OK, web-saavy folks, I have a challenge for you today. See if you can find out what Telstra’s Bigpond ADSL plans (price and download caps) are just by looking it up on Telstra’s website (so no Whirlpool, I want it official).
Rules: you are not allowed to provide any information (including your phone number to Telstra), sign up or agree to sign up and you cannot be an existing Telstra ADSL customer. If you succeed, please tell us how you did it and point us to the site.
I just tried for 10 minutes without success. (I note that you can get a price offer by providing Telstra all of your personal information).
[Update: OK it is a bizarre matter that you are only allowed to see prices if you are patient. To watch the whole 3 minute experience, click here. Warning: it ain’t that interesting. By the way, just testing out the Quicktime X screen capture feature.]
Core Economics 
1. Google “telstra bigpond”
2. Select the ADSL option (listed in the links for the 1st entry).
3. That takes you to http://www.bigpond.com/internet/plans/adsl/plans-and-offers/
those prices are insanely expensive though.
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Sorry, those aren’t prices. They are equipment. Find the price — you know, a monthly charge?
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Ahh. I see what’s happening now. The information is on that page, but the page is not valid HTML, and your browser probably cannot guess how to display it. When I try in firefox it displays the prices, when I try in Konquor it doesn’t. But the prices are in the source HTML.
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OK got it now. Update and screen demo coming soon. Suffice it to say, it should be easier.
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Umm… select “Internet plans…ADSL” from the nav bar on bigpond.com and it took me straight there. Mind you – I’m existing customer and my prior job involved a LOT of scouring of ISP web sites for price information (domestic and foriegn language) so i am pretty adept at sourcing this kind of information.
The address/phone number check stuff though is pretty common practice. In fact for other ISPs (who have both on-net and resale offerings) the address check is even more important since it can make a big difference to the price and speed of your broadband. (e.g. check the difference between DSL offered over the iinet network and iiNet’s plans where they are reselling Telstra Wholesale.
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I’m getting no Internet plans … ADSL option. There is broadband. If you are an existing customer I think it comes up differently. The video shows that they are making this hard.
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Joshua,
You can also get help from BigPond via Twitter… send them your feedback on making it easier.
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Joshua:
Accessing from work so treating me as non-customer. But…Ok .. weird… but now it’s gone. Maybe i had an old version of the page cached.
It’s now a three click process (instead of one) to get to the plans and pricing page.
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Now we know why you appropriated the term “confusopoly” for the telco industry.
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I think I can see what’s happening now. The information is on that page, but the page is not valid HTML, and your browser probably cannot guess how to display it
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