Aussie ISPs charge for uploads

AUSSIE ISP, OPTUS, a major rival of Telstra for both internet and telephony services, has decide to count uploads as part of a new capped, all-in-one bundle plan it is offering customers. The move represents a major shift for internet providers in Australia, and could signal the end of uncapped uploads.

Previously only Telstra has counted uploads. The vast majority of other ISPs, including Optus, have chosen not to metre uploads as they have represented a proportionally small part of most users usage.

This has changed though in recent years, with parity between uploads traffic and download traffic just about being reached. After midnight, (when many ISPs offer ‘bonus' gigabytes on certain plans) upload traffic is outstripping download traffic.

The result is that ISPs such as Optus are feeling the pinch - the extra cost of upload bandwidth is starting to bite.

Optus has not yet confirmed that the practice of counting uploads will be implemented on all its plans, but it does appear likely.

In the short term, the ISP may well lose customers, but if the uploading trend continues, it is hard to see how smaller ISPs will be able to resist the urge to follow suit.

As "Web 2.0" sites are rolled out, users are only going to continue to upload more data. The Facebooks, Youtubes and Torrent sites of this world are hungry for photos, audio, and video, and users want to satisfy that hunger. A recent report claimed that only 0.3 per cent of You Tube users actually upload videos to the site. That small percentage translates into a rather larger figure when you consider the millions who visit You Tube each month. As this report says, YouTube accounts for 10 per cent of all traffic on the internet now.

The upshot of all this is higher prices for consumers. Australia already has expensive broadband prices, and you can bet that consumers won't be happy if other Telcos follow suit. µ