A week after cutting access costs to its range of Big Pond Internet services, Australian national carrier Telstra Corp. has revealed it has been considering offering free Internet access as part of its plan to sign one million subscribers by June.
The free Internet service is believed to be just one option in a package designed to allow Telstra to maintain its foothold as the country's leading telecommunications provider.
It is too early yet to determine whether the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is comfortable with a plan that allows Telstra to use its overwhelming dominance in the local telephone call market to potentially cripple competition in the ISP (Internet service provider) market - a neat variation on the infamous Redmond firewall deployed by Microsoft for many years in the personal computer space.
Indeed, many of Microsoft's current antitrust distractions can be directly attributed to this policy of allegedly using its operating system monopoly to crush competitors in other areas.
Telstra recently lost the battle to acquire Australia's second largest ISP, OzEmail, to Eisa.