Major Australian ISP Pulls OpenOffice 336
thefickler writes "Australia's largest Internet service provider Telstra BigPond has removed OpenOffice from its unmetered file download area following the launch of its own, free, hosted, office application, BigPond Office. The removal of OpenOffice was brought to TECH.BLORGE's attention by a reader, who complained to Telstra BigPond's support department about no longer being able to download OpenOffice updates. The support people were quite open about why OpenOffice was no longer available, i.e. because it was perceived to be competitive with BigPond Office."
Why do they even try? (Score:2, Insightful)
Other sites? (Score:4, Insightful)
Its their storage/local bandwidth that is at stake here, why should they support competing products since one is their own? Or am i missing something key here?
Why is this news ? (Score:5, Insightful)
They are an ISP, if they blocked their customers from reaching http://www.openoffice.org/ [openoffice.org] that would be news.
Wow, how slightly irritating... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really news (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:http://www.openoffice.org/ (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be evil (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm really going to trust my data with asshats like this?
Re:http://www.openoffice.org/ (Score:1, Insightful)
All that's happened is that BigPond have stopped offering a special download that didn't come out of the bandwidth allowance. They aren't stopping people downloading OOo who want to download OOo, they just aren't giving people who want OOo special treatment any more. They are being more net neutral, not less. What exactly is wrong with this?
Re:http://www.openoffice.org/ (Score:3, Insightful)
Slightly less net neutral than before.
Re:Confusing article title (Score:5, Insightful)
Bandwidth caps in Australia are on every ADSL plan. This is usually because the bandwidth costs to the ISP are quite heavy compared to the USA. Most content comes from the US (google, youtube, yahoo etc) and so Telstra (owner of Bigpond) gets to set monopoly prices. To make the bandwidth cap a little more palatable, many (most) ISP's mirror content or large files on servers on their networks so there is no impact on their running costs. In a competitive move, Telstra/Bigpond have done the same thing.
Why Telstra thinks that removing OO from their unmetered server is going to gain them any kudos is a mystery. However, if you put on your monopoly management hat, you can see why. In this case I'd say it's purely evil (tm) as the competitive advantage of not having OO downloadable is next to nothing.
WTF is wrong with Australia? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Big Pond? (Score:5, Insightful)
They've been complete pricks about the whole thing (selling bandwidth to individuals at a cheaper rate than claim that they are able to sell it to ISPs, creating crazy caps on bandwidth with massive fees for going over, deliberately holding back the rollout of ADSL 2+, etc).
They are widely despised by the Australian internet community. Oh for the days when natural monopolies were retained by the state and rented to companies/individuals at fair rates... (I know, I must be a socialist or something, right?)
Re:How about forcing their customers too.. (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not his font, it's whatever font is set in your browser for fixed width content. In other words, it's your font which is too small. Change your browser settings and the font will get bigger (I know because I did so).
Re:Try dealing with Bigpond billing (Score:1, Insightful)
They are huge, but they are a classic monopoly behaving badly. They own most of the last mile in Australia, and play games with it to their benefit and users and competitors cost. We cannot get naked DSL here for one, we must buy a phone service to put the DSL on.
Gatekeeper behavior at it's best. They've had the ear of government, and they've staked out their turf. You need lots of cash to challenge them.
Friends don't let Friends do BigPong.
Re:http://www.openoffice.org/ (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, we're not all with Telstra. Most ISPs have their own content mirrors which are unmetered traffic for their customers. While all the ISPs do have to pay Telstra for bandwidth out to the exchanges at typical monopolistic rates, for end-users at other ISPs OOo will continue to be a free download from their ISP's mirror. And Telstra's customers are probably too stupid to know any better anyway (I say probably because there are some cases where using BigPond (Telstra's retail arm) makes sense, but they're few and far between).
But pretty much all you said is right. The liberal government really fucked up in selling Telstra off the way they did.
Re:Why do they even try? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How about forcing their customers too.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Granted, all they were doing here is cutting off free access to a download that was singled out previously... but the logic that "because they're competing with our stuff" is easily and validly extrapolated to all sorts of possibilities.
Re:Yep... and it began the slide into despotism... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have never had an instance in my life, or those I've known, where a gun has or would have protected them. The closest story is an attempted break-in where shouting to the person that they had a gun and were calling the cops caused the person to forget about it and flee... (in that case they didn't even have a gun)
I think most instances where having a gun would actually help someone, they are caught off guard and surprised and don't have it at hand anyway.
Just my 2 cents, your mileage may vary.