Have you heard about our hot new webmail platform? It’s an exciting product development for Westnet and will see fresh, feature rich, more complete email products offering users an innovative email experience.

We’re so close to launching ‘Webmail’ and we’re calling on YOU to be among the first group of customers to experience it – and all you have to do in return is offer your feedback and complete a mini survey for us. By agreeing to take part in the beta stage of this major rollout, not only will you enjoy all of the new features listed below (and more!), you also stand to win one of two iPod touches (worth $399!) or one of three sets of $50 Myer Vouchers.

Some of the new features include:
• innovative new design
• integration between web pages and your mailbox
• greater email management functionality
• enjoy a faster and more powerful search function
• user tags and message flags
• preview URL images and documents
• import calendars
• exporting emails
• share calendars

The trial will be available from the 3rd June through until the 16th of June and will give you an opportunity to help Westnet refine its email system and assist in its reliability. If you would like to help out by being a beta tester for Webmail and get your voice heard, please email webmail@westnet.com.au .

We will acknowledge your application and be in touch with the next steps.
Please note : We are unable to take applications from Westnet Mail Hosting customers and those who require the mailr.westnet.com.au service.

What is actually happening?
Westnet and iiNet are joining forces. iiNet have reached an agreement to purchase Westnet 100%.

Why is Westnet joining forces with iiNet?
Both iiNet and Westnet saw a great opportunity to combine two ISPs and create the 3rd largest internet customer base in the country. Both CEO’s believe that consolidation is inevitable and essential in the Australian ISP industry, and with iiNet being Perth based, it makes a lot of sense for the company.

iiNet sees great value in Westnet’s achievements, notably in sales channel management, marketing and customer service excellence. Operating the two businesses side by side will allow us to share the best of two performing companies.

Will iiNet be integrating Westnet into its business?
No. The two companies will continue to manage two separate brands and operate separately. From a Westnet member perspective, it will be business as usual, and the key difference will be that we will benefit from knowledge-sharing and products from iiNet.

What are the benefits to members of this acquisition?
Westnet members will benefit from a broader range of products available to them. This should include unbundled ADSL2+ available to more members, naked DSL and VoIP, which we hope to offer to members over time.

What are the benefits to Westnet of this acquisition?
Westnet will be able to offer more products to members, and will benefit from a solid platform for future growth.

What are the benefits to iiNet of this acquisition?
iiNet is set to benefit in a number of ways, such as:
• Access to strong email and hosting product innovations currently in development at Westnet
• Access to a strong national Agent network
• Access to award winning customer service techniques

What will happen to the Westnet management team?
The current management team will remain in place.

Will the call centres merge?
No. Westnet will not be taking iiNet service calls, nor will iiNet be taking Westnet service calls. Westnet will still operate their single call centre. Both companies want to learn from each other to improve how we deliver service.

Will Westnet be supported to drive its growth strategy?
Yes, Westnet will be supported in its efforts to grow and continue to provide award winning customer service.

Have any more questions?
Keep referring back to this page for updates and additions, we will post these as they come to hand.

After much time in development, we are pleased to announce the launch of the new MyWestnet beta site – a comprehensive online portal providing a range of web services including account tools, Google search, news and video, classifieds and lifestyle services, online information and much more!

Open the MyWestnet beta site and you’ll see cleaner design and a realm of new content and services. You can now personalise the page by choosing your own colour theme, select your own location to get local weather, news and fuel information and minimise any content panels that you don’t need. You wanted more control over the site and we heard you!

Site features include:

• Google Search
• Web Links
• eBay, Amazon, Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace
• News
• Video
• Weather
• Member Login to MyEmail, MyAccount, MyFoto
• Fuel Prices
• Property from Realestate.com.au
• Cars from Drive.com.au
• Careers at Seek.com.au
• Dating at RSVP.com.au
• Movie Guide
• MyFoto / Photo of the Week
  
• Horoscopes
  
• Quiz
  
• Westnet News
  
• 3FL News
  
• Quote of the Day
  
• Dictionary
  
• On This Day
  
• Finance
  
• World Time
  
• TV Guide

Whilst we gather your valuable feedback and continue to make improvements, the beta site is currently running in conjunction with the current live site. We aim to launch the full site in early May so keep you eye out for further blog posts!

Check out the MyWestnet beta site here!

Back in April, we hinted at preparations to release a wiki, with hopes it would one day replace our current Help section. Well, now it’s here - we are proud to announce the beta release of Westnet MyHelp.

You can visit it here : Home page: http://myhelp.westnet.com.au/

Unlike a traditional knowledgebase, a wiki is a special type of website with the ability to be edited directly by its readers. For the last year, we’ve been using a wiki internally and with great success – so the natural progression was to bring our members into the fold.

In other words, we’re giving our members the chance to share their knowledge by adding and editing articles on the MyHelp section of our website. Plus, we’ll be the first telecommunications company in Australia, and possibly the world, to introduce this sort of wiki for our members.

Westnet MyHelp will be launched today, Monday 24 September. It is a beta launch and will run alongside our current Help pages during evaluation.

We’ve tried to maintain the look and feel of our current help pages where possible, so it remains easy to learn how to use the wiki. For example, there are still portal pages with quick links and top FAQs. Behind these pages, related articles are divided into spaces. You’d generally find an ADSL modem’s set-up guide in the ‘Broadband’ space. Articles also have labels (e.g. categories) so related information can be linked across spaces and found with a single click.

All new/updated articles will be reviewed and moderated by a Westnet staff member. Whether or not it was approved or rejected will be clearly indicated at the top of each article.

Any questions on the release can be directed to myhelp@westnet.com.au.

Westnet MyHelp Update!

Following the recent release of Westnets’ new online wiki MyHelp, we are pleased to announce the site has now been added to the Westnet Neighbourhood.

What does this mean for our customers?

Basically any online activity a customer carries out on the MyHelp site will not be counted towards their download allowance, meaning they can enjoy unlimited use of this powerful new resource and have to not worry it will be contributing to their download allowance or be the cause of any excess charges on their Westnet internet account.

How will we be letting customers know?

The Westnet website has been updated to advise of this change.

Westnet is introducing a new webmail platform full of powerful features designed to make webmail intuitive and easier to use.

The change over will take place in a staggered fashion (in ‘groups’ of customers), kicking off in November 2007 with an expected finish by the end of the year. Change over should take place overnight (midnight to 4am), on weeknights (Monday to Thursday) during this period.

Existing members should experience only a minor interruption of up to 5 minutes to their service during the migration – but existing emails, address book, tasks, notes, calendars, sent, archived and forwarded email, folders, and email flags will all be carried over to the new platform.

The new features include:

• innovative new design
• integration between web pages and your mailbox
• greater email management functionality
• enjoy a faster and more powerful search function
• use tags and message flags
• preview URL images and documents
• import calendars
• exporting emails
• share calendars

There will be two plans made available from launch; a free email plan to all Westnet members, and a more powerful plan available to those customers who currently pay for email protection.

All Westnet webmail users will be migrated to their new email account which will offer greater functionality and a new look, when compared with their existing Westnet webmail.

From early 2008, members can also opt to upgrade to higher end plan offering cutting edge functionality including mobile integration – a world class email experience to be offered at reasonable prices.

We’ll place more information about the new email platform on the Westnet website over the coming weeks to help members get a sneak preview of the system

A project team has been set up to fast track the launch of a new satellite broadband service for Westnet members. The service planned is a two-way satellite service, offering several plan options, and offering download speeds of up to 2Mbps.

The service will allow us to offer a broadband service to households outside of areas served by ADSL enabled exchanges.

A few years ago, Westnet offered a one-way satellite service that proved unreliable and tricky to manage, and the product was discontinued as it really wasn’t doing members justice. We believe the satellite broadband industry has come a long way during the past few years to overcome some of the underlying issues, and we feel it is going to be a great service for members.

Westnet is applying to participate in the DCITA’s Australian Broadband Guarantee (ABG) program, which will provide subsidies to help cover the satellite dish, installation and router costs - so at this time we are working on a launch offer which would include free set up for those eligible under the ABG.

The launch is dependent on Westnet’s application to participate in the Australian Broadband Guarantee. Funding would be available to assist new satellite subscriptions, and subscriptions that have not benefited from similar DCITA funding programs in the past.

We aim to offer 3 plans, with several download quota options. The entry level plan would offer speeds of 512kbps (down speed) and 256kbps (up speed). Pricing is being worked on as we speak, including an option to ‘bundle and save’ with Westnet phone.

Westnet will be working with IPSTAR, the Satellite Broadband wholesaler to deliver the service. Set-up of the service involves the installation of a satellite dish, some cabling and a satellite router at the user’s premises.

We’re working on releasing the service in the coming few months. As more relevant information comes to hand, I’ll post more details.

Plenty to get on with!

Dan Scott
Marketing Manager, Westnet

Satellite Broadband Update

Westnet is actively working towards the release of our two-way Satellite Broadband. We are in our testing phase with Satellite Broadband and are currently experiencing a technical issue which will affect the end-users Broadband experience. As a result, we are working with our supplier to rectify so we can release the service as soon as it satisfies the quality you would expect from a Westnet service.

Westnet will initially launch Satellite Broadband to those who have registered their interest via the Coming Soon page of the Westnet website before releasing through our Sales team and Agent Network. We will provide regular updates as they come to hand.

Westnet has been trialling some traffic prioritisation tools on our network over the past year with very positive results. As a result, we will continue to use the tools on an ongoing basis.

The key purpose of the traffic prioritisation tools is to ensure latency sensitive applications such as online gaming, web browsing, e-mail and VOIP are not negatively impacted by peer to peer applications. The outcome of the trial illustrates traffic prioritisation has produced no noticeable degradation of peer to peer speeds while ensuring applications such as online gaming, web browsing, e-mail and VOIP receive the bandwidth required.

An important point to note is that Westnet has not enforced a fixed limit on the amount of bandwidth available to peer to peer applications. The amount of bandwidth available to peer to peer traffic is dynamically limited only when the bandwidth required to service the other applications exceeds expectations. This ensures peer to peer is only impacted when absolutely necessary to protect the performance of the other applications. Westnet believes this provides members with the best of both worlds; protection of the performance of key applications without any noticeable impact on peer to peer performance.

The trial was conducted in WA, NSW and QLD and Westnet intends to extend the benefits of traffic prioritisation to other states in the future.

For the last year Westnet has been reviewing its News service; looking at ways to improve the customer experience and provide an overall better product. This process has involved the investigation of in-house news software and external News providers.

After careful consideration SuperNews was chosen as the new direction for Westnet News. SuperNews is the leader in Usenet services since 1995, SuperNews delivers unbeatable speed, performance and reliability, along with the most complete, spam-free content. SuperNews will allow Westnet to provide a more reliable and respectable News service to its customers without any extra cost, that is it will remain FREE. SuperNews also allows Westnet to increase its News offerings meaning a Premium based News Service may be available as an Optional Extra in the near future.

I believe this partnership with SuperNews will allows us to provide a much better News service. I appreciate your thoughts and comments regarding this move.

Westnet will be releasing changes to the download limits on our 1.5Mbps plans this week. The website will be updated later this week and all 1.5Mbps members will be contacted via e-mail. The changes will take effect later this week meaning that 1.5Mbps members will be able to enjoy the increased download limits this month.

Also, the “Option 1″ plans within the 1.5Mbps speed bracket are now eligible for Free Traffic (MyWestnet sites, Westnet Download Vault and 3FL site) and shaping. This plan will no longer be capped for monthly excess charges.

I hope you enjoy the increases.

If you are currently on or looking to upgrade to a 1.5Mbps plan I would suggest keeping an eye on the Westnet website mid to late next week (all things going well). Don’t expect any price changes but there are some small changes on the way for the 1.5Mbps plans. That is all I can say for now:)