BigPond, the ISP arm of telco Telstra, is closing the doors on its virtual island in Second Life. What’s a lot more interesting is that Second Life traffic (that is, downloads and uploads between players of the game and its servers) will now be flagged as metered usage for BigPond subscribers.

Unmetered usage is one of those big features you look for in an ISP. Internode, for example, has unmetered downloads to its gaming servers and site, so users can grag patches (which can be 100s of MB in size) and play Counter-Strike without it eating into monthly allowance.

According to a Telstra spokesperson, this should only affect 2000 of its clients; the regular players of the game. I’d be a bit angry if I’d signed up to BigPond just for the unmetered Second Life traffic, but I’d also be just as crazy for signing up to Telstra in the first place. It’s no mystery the ISP is a joke when it comes to pricing, and if you really, really love Second Life, I’d take this as an omen to hitch up with Internode, iiNet, or one of a dozen other much better providers.

BigPond pulls plug on Second Life [The Age]