Although Telstra's current usage meter, which is provided through a Web page, should help users monitor their downloading activity so as not to surpass the three-gigabyte limit imposed by the telco heavyweight earlier this year, many customers have complained of inaccuracies and the inconvenience of a Web-based meter which doesn't prevent users from going over the 3GB limit but will penalise them if they do.
"By far the biggest kick in the teeth is no hard cap, (disconnecting users when they've reached their limit)," BigPond user Peter Revill, who developed a program called BPWATCHER, told ZDNet Australia. "It would be easy to implement...but Telstra have a reason not to. Namely, they either save a couple of bucks by making people not dare use all their 3GB in fear of going over, and of course their eyes must light up at the prospect of a user going over the 3GB limit and filling their greedy wallets even more," he added.
-Myself and other BigPond customers have had to create our own way of hard capping after Telstra's complete and utter incompetence," he said, adding that it's a sad and sorry state of affairs that BigPond users have to create these programs themselves.
Whilst Telstra denied that the current usage application is a stop-gap measure which is to be replaced by a more efficient service in March 2002, spokesperson Stuart Gray admitted that Telstra is looking to upgrade the current meter to include a hard cap that disconnects users before incurring charges. Telstra steadfastly claims, however, that the usage service is accurate.
-That usage meter is accurate, it's not a stop-gap measure, it's a fully functional, very accurate meter," Gray said.
However, since the telco's crackdown on broadband downloading, customers have consistently complained that accessing so-called free sites, such as wireplay, has been classed as billable traffic.
"It certainly will be interesting to see whether Telstra actually does bill people for excess usage this month," broadband user Dan Warne said. -On the one hand if they don't, it will be a case of 'the boy who cried wolf' but on the other hand if they do, customers will be infuriated to a new financially motivated level as Telstra clearly has some serious billing problems yet to sort out."
Of the billing concerns, Gray conceded that Telstra has investigated a number of such complaints but claims to have found that customers haven't been charged for usage of wireplay but for accessing billable sites via wireplay.
-The usage meter accurately dismissed the wireplay site but registered when people went out of wireplay," Gray said.
Of the do-it-yourself usage meters, Gray said: -my understanding is that they can either underestimate or overestimate the usage that we bill for" and may not take into account the non-billable sites.Of Telstra's own usage meter he said: -ultimately it's the most accurate one".
Whilst Webmaster of broadband community Web site Whirlpool Simon Wright agreed that third party usage meters are not more reliable or more accurate, "their role is to make it more convenient to view the statistics Telstra provides," he said.
With BPWATCHER, for example, all users have to do is hang their mouse over an icon on the task bar and their usage - taken directly from Telstra's Web page - is displayed.
-The third party usage meters are proving very popular, because I think users are frightened of receiving huge bills from Telstra, especially because the usage meter is often inaccurate and Telstra has not provided a way to stop usage once the monthly limit is reached," Warne said.
More information about third-party usage meters can be found on the Whirlpool Web site.
