Residential Delivery Systems (As used by homes, small businesses and schools)

1.1 Analog telephone modems using the public switched telephone network (PSTN)

The modems are cheap to buy (a few hundred dollars or less) and the phone call costs at present are the same as a normal phone call.

To access the Internet, the `home' user needs to connect to an Internet Service Provider (ISP). ISPs don't charge much for dial-up connections, and you can get access charged on either a connect time or per MB basis. All Modems on sale within Australia should have AUSTEL approval to connect to the PSTN wiring network, and they are all based on hardware that supports the international modem standards (V34bis being the 33.6Kbit/s modem standard, there are currently two 56Kbit/s standards in use, so not all ISPs will support 56Kbit/s modems).

1.2 Digital ISDN (Basic Rate)

Telstra currently markets the Basic Rate ISDN service under the name OnRamp, older names for similar services were Microlink and Macrolink.

All OnRamp products are based on the globally accepted European ETSI standards - so they are compatible with a wide range of hardware, are generally less expensive than existing ISDN products and should be more widely available.

ISDN access is still limited to major population centres and the more modern telephone exchanges.

Telstra's On-Ramp service should spread the availability of ISDN but it doesn't have very high market penetration at present. [As an aside, within large parts of Germany, ISDN is the standard telephone connection type (as opposed to PSTN analog connection within Australia) allowing faster data rates without extra connections being installed]. It is now possible to buy a Basic Rate ISDN modem for around $500, but the connection costs and rental structures are fairly costly and complex.

Telstra's ISDN OnRamp Connection cost is around $300 with a $60-70 monthly rental fee, on top of which call charges apply. All ISDN calls are timed and charged according to the type of call, distance, time of day and day of week.

Typically there is a minimum charge, covering an initial period of time - for example, 1 minute, plus timed call charges if the call is longer than the initial period of time. Night rate and Economy rates are at a cheaper cost than Day rates.

Example ISDN call costs:

30 second local data call at 10am on a Monday morning:

Cost is 20 cents only (20 cents for any 'day' rate data call less than 3 minutes.)

2 minute STD data call(from Melb. to Sydney) on a Tuesday at 6pm:

Cost is 57 cents only. (12 cent flagfall plus 2 minutes [120 seconds] at $0.37333 per second)

Overseas Calls : ISDN can be used to make overseas calls. Data calls, requiring a clear 64 Kb channel, can use Telstra's Switched Digital service which has a timed call charge.

1.3 Cable Modem

At present the cable modem hardware is faster than ISDN, but each of the cable systems on offer (by Telstra and Optus) is a proprietary, non-standard system requiring its own hardware. The actual speed on offer by the cable system depends on the direction of the traffic (asymmetrical rates) - faster to download (up to 10Mbit/s) than upload (about 1Mbit/s). See below for some of Telstra's test download comparisons.

Unfortunately the current pricing structure for Telstra's Big Pond cable modem service is going to make it uneconomical for large (100's of Mb) multimedia data transfers.

Telstra claims "Big Pond Cable Internet will allow customers to reach the Internet at speeds up to 100 times faster than conventional analogue modems used for PSTN services. Introductory pricing is a monthly fee of $65 which includes 100 Mbytes of data transfer (that is, data received by and sent from the customer's PC). After that, customers will pay a service charge of 35 cents per Mbyte for data transfer. Customers will not be charged for the period of time they spend logged onto the service. They will also have to purchase a cable modem package which will cost $595. "

"We expect that the initial customers will be power internet users and that on average they will pay between $80 and $100 per month to use the service. When compared with other Internet services the total monthly pricing is consistent with alternative pricing packages for customers who use the Internet extensively."

Currently the Cable companies are restricting the types of traffic allowed on their networks - this may have a severe impact on the suitability of the cable network to support on-line delivery of multimedia content. Any new protocol developments would have to be given access through the firewall.

To Quote Telstra's press announcement:

"The Big Pond Cable Internet network includes a firewall between its customers and the global Internet. The firewall is designed to provide security for Big Pond Cable Internet customers and servers, while enabling broadband access between the servers and customers.

Currently, the firewall offers access to the most popular Internet applications and protocols including: web access, e-mail and news, ftp, telnet, IRC, RealAudio, and RealVideo. Telstra Multimedia is taking into account its customers needs to ensure a balance between security and access to applications."

Telstra's firewall limits protocols such as Internet Phone, at present along with ICQ - www.mirabilis.com, VDO Live - www.vdo.net and Microsoft News Server - msnews.microsoft.com as well as other news servers. Telstra's reason for this is to avoid hacking into clients workstations, which is a possibility due to security holes in Win95 amongst others.

1.4 Wireless