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Dude, you're Australian. You're lucky to have some pretty strong consumer protection law on the books.

According to my Aussie friend if you have a problem with Telstra, or any other Aussie telecoms company, you contact the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman and your problem will almost always get sorted quickly. He's had to call them when Telstra have dragged their feet fixing his Internet connection. After he complained to the Ombudsman, Telstra were calling HIM back and apologising, and had a team out in his neighbourhood fixing the problem the next day.

APANA isn't an ISP

Well, given that this organisation has a working title of No ISP, I guess they don't think of themselves as an ISP either.

But of course, the reality is that anyone who provides the end user with a connecting into the internet is an ISP, even if they don't want to use that title. I'm very curious about whether they will be able to structure themselves so that they're not legally an ISP, or whether (the more likely scenario in my mind) they'll have to sign up to the TIO and all the other stuff that ISPs are required to do.

and only offers broadband internet service through commercial ISPs (at no discount to those ISP's standard rates).

That might be what APANA does now (it's hard to work out what APANA's purpose is these days, and their 1996-era webpages don't help), but it's not what it did back in the 1990s and early 2000s.

APANA used to provide internet access directly. They operated banks of modems and had incoming phone lines, and you dialed in to get internet access. My recollection from the last time I looked (around 1999 or 2000, I think) you could get a permanent dialup connection for the costs of

• Your APANA membership fee
• The cost to install and rent a phone line into their dialup location
• The cost of the modem on the other end (which was technically yours)

If you wanted permanent internet access, for non-commercial use in that era, then APANA was the way to go.

However, those costs add up, so if you just needed occasional access, commercial ISPs were cheaper (but when APANA started in 1992, those ISP didn't exist, and very few ever offered the style of service APANA offered).

Around that 1999/2000 timeframe that I last looked at APANA, Optus cable was prevalent enough in most metro areas to mean that people could get always on internet via cable, for better speeds and less money than the APANA offering. ADSL wasn't far behind (rollouts started at the end of 2000, I believe), and APANA's purpose changed, and at some point in the mid 2000s they stopped providing direct internet access any more.

Hit up the TIO if you have these kind of issues in future.

Do you know how to pay less for better service in the US?

Most nations call it "regulation". Fixing the kinds of charges a telco can charge, setting minimum standards for performance and service and real punishment for failing to meet standards. If Australia didn't have the ACCC and TIO we'd be in a worse position then the US. Fortunately the ACCC (government organisation responsible for ensuring businesses comply with the trades practices act, or in other words, enforcing the law) took a good hard look at Telstra when it was privatised (was previously a government run public telco) and clearly stated what they were not allowed to do. Now we have multiple phone providers, multiple DSL providers, real competition and a superior 3G network to the US.

So I ask the yanks a question, "what can you do, if a telco screws you over"?

In Australia if a Telco does not live up to their end of the contract, fails to provide service, cuts me off/blocks bit torrent or just drops out too many times and refuses to fix the problem (or gives me the run around) I can call the TIO and have them sort it out within 10 working days.

I think the terminal moment will come when we see the price for tethering.

This is not a problem with AT&T in so far, this is a problem with Telco regulations.

In Australia the government has written into law that the phone companies have no say in what I use my phone for. If I pay for a data service I can use it to tether. This protects the telco if I do anything illegal with their service as well.

We have an organisation called the Telecomunications Industry Ombudsmen. Free and independent of telco's and political parties with a mandate to enforce the law and analyse the industry for abuses. Sounds like the US could use a TIO of it's own.

Thank God I live in Australia where ISP's *must* describe exactly what the customer is getting for their money thanks mainly to the ACCC and TIO. We've even got a nice community built search form based on that information so you can easily compare ISP's.

In Australia you can raise a complaint with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman. Just go to their website ( http://www.tio.com.au/ ) and submit a complaint.

Once this happens all sorts of management in the offending company get involved, because if they don't solve the problem to your satisfaction within 14 days the TIO steps in and that causes a huge amount of work for the company unless they are clearly and unambiguously correct.

The issue of the use of the term "unlimited" broadand connections has been quite a serious one in Australia - so much that the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) and the TIO (Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman) have dealt with and advised on several issues dealing with unlimited broadband not being unlimited in every sense of the word.

We have the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman for that.

Cheers
Stor

Actually he's in Australia, so he should probably report it to the Telcommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO).