BigPond today launched a Web hosting service marketed to BigPond consumers as an opportunity to create personal Web sites allowing them to publish their online digital photo files.
BigPond consumers who take advantage of the service would be charged a minimum AU$2.95 per month on top of their regular BigPond Internet account.
While the service can be employed to create Web sites with other features, BigPond is understood to rate online digital photography display as a "killer app" for consumer-based Web hosting.
BigPond executives do not believe the average consumer is ready to embrace Web hosting without some sort of hook. Managing director Justin Milne said in a statement today "Web hosting has been seen as quite 'technical' and needs some impetus to really take off in the mass market".
The launch represents the second stage of BigPond's foray into the Web hosting market, after launching in June a range of hosting plans targeting small-to-medium enterprises, starting from AU$38 per month.
Parallel to the Web hosting push, BigPond is heavily targeting the small-to-medium enterprise space, with an announcement imminent of a partnership with an as-yet unnamed company to deliver a suite of anti-intrusion software services, including anti-spam, anti-virus and firewall protection.
On the Web hosting front, BigPond claims to have just over 10 percent of the shared hosting market and plans to double its customer base by mid-2004.
According to researchers International Data Corp, small-to-medium enterprises in Australia are forecast to spend AU$8 billion on information technology systems, communications and services by 2005.
