BigPond News available in 'œ3D' wall

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 16 December 2008 10:13

Opinion and Analysis

Telstra says its BigPond News service “covers national, entertainment, sport, world, politics, technology, environment, health, weather and odd-spot topics, including a six month archive of stories.”

Telstra says it has also given special attention to “business and finance coverage with hourly video market updates during trading hours and extensive market data”, with all these categories supporting “RSS news feeds so the latest headlines from each section will be available instantly in a news reader.”

It looks pretty comprehensive, although presumably Telstra is simply licensing news content from the standard news providing sources, which is how it can put together a rich news site with lots of stories and videos very quickly, and without any actual journalists.

Telstra also mentions its BigPond Live News service, a separate news TV channel. This is actually a rebadged “Sky News Australia” feed, with the BigPond logo super-imposed, with the main news and other headlines on a continuing, updated loop.

When live news breaks, the updated feeds go direct to whatever Sky News is broadcasting, be it a sermon from Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, or some other important national or international event.

Although the BigPond web version of the service, is free and unmetered for BigPond users, and free for users of other ISPs (aside from the fact your ISP won’t unmeter the video downloading), Telstra also has a mobile version for its Next G and 3G customers, at AUD $4.95 per month, $1.95 for a “day pass” or 50c for a news bulletin. Clearly if you intend watching a lot of BigPond Live News on your Telstra mobile, the $4.95 monthly pack is the cheapest option.

Telstra’s Milne said that: “Since October 2007 we have experienced a near five-fold increase in visits to our BigPond News section on Telstra Next G mobiles as customers catch-up on the latest news as they travel to and from work or while they are out and about on the weekend.”

To show how popular the service can be, especially when live news breaks, Telstra noted that “on the day of the 2008 US Presidential Elections, there was a sixfold increase in streams of the BigPond Live News service on Next G mobile phones and an 829 per cent increase in streams online.”

So, the CoolIRIS service is a nice graphical interface and fun to play with, but once the novelty wears off you might find the BigPond News site itself a simpler and faster to get to the news.

Don't forget to make that iPhone version!