The new usage meter was available to BigPond users as of midnight on Friday, but a file corruption resulting in intermittent service plagued users throughout the weekend. After a total of 11 hours downtime, the service was fully reinstated by Sunday night.
According to Telstra spokesperson Stuart Gray the issue -kept repeating itself", and the vendor who was called in to rectify the problem is currently working on a -permanent fix".
Broadband users discussed the usage meter's unsuccessful unveiling on Internet forums over the weekend, with many saying it was unavailable for the most part, or very, very slow.
Gray said the corrupted file problem was compounded by a large amount of traffic going to the Web-based meter.
-Along with the permanent fix we're looking at improving the site so it's not impacted by large [traffic] loads," Gray said.
Telstra updated its usage meter in order to better enable BigPond Freedom Plan users to monitor Internet usage, following the telco giant's move to limit downloading to three-gigabytes a month in June this year.
Telstra declined to say whether users would be charged additional usage fees if they surpassed the three-gigabyte downloading limit during the usage meter's erratic service.
-Given that it was the first day of operation I doubt if people would have downloaded three gigabytes in one day," Gray said. When reminded that the service had been intermittent over the entire weekend Gray said he though it unlikely that data downloading limits could have been reached in that time.
Asked if Telstra was confident the weekend's usage meter problems were behind it, Gray reiterated that the vendor is working on a -permanent fix" and said: -We don't anticipate we'll see that spike in traffic in the future."
what a freakin crock... the email i was sent had a link which i couldnt access.. now it turns out it was broken anyway. and being a penguinista i cant even monitor my downloads anyway. more bumbling actions from the company who doesnt seem to know what theyre doing