The AU$38 per month plan, dubbed Premium Hosting 20, requires a AU$64 set-up fee and includes 10 mailboxes, 20 MB of disk space and 500 MB of data to be transferred from the site per month. According to Telstra's Web page, if the data transferred from the site exceeds the 500 MB allowance the excess data will be charged at 13.2 cents per MB.
The higher-end plan, Premium Hosting 1000, includes 50 mailboxes, 1 GB of disk space and 2 GB of data transfer included and costs AU$315 per month, with a AU$105 set-up fee.
Telstra hopes the plans will help it grab a larger slice of the Australian Web site hosting pie, which is forecast to grow to AU$326 million by 2005.
"The majority of businesses have been slow to take up web hosting," said Justin Milne, the managing director of BigPond. "A 2002 Australian Bureau of Statistics report found that only 24 per cent of all businesses have a Web presence, while 21 per cent of small businesses were not connected to the Internet."
"Companies that are slow to take up now affordable web hosting services could be left behind in a competitive market place," said Milne. "We're appealing to Internet-enabled businesses that are ready to make the next step with an affordable web hosting presence. It's no longer big business versus small, but the quick versus the slow and e-commerce versus old technology," he said.
The hosting products will be promoted to BigPond's customer base of 1.4 million subscribers to its monthly dial-up Internet and broadband Ponderings newsletter ahead of a national advertising campaign.
