Australia's largest Internet service provider Telstra has announced that as from December 16 2009 they will no longer be maintaining a presence in SecondLife. Telstra have also decided to remove any "UnMetered usage" applied to their subscribers whilst in the second life environment.

Telstra has for 2 years operated the "Pondi" simulators within second life attracting many thousands of users. Part of their marketing strategy was to provide Unmetered bandwidth to their subscribers while using second life. In a country where bandwidth is expensive and constantly metered and charged for by ISP's this has been seen by many Second life users as a blow to thier continued usage of the service.

Telstra spokesman Craig Middleton confirmed today that the company was abandoning its presence on Second Life.

He said 100,000 avatars had joined Second Life through its service over the past two years, but only about 2000 of these were regular users.

“We commenced back in 2007 when it was an emerging opportunity. It was largely an experiment – a learning opportunity about engaging with online communities. We have a number of islands that customers could access on an unmetered basis, but now our focus has moved to other social media opportunities,” he said.

The decision has been seen by many users as a bad move which will restrict the majority of second life users in Australia from enjoying the full experience of Second Life due to the high bandwidth and ADSL charges applied in Australia.

Middleton said BigPond's in-world customer service would help members relocating to other areas of Second Life.

“The unmetering was only on BigPond islands themselves, which is only a small part of Second Life world,” he said.

Unfortunately this statement is not literally correct. During the 2 year second life experiment by Telstra. Bandwidth used by Telstra subscribers was in fact UnMetered irregardless of what simulator the subscriber was in. Telstra has for 2 years been providing what amounts to Free Bandwidth to some thousands of subscribers across the entire grid of second life  while at the same time advertising to the public and their shareholders that only usage applied while within the telstra bigpond operated simulators counted as "UnMetered Usage".

It has been estimated that an average telstra bigpond Second Life user on a 25Gb ADSL Plan would on average have used in excess of 50Gb of "UnMetered usage" in addition to their usage outside of Second Life.

This UnMetered usage across the second life / telstra user base may have cost Telstra a substantial amount in wholesale bandwidth charges which their subscribers have never been charged for.

This would all be very philanthropic if Telstra had planned to allow grid wide UnMetered usage. But as late as this weekend they were still maintaining the statement that "only usage within the Bigpond islands was Unmetered" which is incorrect.

It is expected that the Australian Shadow Minister for Communications , Senator the Hon. Nick Minchin will raise questions in the Australian Parliament this week during the final week of sittings in relation to both mismanagement of the telstra second life "experiment" and the financial implications of their UnMetered bandwidth component of that service.