According to a press release issued by the company, the Utra service can now be accessed by customers of any ISP for "as little as $5 per month."

That's the good news -- the bad news is that the new service is charged on a per-megabyte basis.

IHUG director Tim Wood says that the previous pricing system "prevented us from providing discounted prices to light users, even though they typically use 50-100 times less bandwidth than a heavy user."

The company's previous attempts to provide some parity between heavy and light users of the Ultra service included the removal of the true "flat rate" offer under which the service was first launched. This move resulted in harsh criticism from some of those bandwidth-hogs who were most affected.

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The data charges associated with the re-vamped pricing schedule vary from five to 10 cents per megabyte.

According to the PR, "even at the highest per MB rate, an Ultra user can download 500 text emails and over 1000 web pages for less than $8!"

Well I'm blowed if I know why anyone would bother using a service charged on a per-MB basis to download "text emails." Text compresses very nicely over a typical dial-up modem connection and with a 56K modem it is possible to reach peak transfer rates in excess of 150Kb/S anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking the Ultra service -- and I do understand the need to structure the pricing so as to ensure that the greedy don't ruin the cost-effectiveness of the service for others. However, I wonder just how many people with broadband connections are "light users?"

I know from my own experience that once you have access to a broadband connection, a whole new world opens up. Suddenly things such as streaming video, and large software downloads come within easy reach -- making it easy to consume large amounts of bandwidth with only a few mouse-clicks.

When you see an MP3 track from an indie band that looks interesting you no longer weigh up whether it will be worth 35-45 minutes of time to download at 56Kbps -- you just click "download" and you're listening within seconds.

I'm afraid that for these reasons, the term "light user of broadband" is to me (and a huge number of others) somewhat of an oxymoron.

I've found IHUG's Ultra service to be very good and I certainly recommend their "direct by satellite" service for others like myself who simply don't have the option of using DSL or other broadband services. However, don't forget that before you can spend your $5 a month and $0.10 per megabyte you also have to fork out $397 for the dish and PC card -- but that's no more than the price of a DSL modem anyway.

IHUG seem to be positioning the service as a strong alternative to DSL -- selling the hardware and "pre-pay" cards through a range of existing retailers such as Dick Smith.

What do you think? Will this give Telecom the kick it needs to restructure its DSL pricing -- or is it simply another endorsement of Australasia's crazy infatuation with per-megabyte pricing schemes?

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