milo Medin (and presumably quite
a few of his colleagues) are genuinely interested in providing good
Internet connectivity - in part because of its social benefits. Milo
has been active in Internet standards development since the early 90s,
as a quick search on his name reveals - so he is no Johnny Come Lately
to the Net.
I agree with what Milo Medin said about "consumers" wanting a flat-rate
billing arrangement, so they know what it costs per month and do not
face incremental costs for everything they do via their Internet
service.
The Optus@Home service will be superior to ordinary dial-up access to an
ISP in every respect - apart perhaps in terms of cost.
1 - The connection is permanently available. With power-saving PCs and
monitors which power off after the PC's video card goes to sleep,
it is simple to leave the machine running and so be connected to
the Net all the time.
This completely changes your usage of email, searching for things
etc. I have had a permanent fixed IP address 56k connection for
nearly three years (Telstra Internet permanent modem) and it is
***marvellous*** being always connected.
Apparently this is hard to sell to consumers who have never
experienced it - but I think it is a more important benefit than
speed.
2 - Speed - more bandwidth. This, I think, would mainly help with the
very graphics intensive web sites - which unfortunately are becoming
more common. Also, of course, for downloading large programs,
music and video files.
This is apparently the main thing which interests the residential
customers this service is intended for.
3 - No tying up a phone line, with its rental and call costs.
4 - Access to special, Optus@Home "broadband content". I remain
generally suspicious of this, since I can't imagine there is
much which would be of interest after initial perusal. However . .
Milo gave an encouraging example of advertising-supported free
"radio" stations, which you can leave running all day if you
like, but which are (perhaps) more genre-specific than whatever
is locally available via FM or AM. These typically carry
information about the artist and an easy way of buying the CD - an
excellent discovery and purchasing arrangement for music!
Other examples were short video pieces relating to news and
sports.
While the initial service will have restrictions on servers and be
unsuitable for many business applications, it should (I think) be
suitable for peer-to-peer games and video-conferencing. It will suit
the general web-browsing, IRC/ICQ etc. email, Usenet and many other
needs of a large majority of residential customers.
I think it will be pretty reliable and generally fast. The $398
installation and $60 a month is around twice the cost of a 56k modem
and twice the cost of a decent dial-up ISP (e.g..
http://www.eisa.net.au). But there is no phone line rental or phone
calls, so in reality it is not so much more expensive at all.
I think that the permanent connection nature of the service is *well*
worth $2 a day, without considering the ability to download large
quantities of material.
BTW, you don't have to use their proxy server and you can run any
browser you like - but they only do customer support for their special
versions of MS Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator.
The Acceptable Use Policy is at: http://www.optushome.com.au/aup.html
In theory, the service will be available in my area in March. I have
had the cable to my home for several years and will be getting this
service ASAP - but it won't replace my hyper-reliable and relatively low
cost ($0.19 per megabyte incoming, with minimum $20 a month and a $500
setup fee) fixed IP address Telstra permanent modem service.
- Robin
===============================================================
Robin Whittle [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.firstpr.com.au
Heidelberg Heights, Melbourne, Australia
First Principles Research and expression: Consulting and
technical writing. Music. Internet music
marketing. Telecommunications. Consumer
advocacy in telecommunications, especially
privacy. M-F relationships. Kinetic sculpture.
Real World Electronics and software for music including:
Interfaces Devil Fish mods for the TB-303, Akai sampler
memory and Csound synthesis software.
===============================================================
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