ZDNet Australia understands BigPond, Australia's largest Internet service provider, is examining a model whereby customers would be charged for their use of the products on a monthly basis, on top of the existing monthly BigPond access fee.
It is believed the move comes in response to feedback from several customers, who wanted to be able to purchase their filtering products in combination with BigPond offerings. However, the launch of the bundled offerings is understood to be several weeks off.
The move follows a more aggressive push by the telecommunications heavyweight against spammers, which it says includes the disabling of BigPond accounts involved in spamming and creation of an "internal taskforce" to protect its customer base from spam.
The carrier is also believed to be tightening management of its abuse cues to ensure customers receive a better response when filing complaints about spam.
Telstra's anti-spam initiatives gained added impetus in early March after a Usenet administrator threatened BigPond with being cut off from global newsgroup communities due to large volumes of junk e-mail being sent via BigPond news servers.
Finally, a good sound reason to be using Telstra's internet access.
You might have a bit of downtime, but at least you will have a greater sense of peace about what can be accessed.