Hi Dale,
I'm not sure how badly the changes effects everything. I gave up on bpalogin long time ago as there were times when Bigpond went off the air and then came back on, bpalogin still refuses to log back in till a server reboot or a restart of the network interface. Cheap DSL/Cable routers with built in Bigpond clients are available that appear to be a lot more stable (I use a Netgear one) and have hardly had any service interruptions (maybe once that required a router reboot - but that's it) unless Bigpond itself is down.
So far, I have not experienced any disconnection from Bigpond yet (that I have felt anyway - maybe the router is doing too good a job connecting and reconnecting - I'll check someday).
Kelvin