The big news for PCUG members this month is, as announced in my email to members on 6 March, the Australia wide local call dialup access to TIP is now available. You can now connect to TIP for the cost of a local call (as defined by your Telco) from anywhere in Australia by calling 0198 307 184.
 You will have to logon as <user>@pcug.org.au rather than simply <user>, where <user> is replaced by your TIP username.  This addition of the "@pcug.org.au" can also be done for normal logon to our Canberra number 6162 6500 and must be used for any broadband logon.
 Except for testing that it works for you prior to going away from Canberra, the 0198 number should not be used for calls which could be made as local calls to our normal 6162 6500 Canberra number.

This new service is supplied through TransACT and will currently not work if you are logged on via TransACT broadband.  We hope to have this changed in the near future so that your home "always on" connection can be left on when you go interstate and want to use the 0198 service.

We have also introduced a new TIP account type, "Local Access with Extras" to cater for the needs of members who switch away from TIP as their primary ISP but wish to retain some of the current extra benefits of a TIP account. All PCUG members are entitled to a free Local Access account which provides a small home directory and smaller single mailbox.  For the payment of $20 per year, members will be able to retain "extra" benefits including a full size home directory (currently 100MB), full size mailbox (currently 25MB) and, if Household Members of PCUG, additional mailboxes.

We believe that TIP is very competitive with commercial ISPs for both dialup and broadband via TransACT.  One of the features of TIP is that caps on time or download are applied over the whole of your TIP subscription period, NOT monthly as usually done by the commercials. For example, while our Medium Use Broadband quotes 2,400 MB/Month for $20/Month, if you pay for a year you can actually use 28,800 MB across the whole year - we do not mind if you use say 1,800 one month and 3,000 the next.  With most of the commercial ISPs you would be charged for an excess of 600MB or have download speed throttled.

Congratulations to James Bullivant, who received the ACT runner-up prize in the 'Realising Potential Through Teamwork' Competition.  Congratulations also to all those who submitted an entry.

Allan Mikkelsen