BigPond

BigPond
Product of Telstra
Industry Telecommunications / Media
Founded 1996 as Telstra Corporation
Headquarters Sydney, NSW, Australia
Key people
David Thodey
Group Managing Director
Services Internet service provider
News
Email
Online Television
Number of employees
10,500 (2007)
Parent Telstra
Website bigpond.com

BigPond is an Australian Internet service provider and a product of Telstra. BigPond is Australia's largest ISP and is based in Melbourne. The BigPond brand has been in the process of being discontinued in favor of full Telstra branding since 2013. To date, BigPond Movies is the only remaining service using BigPond branding.[1]

Internet

BigPond offers 5 types of Internet access;

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]

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 operated 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] The BigPond Music service ended in late 2014.

BigPond Games and GameArena

GameArena was a website dedicated to video gaming operating under the BigPond brand that was managed by Mammoth Media and based on the east coast of Australia. The site provided news, downloads and servers primarily for the PC, and Mac, though it later branched out to include console sites. GameArena provided an online game shop GameNow, which sported various benefits to Telstra customers.[12]

Usage of the GameArena file library, gaming servers and booking service were freely available to anyone, but provided specific advantages to Telstra customers such as preference in downloads and unmetered usage, as well as various bonuses in competitions. In 2005, GameArena went through a new shift with the merging of GameNow and Gameshop into itself. The name became simply BigPond GameArena.[13]

GameArena once operated over 100 gaming servers, which were monitored by a volunteer force of administrators, known as GameOps. GameCreate was 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 was private and could be used for either ladder training or social events.[14]

GameArena servers and its website closed on 20 October 2014.[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]

See also

References

  1. Coyne, Allie (18 May 2016). "Telstra hits another nail in BigPond coffin". IT News. Retrieved 18 October 2016.
  2. "Telstra BigPond trials naked DSL". Ben Grubb, ZDNet.com.au. 2010-06-02. Archived from the original on 4 June 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-02.
  3. "Mobile Broadband Coverage". Telstra. Archived from the original on 23 January 2010. Retrieved 19 January 2010.
  4. "Telstra Wireless Hotspots". Telstra.com.au. Archived from the original on 28 December 2009. Retrieved 2010-01-19.
  5. "Satellite plans and pricing". My.bigpond.com. Archived from the original on 28 February 2009. Retrieved 2010-01-19.
  6. Ramadge, A (7 December 2007). "Telstra's BigPond bombs out with consumers". News.com.au. Retrieved 17 March 2010.
  7. Archived 21 May 2009 at the Wayback Machine.
  8. Schneiders, Ben (10 October 2008). "Telstra jobs head to Philippines". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 17 March 2010.
  9. Korporaal, Glenda (27 November 2009). "ETS pushes Telstra issue to parliamentary backburner". The Australian. Retrieved 17 March 2010.
  10. http://exchange.telstra.com.au/2012/04/17/mog-powered-by-telstra-a-massive-deal-for-music-lovers/
  11. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 29 June 2012. Retrieved 6 February 2016.
  12. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 14 March 2008. Retrieved 2008-02-27. ITWire article on GameNow
  13. http://pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php?id=976973335 PC World GameArena article
  14. http://www.gamearena.com.au/getconnected/servers/ GameArena list of servers
  15. "Telstra confirms it is closing Game Arena". MCV Pacific. 2014-09-16. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  16. "The Pond on Second Life". My.bigpond.com. Retrieved 2011-11-23.
  17. Hearn, Louisa (2009-11-17). "BigPond pulls plug on Second Life". Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 20 January 2010. Retrieved 2010-01-19.

External links

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