"I didn't start Whirlpool with the intention of it being what it is today," says Melbourne-based Simon Wright, founder of Australian broadband watchdog site Whirlpool.net.au. "I don't think I ever thought about where it was going or what it was going to be at any stage."
For a guy who describes his life as a bit like an Adobe "gaussian blur", Wright has managed to make a big stir in the broadband community, with a Web site launched quite simply "because it seemed to be a good idea".
It was with this sincere nonchalance that Wright also waded into a debate which would see him promoted as a spokesperson for broadband users across Australia. Although he never purposefully mounted the podium, his site became the focus of broadband user disappointment over Telstra's Big Pond Cable, Australia's first and at the time, only broadband service.
"I was just picking up on relevant issues and allowing people to discuss them on the site," Wright said. "There were a lot of people becoming more and more angry and Telstra began to improve the offerings to dial up Internet users, and doing nothing for the broadband community."
One of Australia's early adopters of broadband, Wright launched a site in 1998 in an attempt to aggregate the services and information available to members of the small but growing community of Internet buffs.
As user numbers swelled, the site became an important information source covering everything from how to find gaming sites to the status of the Telstra service.
"At that stage Telstra didn't tell users what was happening with the connection so it was very difficult for users to find out whether there was a problem at their end, or if it was further down the line," Wright said. "Back then Whirlpool was the only place where you could go to to find out about that kind of thing."
Matters came to a head in 1999 when Wright found himself talking with the Telstra representative and head of the Big Pond Cable Richard Juliano. Not long out of school, and with limited business experience Wright was placed in the unenviable position of explaining to Telstra management why tempers were flaring in the broadband community.
"I believe he was genuinely interested in the problems end users were facing," Wright said. "He also explained a lot about Telstra's plans with the cable service."
However, the interview did little to aleviate the problems with Telstra services. Although Optus launched LanCity cable modems as early as 1996, it was not until 2000 that it broke the Telstra broadband services monopoly. Optus became the first of a raft of broadband providers leasing lines of Telstra and offering users a choice when it came to broadband access.
As Telstra's wholesale pricing policies sparked an ongoing debate regarding competition in the Industry and Wright found himself again in the eye of a storm, channelling the responses and opinions of broadband users to emerging ISPs and the general media outlets.
As the battle raged in the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission), and broadband providers multiplied Whirlpool began to change tack. Rather that focal point of complaints against Telstra Write began to accumulate data on the services offered by different ISPs.
"It is not like other sites because we are focussed specifically on what broadband users want to know, we are not so much into breaking stories, just covering relevant issues," Wright said.
Predominantly autodidactic, outside of Whirlpool Wright says he is still looking for some direction in terms of his career.
"I've thought about taking a course in something like graphic design," he says. "But I really can't find anything that will teach me what I want to learn at the moment."
"Maybe something will come up, but in the meantime I am happy to keep working with my dad and looking after Whirlpool," he said.
In its latest incarnation Whirlpool remains an important source of information regarding broadband services in Australia and a forum for chat ranging from the very political to the totally irreverent.
"Does anyone have Ziggy's house address," asked one user recently. "I'd like to pay him a visit and see which ISP he uses. I bet it ain't Telstra."
While Wright has no intention of changing the focus on the Whirlpool site, he admits he would like to see more attention paid to it by the mainstream media.
"I wouldn't want the site to become main stream at all, because people rely on the site for specific information," Wright said. "But I do want it to be read by people who have some kind of influence over these issues, just so they know what is really going on out there in the community."
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Whirlpool is one of the sites I visit at least once very week.
Great work Simon, keep it up. :-)