Internet Service Newsletter No.7

The good news is that at time of writing (early February) all data, news and mail have been flowing well for some time with no reported problems. Since installing the last 30 phone lines there has never been an occasion where all lines are busy simultaneously. Over the peak one bank of modems may be busy for a short while but there have been free lines on the other numbers.

The better news is that we believe we will be able to absorb and increase due to the GST. For the last couple of months now we have been absorbing the pro-rata expense of GST, and we feel confident that we will be continue to be able to when the GST is fully implemented. This means that our annual subscription will be continue to be $140.00 including GST, while actually it means that we reducing our subscription to $127.27 - a reduction of 10%.

Figure 1. View of some of the Internet equipment at
Melb PC headquarters

As we currently have 5,500 Internet members this will result in a loss of revenue in order of $60,000 to $70,000 for this coming year. Although this is a significant sum, all indications are that by far our largest cost, the Internet data charges, will drop very significantly later this year and that we can use up any surplus to give our members the best possible deal that we can afford.

The Internet industry in Australia anticipates that there will be a drop in wholesale prices following the completion of the Southern Cross cable that will link Australia and the US west coast. All bulk data wholesalers have indicated that there will be a significant price reduction and this is the basis for our early price reduction. The Southern Cross cable will have a capacity of 120 Gbits and time delay time in reaching America is much less than for a satellite. To give you an indication of what this capacity means, it will be possible to send the entire text content of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in one twentieth of one second or to send a full length feature film is under half a second. The cable will be available for 24 hours per day. As we live in a society where prices are governed to some extent by supply and demand, the huge increase in supply must result in more competition and a lowering of the wholesale prices.

Many users have mentioned, and are continuing to mention that the date displayed on our MOTD (Message Of The Day) page is incorrect. This is being caused by older versions of a browsers being used at your end not displaying the Java script correctly. If you upgrade to IE5 or Netscape 4.7 then the date will be correctly displayed on your computer. As these browsers are quite large in size and will take some time to download, you may consider purchasing a commercial computer magazine that has a CD stuck on the front. Glance at the contents of the CD, often inside the magazine to ensure that it has the new browser.

There is a great deal of useful information that can be found from the links in the Useful Links panel on the right-hand side on the MOTD ("Message of The Day").

The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)are being constantly upgraded. Questions such as how to change passwords, fixing line drop problems, fixing some mailbox problems, and more can be found there. I suggest that these are regularly checked by all. It will result in saving you time, improving your Internet knowledge and reducing the load on the volunteers.

All committee minutes for the last year as well as minutes for the last approved month can be accessed from these menus.

Also there is an invitation for members to ask for their personal (not commercial) pages to be listed. If you would like to have your own home page displayed so that anyone from any part of the globe can view it contact Stan Johnstone, stanj@melbpc.org.au

Reprinted from the March 2000 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia