It’s finally happened! After many rumours spanning at least the last 3 years, BigPond have finally officially announced that the heartbeat system is to be slowly phased out over the next 9-12 months. What this means is once you receive the email from BigPond advising that your account has changed over to the new system you will need to change from using the old login client which requires a username and password to using no login client at all (DHCP client). The system recognises you by your modem in the same manner as the Optus Cable system. However, just like Optus when connecting a new router for the first time the previous connection can get hung up. To get around this you need to switch the modem and router off for a few seconds then back on and maybe wait for 15 minutes or so, or you can get tricky by spoofing the previous Mac address.
See Whirlpool for more, or go to Telstra’s FAQ about the new billing system.