Speculation that Telstra would seek to recoup a higher proportion of its support costs from customers arose after a broadband community user site reported that the telecommunications heavyweight had commissioned a market research firm to ask Bigpond customers whether they would be prepared to pay a monthly surcharge for faster technical support.
Milne said that support was one of Telstra's biggest cost centres but added that Bigpond didn't have any plans to change its support service "anytime soon."
"No-one should get tense about any of this. It's all about getting feedback from customers. Something I hope to do more of," said Milne in written advice to one of the site's editors.
Milne said he had reservations about offering a premium service as it would create a sub-class of support as a consequence.
However he hinted that Telstra might create low-price, self-supported plans for technically savvy users.
Telstra is also prospecting for a specialist support services market. Milne said it would be "interesting" to know if its customers would be prepared to pay for helpdesk services unrelated to their Telstra service, such as home wireless networks.
Fine, they can go ahead and charge for "premium" service.
I'll just log the dates, times and durations of outages, and then subtract an appropriate amount from the invoice.
If they have a problem with that, I'll charge them $95/hour or part thereof to discuss the matter with me on the phone.