Telstra has soft-launched a roaming dial-up service for its BigPond broadband customers as the carrier gears up for a major revamp next week of its high-speed Internet offerings.

Telstra officials said the carrier was expecting several thousand of its customers to take up the offering, roughly 80 percent from the small-to-medium enterprise sector and the remainder being individual consumers.

The service, billed by Telstra as "designed for the national and international roaming needs of its cable and ADSL users," is charged at AU$4.95 per hour for national roaming over the BigPond dial-up network and AU$8.00 per hour for international roaming -- plus dial-up charges for both.

Small-to-medium enterprises may be able to use the service as an unofficial contingency in the event of a BigPond broadband outage, should they be unwilling to pay for a full dial-up service on top of their broadband offering.

However, Telstra is not marketing the service as a contingency, preferring to focus on its roaming benefits. Terms and conditions of the dial-up for broadband service stipulates that the plan "does not provide, and is not designed for, continuous connection.

"A 24-hour hard limit on continuous access time may be applied," Telstra warns.

Telstra's broadband chief, Justin Milne, is understood to have told staff in an internal e-mail that the dial-up project is the first of many designed to integrate BigPond dial-up more closely with its broadband offerings.

"The ultimate beneficiary is the customer as we become increasingly easy to do business with, irrespective of technology," Milne told Telstra staff.

Telstra is also gearing up to launch in the next few weeks, a 128 kbps symmetric ISDN service designed to extend high-speed Internet access across its fringe metropolitan and regional user base. A wholesale offering is expected to accompany the retail product.

Meanwhile, the carrier is preparing for a BigPond New Look announcement next Friday, which is expected to include both sports-based content services and a new awareness push designed to make broadband more "top of mind" for consumers and stimulate takeup.

A Telstra spokesperson said the carrier had recently undertaken research which found Australians still thought broadband was difficult to install or that they needed a special cable to install it in their homes.

The spokesperson said the research found many consumers were still unaware of many of the basic issues associated with broadband connection and use -- a blow to the carrier as it tries to spark demand to reach its target of one million broadband users by end-2005. The figure -- which presently sits at around 360,000 -- includes BigPond and wholesale ISP customers using Telstra's broadband networks.

Telstra has pinned much of its hopes for broadband takeup on a self-install kit the carrier says allows consumers to install broadband quickly. "Many consumers do not realise they can set up broadband with an existing phone line in about 12 minutes," the spokesperson said.

She added "when it comes to costs, many consumers are not aware that broadband pricing is competitive when all dial-up Internet costs are taken into account, together with second-line rental costs and dial-up call costs".

The sports-based services are expected to heavily leverage the carrier's rights to the National Rugby League and Australian Football League.

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