Australia And The Price Of Data

4:16 Jul 8th, 2009 | 0 notes

Just for today I thought I’d blog about the more traditional subjects I normally write on.

I was reading an interesting article in this month’s WIRED magazine. It was talking about data and how this century has brought about great waste in data compared with last century when data was rare and precious. Think about it, last century, data wouldn’t have been used for such frivolous things as videos of a cat swinging from a fan or videos of your drunken friend at a party. Data was too expensive to waste on such puerile things. Then think about this: Youtube and other video sites are using data for exactly these things. Data has become so cheap that people use it like the air we breathe. Conserving data is something we just don’t have to think about anymore.

This then got me thinking; Australia has the complete opposite mindset. Just look at our internet services. Telstra’s (Australia’s largest telecom company) best cable broadband plan under $100 has a 25GB cap, and it costs $80 a month. To get any more data you need to move up to the $130 a month plan which only gets you 60GB. Compare this with the US and their 250GB plans and you begin to see that Australia really doesn’t understand that the true cost of data is nothing.

Additionally, have a look at Telstra’s email storage. You’ll be surprised to see that the amount of storage customers receive is 20, not gigabytes, but megabytes. In 2009, Australians are paying good money for 20MB of storage. Let’s compare this with the US again. Gmail, Live Mail and Yahoo all offer free inboxes into the gigabytes of storage, and growing.

So here Australia is in the 21st century; separated from the rest of the world not only by distance, but also technology. If Australia plans to keep up with the information explosion happening throughout the rest of the world, we better wake up and see that this isn’t the 90s anymore.

Customer Service

12:44 Apr 9th, 2009 | 0 notes

I had some trouble getting Disqus commenting working properly working on my original Tumblr theme. I was really bummed because I really wanted to keep it but couldn’t because the disqus box moved itself into the static portion of my blog and was covered up, making it unusable.

I twittered about it and within two minutes I got a reply from @giannii, the community manager at disqus, offering to help fix my problem! Within 20 minutes I was back to my original theme (the one you’re looking at now). I was so amazed that a company offering a free service was so friendly and helpful. They didn’t have to help me, but it’s clear that they value their users enough that they do help.

I instantly thought about Telstra, my ISP with whom I’ve had countless arguements. Even though my parents are paying them upwards of $150 for broadband, cable TV and a home phone, their customer service is still some of the worst I’ve ever had to use. Aside from being on hold for 2 hours with them last week, I get sent all over the world to get to a customer service rep who can’t fix the problem without sending a technician to my house. Then they have the nerve the call me asking me to fill out an ‘automated customer service survey’ over the phone! I’m giving my responses to a computer! They won’t even put people on the other end of the phone at all now!

Then there are companies like Disqus. Part of the new media circle on the internet offering a free service to whoever wants to use it. I don’t pay these guys a cent and their customer service is leaps and bounds better than any I’ve encountered with Telstra. They’re fast, helpful, friendly and want users to have the best possible experience when using their services.

The biggest contrast I found between Disqus and Telstra is that Disqus are proactively helping their customers. I didn’t request help from Disqus but they came to me offering to help anyway! This is very unexpected but a very welcome change from what I experience with Telstra. The amount of times I’ve complained about Telstra is massive and their customer service branch has never contacted me even though they have a twitter page.

The difference between Disqus and Telstra? Discus is part of the new digital world, while Telstra is from the old world. In the end, I’m never expecting the same service from Telstra as I am from new companies like Disqus.