Telstra to launch T-Hub
- 29 October, 2009 15:26
- Comments 11
Telstra has used its Investor Day to announce its forthcoming T-Hub service, which combines a wireless handset and public switched telephone network (PSTN) calling service with 7-inch touchscreen and access to the Internet.
The service falls into a category that Telstra refers to as ‘The Fourth Screen’. It also combines BigPond address book and calendar, BigPond and Sensis content and a range of other Internet services such as YouTube and Facebook. It also plays Internet radio and can be used as a digital photo frame.
“It’s not a PC, it’s not a TV and it’s not a mobile device — it’s a fourth way to consume both calling and Internet services,” Telstra group managing director for product management, Holly Kramer, said. “It’s essentially the home phone reinvented and we will be using it to differentiate Telstra’s fixed line offerings, fixed line bundlings, with an ‘only-at-Telstra experience’.”
The service is one of several of responses Telstra is making in order to move away from network access to higher value services and compete with a growing number of competitors, according to Kramer.
Telstra was seeing far greater competition coming from “over-the-top players” and device vendors than it ever had in the past, she said.
“Although we continue to invest, we face a future in which our reliance on the network access layer as our primary source of differentiation is being eroded,” she said.
As a result, Telstra’s ability to differentiate and add value would have to come from new sources, Kramer said “We may choose to cooperate or compete with all these players but the key point is that our investments in our strategy are about shifting the battleground away from network access,” she said.
Kramer said Telstra was working to build out its concept of the Next Generation Home — one with Telstra high speed broadband facilitating a range of services and devices.
“It’s through our device ecosystem that the full experience of the digital home is most tangibly delivered to our customer,” she said.
Kramer said Telstra had in the past year launched better quality lower cost WiFi home gateways which had been taken up by about 75 per cent of fixed broadband users.
“This gateway provides the platform for a future roadmap of further connected devices, content distribution through the home, the introduction of new home services such as energy management and security services,” she said.
Telstra had upgraded 450 exchanges since March and close to 90 per cent of Australian homes had access to high speed broadband, Kramer claimed.
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Comments
Anonymous
Bullshit. Telstra giving a stuff about its customers? That'll be a cold day in hell.
Anonymous
I work for Telstra, and I am pretty sure we do care about our customers very much. When I see this kind of statements I can not understand because it is so much out of character to what I see around me everyday. I am positive that Telstra cares about its customers more than any other Telco. Maybe demands and expectations of some customers are so unreasonable that no matter what you do, you can not satisfy them. Every Telco would be very happy to see those ferals go to their competitors:)
Anonymous
Telstra have been nothing but great in our house. Never had the internet or phone drop out. and they do care about their customers. I call them up they will help me there and then
Anonymous
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2007/s1954636.htm
Anonymous
Telstra is trying to follow verizon. But verizon had to disconitue. http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/09/29/the-verizon-hub-has-been-discountinued-try-not-to-get-upset/. This is nothing but a small tablet pc on kitchen table. I am not sure who use bigpond calender, address book. If any calender or address book you want is probably outlook or your personal mail client. When telstra started voip, phone pricing was ridiculously high. I am not sure anyone use now telstra phone to call overseas(Frequent callers). Telstra need to look around and set the price. Customers have access to more information now. They know which product is trying to make them fool. Check out pennytel, iinet or any other voip provider. if telstra cares about its customer, they should think about the price before marketing T hub. And try to make that open, not limited to few telstra icons.
steve
I dont work for telstra,But i have been a customer of for 33 yrs. I have only but one complaint.
customer service!! Yes to be on hold for half an hr only to be cut off at 5 pm. Or to be on hold for an hr on the mobile because the land line is caput for 5 days then to be connected to the wrong dept Ye they care. And so dose the Mumbai call center(Telstra wkr so ya think i am feral)
Jaime
Hey, the fact of the matter is. Every telco has issues. The main reason telstra is in the spotlight is because they are the biggest and the first company.
It's numbers....telstra has more customers than all the providers combined, so of course it will have more complaints than all the providers combined. It also needs more infrastructure to hold not only it's own customers, but also telcos that feed off its services.
You tell me in your perfect little worlds, if you look at a company that big and tell me you can do a better job.
Guess what, you call telstra and get a call centre in the phillipines, call optus, call soul, call vodafone, and tell me what you get.
Telstra also has call centres in australia, and unfortunately, our last CEO signed contracts to keep those call centres offshore, that our new CEO can't reneg on.
Another thing. You ask any telstra shareholder (which by the way, anyone can buy into telstra shares) how crud telstra is as a company, and the one thing you get back almost every time is...telstra pay great dividends. You tell me how many optus and vodafone and iinet share holders say that.
Guess what, I've worked for optus, primus and telstra before, and I can tell you, telstra may not be the cheapest, but they certainly are the company that has made the most impact, put the most money into australian infrustructure and telecommunications than anyone else has ever been willing to do.
Get your facts right, do your research before you point your finger.
pat caldecott
don't buy the Telstra hub it has no message recorder you have to get voice mail and at $1 per minute it can get expensive especially if you run a business as we do I reckoned that our costs for voice mail would be $20 a week $1,000 per year for something that our old phone did for free. It is slow and it did not let faxes through to the fax machine I was told that eventually they may have a fix for it NOT GOOD ENOUGH. In the first 24 hours it had to be reset three times losing all the phone numbers etc programed into it, the icons kept disappearing and the display was very degraded. So don't do it I had one for 22Hours and returned it in disgust plus the phone number for help sends you to a company that sells sports goods not Telstra help PATHETIC
pat
don't buy the Telstra hub it has no message recorder you have to get voice mail and at $1 per minute it can get expensive especially if you run a business as we do I reckoned that our costs for voice mail would be $20 a week $1,000 per year for something that our old phone did for free. It is slow and it did not let faxes through to the fax machine I was told that eventually they may have a fix for it NOT GOOD ENOUGH. In the first 24 hours it had to be reset three times losing all the phone numbers etc programed into it, the icons kept disappearing and the display was very degraded. So don't do it I had one for 22Hours and returned it in disgust plus the phone number for help sends you to a company that sells sports goods not Telstra help PATHETIC
bill
don't buy the Telstra hub it has no message recorder you have to get voice mail and at $1 per minute it can get expensive especially if you run a business as we do I reckoned that our costs for voice mail would be $20 a week $1,000 per year for something that our old phone did for free. It is slow and it did not let faxes through to the fax machine I was told that eventually they may have a fix for it NOT GOOD ENOUGH. In the first 24 hours it had to be reset three times losing all the phone numbers etc programed into it, the icons kept disappearing and the display was very degraded. So don't do it I had one for 22Hours and returned it in disgust plus the phone number for help sends you to a company that sells sports goods not Telstra help PATHETIC
peter brown
don't buy the Telstra hub it has no message recorder you have to get voice mail and at $1 per minute it can get expensive especially if you run a business as we do I reckoned that our costs for voice mail would be $20 a week $1,000 per year for something that our old phone did for free. It is slow and it did not let faxes through to the fax machine I was told that eventually they may have a fix for it NOT GOOD ENOUGH. In the first 24 hours it had to be reset three times losing all the phone numbers etc programed into it, the icons kept disappearing and the display was very degraded. So don't do it I had one for 22Hours and returned it in disgust plus the phone number for help sends you to a company that sells sports goods not Telstra help PATHETIC
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