Austpac has been the backbone of a large number of business and government online services for nearly a quarter of a century. Throughout its history, it has supported everyone from professional punters to large corporations and Australia's national library archive.
Austpac was established by Telstra in 1982 under its former guise, Telecom Australia. The technology underpinning the network, the X.25 protocol, is an early iteration of the packet-switching concept behind the Internet, Internet Protocol or IP.
Chris Newlan, corporate communications manager, Telstra Business and Government, today confirmed that the telecommunications heavyweight was reviewing the viability of the network, but insisted that no decision on its future had been made.
That hasn't stopped the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), which has relied on Austpac for its business electronic tax lodgement service (ELS) since 1990, advising tax practitioners that Telstra will dismantle the service in the "medium term".
"Telstra have advised that they will be decommissioning Austpac in the medium term and that current users should look at alternative arrangements," wrote the ATO in a communiqué to its business users.
ATO documents indicate Austpac will be decommissioned by the end of the year. The ATO has been cooperating with a number of accounting software developers to pilot a new Internet-based electronic tax lodgement system for businesses.
The ATO said it expects that businesses will be able to lodge tax returns electronically via the Internet -- rather than the Austpac network -- from tomorrow coinciding with the release of e-tax online tax lodgement software for individuals.
If Austpac closes by the end of the year, it could have significant impact on businesses that rely on the service.
There are indications that migrating to the ATOs new ELS system could significantly increase running costs for a number of small businesses -- while delivering a small saving to most.
Tax agents will be able to access the new service via Cisco virtual private networking client software to be bundled into new versions of their accounting applications. The VPN client applications will support both broadband and dial-up networks. However Windows 95 will not support the technology.
"If the PC that you are intending to lodge from runs Windows 95, then you will have until the end of December 2003 to arrange an upgrade to a later operating system," said the ATO.
For many businesses and sole-traders this could mean spending thousands of dollars on software and hardware upgrades.
There are also several questions over the cost of using the new ELS service over the long-term.
Businesses in regional areas using dedicated Internet connections such as ADSL will be pleased they will no longer incur the costs of dialling in to the Austpac service. However it may simply give new force to existing complaints by those in areas where Internet service is still scarce or expensive.
Also, those using Internet service providers that charge for uploads also face an increased risk of exceeding their monthly bandwidth caps.
There is also some uncertainty about the cost of subscribing to the ATO's ELS service. The ATO said it will absorb the cost of running over its first year of operation. However, it is yet to reveal what it will charge for the service after June 2003.
A tax agent who contacted ZDNet Australia said he currently paid around AU$11 per month -- plus call costs -- to access Austpac.
As someone who programmed an ELS package for use over the Austpac network and set up access via Austpac for a computer bulletin board via ISDN D-Channel, it will be the end of an era when Austpac goes. This also raises questions whether EFTPOS via ISDN D-Channel X.25 is seen by Telstra as not viable. Not every business wants an internet connection brought up just to do EFTPOS transactions.