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(anonymous to stop karma whoring)

Who knows, maybe the money they save can be put towards letting people connect to their 'broadband' service, which they kindly cap at 3gb/month? Or maybe educating our communications minister?

While it's nice to hear that Telstra are switching to Linux, this hardly makes them a good company - they're still monopolistic and evil, as I'm sure any Australian who's tried to get decent broadband will tell you.

(anonymous to stop karma whoring)

Who knows, maybe the money they save can be put towards letting people connect to their 'broadband' service, which they kindly cap at 3gb/month? Or maybe educating our communications minister?

While it's nice to hear that Telstra are switching to Linux, this hardly makes them a good company - they're still monopolistic and evil, as I'm sure any Australian who's tried to get decent broadband will tell you.

The fact remains that the Federal Government won't be embarrassed at the large (wasteful?) sums of money it spends on IT infrastructure because it does not listen to the IT industry.

Even when the Australian IT Minister (Richard Luddite Alston) spent 4 million dollars on his website, the uproar was loud in the IT sector, but nonexistent elsewhere.

...and don't get me started on the shitful state of broadband in this country.

Bitching about poor service doesn't hit a company nearly as hard as taking your business elsewhere.

Agreed. However, did you read the Whirlpool link I posted?

Telstra makes it *very* difficult to change to a different service. This is a typical case. It's happened to people I know .

Even if that doesn't happen, there's a delay of 2 or 3 weeks without net access while you change. It's annoying, but I will change.

Here's a more recent story (dated today). Telstra are the Microsoft of Australia.

Telstra have a history of standover tactics (see Here, for instance).

I really hope they get busted under our new privacy laws. I have a telstra email address that I've never used that gets spammed constantly. If telstra didn't sell my details, then something very fishy is going on.

I'm with testra, and have had nothing but problems. Their Privacy policy allows selling your email address to advertisers. They've also got this insane capping system, that's stopped the rollout of broadband in AU.

Read more in Whirlpool. They've got the facts.

190.00USD/mo would get me a 256kbs/128kbs with caps set to around 20GB/mo in Australia.

It's not that bad, check BroadBandChoice which is a sister site to Whirlpool. :)

But it's still not multi-megabit bandwidth, and often it is metered.

I cannot get cable here (being a regional city of ~100k people) and Austar (satellite paytv) is around $60/month. My ADSL is $150/month flatrate, and POTS/PSTN line rental is $25/month. That adds up to ~$US155/month ($US1=~66AUc).

But you can't directly compare these sorts of things; different earning rates can change things, as well as the fact Australia is an English speaking country (so lots of international traffic) which is physically separate from the rest of the world) This all costs many dollars.

My 1500/256 Nella Networks FlatRATE ADSL service came online today. It's using the Comindico IP Network and is a truly unlimited service. Aardvark were even offering cases of Red Bull to those who download the most! That said, I do pay AUD240/month for it (opting to avoid the slower unlimited services which start at around AUD90/month). You can get 'always online' service from TPG starting at AUD19.95/month, with the first 400mb costing ~AUD80, then capped to 10Gb and reasonable rates thereafter. Meanwhile, my 3G NEC e606 mobile handset from three gives me 3000 minutes per month of voice calls for AUD99 - significantly better than the AUD300-500 I was recently giving Optus for around a third of the airtime. I guess this makes me one of the lucky few well connected Aussies. If it weren't for me living in Sydney and being able to justify the expense I'd be putting up with an overpriced, flaky Telstra service like everyone else! I'm still perplexed as to how they have managed to hang onto the Telstra Rewards program for so long - would have expected the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to have raised an eyebrow over this some time ago.

Also, Telstra has been playing dirty recently, saying that a certain customer's home cannot be connected to iiNet, but his application was accepted by Telstra.

More info here.

Actually, you can get fixed-rate ADSL from quite a few provides - see Whirlpool for a list. Most will slow you down to modem speeds past the cap point, but at least you don't get whacked with thousand-dollar service bills.

Still, you can get ""unlimited" ADSL plans for as little as $65, e.g. from TPG. Only 256/64 Kb/s, and it can get pretty choked at peak times. It does exist, but it's a far, far cry from the unlimited cable I enjoyed in Canada for $40/month...

The real problem is not so much the download cap as the horrific excess charges. My ISP (Pacific Internet) offers an entry-level ADSL plan (256/64 with 500MB of downloads) for $44.95 per month (US$30). Once you go over the 500MB, you are charged at 14.9c per MB - $149 per GB (US$100). That's a fairly typical charge across the industry.

Things have started to improve just recently. First, Comindico (through numerous resellers) have started to offer flat-rate ADSL. Second, Swiftel (directly and also through resellers) have started to offer plans with an excess charge of just $6 per GB - 25 times cheaper than the industry standard.

As others have mentioned, Whirlpool is the place to go for Broadband news in Oz. Most of it is bad, of course. Telstra is, not to put to fine a point on it, evil. Our federal communications minister, the benighted Senator Alston, is hopelessly ill-suited to the post. It's not all darkness, though.

... they're anti-competitive too.

Read this post for an example. Basically they don't tell the other ISPs on their wholesalers list when new exchanges are ADSL-enabled, so that customers sign up with Telstra because they think they can't get a connection through other ISPs. (The author of that post, Simon Hackett, is the CEO of Internode, one of the larger - and best -- wholesale ISPs).

He should not have gone public. Clearly. What do you expect when you bite the hand that feeds.

The reseller sells the same service. The reseller wont sell to him because of distance. The original provider will (because presumably they make more from direct sales than resales).

He asks why.

They say "have this really great deal, and stop asking difficult questions"

He keeps asking questions.

They said he did not qualify for ADSL any longer and disconnected him.

He obviously qualified, or he could not have got the service in the first place. They didn't just not give him the deal, they removed his service completely.

As was mentioned in a previous post (by someone at Whirlpool), they asked him to drop the complaint (to the ombudsman), but said nothing about not informing other people or the media (at least, as far as I can see from the article and from Now15's post).

I couldn't tell you who retail the XYZed service, but there's an entire forum devoted to Comindico resellers on Whirlpool...

That is misinformation. The user only got his Telstra ADSL connection because Telstra didn't want him to complain to Australia's Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO). Such complaints generate automatic fines against Telstra, whether or not the telco is at fault.

And indeed he did retract his complaint to the TIO, instead, he just released his story to the media.

Cheers
Simon Wright
whirlpool.net.au

I'm not surprised, to tell the truth. Two seconds of looking on Whirlpool (the Australian Broadband Users' Community) will highlight exactly how bodgy Bigpond can be. I'm sure their own spam procedures have been less than perfect (or even good) for a long time, so I'm not surprised that other ISP's have had to block them out.

As much as I hate AOL, I'm not sure that this situation is ALL their fault -- if Telstra took the spam problem more seriously themselves, then AOL may not have felt that they need to take this measure.

Still, that all said, I do find it amusing that one bodgy, overpriced major ISP has blocked another bodgy, overpriced major ISP....

Have a quick look at whirlpool broadband news and the number of "telstra is down" stories and anti-telstra sentiment in the comments. Remind you of anywhere else ;)

__
cheap web site hosting from $3

" For those outside of Australia, Telstra is one of our largest ISPs. "

Telstra is Australia's largest ISP.

I'm not particularly surprised that this happened, seeing as how Telstra was almost blocked from Usenet not long ago. Fortunately for Telstra users, it seems to be trying to do something about it.

Thes Australian Broadband news site Whirlpool
has an article regarding an Isreali company being involved.

The article notes the problem of strong transformers in use in Australia (similar to the US maybe? We are on 240V/230V however...) but the guy interviewed didn't seem to have any idea if it would be a problem.

The ultimate comparrison for Broadband in Australia can be viewed at: http://www.broadbandchoice.com.au/

For general news and info regarding broadband in Australia, visit: http://www.whirlpool.net.au/

Over all the broadband market in Australia seems quite healthy to me. There seems to be enough players to avert a monopoly situation and with ISPs like the one I use offering contract free broadband hopefully there will be enough fluidity to keep competition strong.

The monopoly lies in Telstra owning most of the lines and exchanges that the ISPs have to go through. They have in the past gouged the ISPs, who then have to pass on those costs to Joe Public.

I agree the market is quite healthy, but that has only occured in the last couple of months. A number of the previously smaller players have started to pick up customers (like me) who would normally be prepared to stick with dial-up.

The Whirlpool.net.au forumns, generally paint a slightly less picture of the Australian broadband market place.

I'm on a 3gig cable plan from Telstra. We have gamearena that serves demos, game servers and various game files. A month ago they pulled all the linix isos off the free server and advertised a new paid file server. Basically, I have to pay for linux. Most people ask for it to be sent to them via newsgroups, just like the old dialup days. Theres a lot more info at whingepool

There are a few providers that provide mirrors of linux software...

and some of these provide this software free, or rather it doesn't count towards the download quota.

However one can see that the providers in Australia are now slowly starting to shift away from the circa 13c/meg exceess download rates.

A few have started offering plans that slow down once you reach your cap.(Netspace)

One provider (Internode) even has a new flat rate sort of plan in which there are no download 'limits' or caps as such but rather a priority list, and peoples place on the priority list is based on how much they download...

then in times of congestion those on the bottom of the priority list slow down a lot, those in the middle slow down a little, and those on the top dont slow down.

Then when it gets uncongested again, everyone downloads fast...

So I think theres some good Broadband plans out there now in Australia, the biggest problem in relation to Oz Broadband is Telstra... they have monopolised literally the whole broadband market and they are pretty much the sole reason why the uptake of broadband in Australia has been so slow.

A good place to check out the Broadband scene in Australia is Whirlpool

Since you own this IP address, we request that you immediately do the following:
1) Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above; and 2) Terminate any and all accounts that this individual has through you.

Can someone get me a copy of the threat letter?
http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/1054

The problem with niche players is that they often get swallowed up, starting the whole churn thing again.

Here in Aus we have a great many small ISP's offering broadband, and the big thing they have in common is paying way to much for their bandwidth. They then have to pass these costs on. They find out their first customers are the guys who just left their competitor who just introduced caps. They freak. They didn't plan for this. They have to introduce their own caps.

For more of an idea, have a look at the Whirlpool to see how Australian broadband is faring.

Some background for those non-aussies.
In Australia, after attracting customers with 'unlimited' internet, Telstra then switched all users over to 'capped' plans. I say 'capped' as they are not really capped, you just pay an arm and a leg if you go over your limit. It didn't take long after SingTel's takeover of Telstra's main competitor, Optus, before they too introduced capped plans (these are actually capped).

So it looks like the U.S. will soon follow....then what? Will this become the new standard business model for broadband providers?
Telstra was able to do it in Australia as they have a virtual monopoly on broadband infrastructure. Don't let this happen in your neck of cyber-space, it really sucks as the charges aren't even realistic, they are highway robbery.

For more information on Telstra screwing broadband customers, see The Australian Broadband User Community site.

"70 per cent of Telstra's broadband customers did not reach their download limits."

Telstra's most limited account is 300Mb limit per month at AU$54.95. Each additional Mb is charged at 15.9c per megabyte.

Some Australian ISPs charge for each additional megabtye over your limit, and others throttle your speed to something ridiculous (like 28.8kbps). I ordered the latter for my uncle when setting up his ADSL because many people are ignorant of their web usage (at least at first).

If a user on the 300Mb plan downloads 500Mb in their first month, they will pay

$54.95 + 200Mb * $0.159 = $54.95 + $31.80 = $86.75.

If you think that is bad, if a 3Gb user downloads 3.8Gb in their first month (like most teenagers I know), they're up for

$87.95 + 800Mb * $0.139 = $87.95 + $111.20 = $199.15.

I'm suprised no Aussies brought this up in the recent article Add-Ons Add Up.

Independent resources for market research include Whirlpool (Australian Broadband News) and Broadband Choice for indexed summaries of all providers plans. Read them first! Please!

Nice work Whirlpool, getting mentioned on Slashdot.

Simon and Dan should be getting a nice fat brown paper bag from Telstra this month.

Yeah we were affected last night aswell, little US traffic, i.e. we could get www.microsoft.com but not www.google.com where we all actually wanted to be :( When our ISP was affected: Here

Jeez 12 months ? My line was live a week after I emailed the request to my service provider (ozemail).

Quite frankly, comparing your experience with mine, there's something odd going on...
Are you on a waiting list in an area that has no ADSL capable exchange, or are you waiting for a line to be available, or are you on a double-pair, or on a RIM ?

BTW, if you don't know about it whirlpool is the ducks guts for the Australian broadband community.

If you you're looking for more info, Simon Wright's site Whirlpool is the best place to start. The discussions there right now are rather...heated.

Nah, in my area its not so bad - we are part of a research project so we get a A$38.50 per month rebate. My total cost is A$50.50/month. However this is for 512/128 and a THREE GIG CAP, I can understand how the rest of the country is pissed off!!

Bastards.

you guys don't know how good you've got it:

Have a look at the latest broadband offerings in australia. THEN complain about your services.

I would chew off my right leg to get as good a deal as you guys are getting. Have a look at the Australian Broadband community website: Whirlpool then while you're at it look at this Broadband pricing plan which is a 31 percent increase over what it was a month ago!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not ticked off at you guys for complaining, but just remember, no matter how bad you've got it - we've got it worse..

-- Dan "Not happy Jan" Thomas =(

you guys don't know how good you've got it:

Have a look at the latest broadband offerings in australia. THEN complain about your services.

I would chew off my right leg to get as good a deal as you guys are getting. Have a look at the Australian Broadband community website: Whirlpool then while you're at it look at this Broadband pricing plan which is a 31 percent increase over what it was a month ago!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not ticked off at you guys for complaining, but just remember, no matter how bad you've got it - we've got it worse..

-- Dan "Not happy Jan" Thomas =(

Whirlpool's Article on it

It's official....Telstra's screwing over it's broadband subscribers yet again....

Times like this I remember why I Love my 56k modem :)

What's the deal? The deal is that sometimes it's very hard to get on when there's 128/128 slots being used. (Due to new demo's or ISO it uses)...hey but it helps!

Wireplay also hosts popular game services like CounterStrike, Quake and Unreal Tournament. Traffic to these servers are suppose be also excluded from the usage meter but there are reports of Tel$tra still counting this and the files d/led as part of usage. Check this forum to see what customers are saying.

SiMac, does your broadband provider provide a facility then to cut your connection if you go over 3G? I'm very suprised to see an US/international capping! Firstly, most traffic is US so it's doesn't cost much in terms of Internet Termination Access costs for the ISP (I admit unlike Australia, yes). On the other hand, it is the only broadband provider in your area so they have the license to limit whatever they want to minimise costs. Wrong or right, ethical or unethical I don't know, but my question to you is what are your pricing plans? I'm sure they won't be like Telstra's!

SiMac, I challenge you to use a netstats type tool to see what your "NORMAL" usage per day/month is: Here are some suggestions: NetMedic, Starfish InternetMeter and the traffic meters in some proxy software (e.g. Wingate).

You'd be suprised of the result.

For this month, I have had to try hard to stay under the 3GB cap, and sometimes I have to think twice before I click on the "download" button..."This isn't the broadband experience I wanted, it's Tel$tra'$".

But wait there's more....you are probably thinking why there is not higher cap plan available? Well the situation is if you went to the link I provided above there is a 5GB cap plan (no speed limit)...look at the price... A$209 ($US100) per month!!!!
What really amazes me is that it would be cheaper (but not possible in this case) to set up 2 x 3GB cap cable accounts and it would be still cheaper than the 5GB plan. I just don't get how Tel$tra has come up with their pricing models! Let's just say you wanted 10GB Cap, $US 200 per month!!! What do ordinary Optus customers pay for this competing service? Approx $70 ($US35) per month. Only 17% of the Telstra cost!!!

According to Telstra, the customers have to "MANAGE" their usage to ensure they don't go over their cap...so what tools have Telstra given to its customer's? A an online usage meter that does not work! Check this link to see why customers a very angry. I wish I could switch over to Optus, but where I live, Telstra is the only broadband provider. Talk about monopoly.

Optus customers have it good and I wish I could join you guys. I think the broadband broadband offered overseas kick butt.

Maybe I should relocate (I can not see myself going back to dialup). Btw, Telstra have recently introduced these new restrictions so I did not know about them until after I signed the contract months before.
Here's a link that mentions the first customer hit with the 3G cap.

Enjoy!

http://whirlpool.net.au/mirror/freeme.zip

Simon

For those of us on Telstra, there was an earlier problem with Telstra's mail servers being open in about (that is, someone from outside the T$ network could use the mail servs to send mail).

If Optus has a prob like this - it should be fixed fairly quickly - I'd expect to see something on one of Australia's Broadband Community Websites: Whirlpool shortly...

-- Dan =)

"Optus@Home has clarified its position on piracy, saying it will not be actively monitoring customer internet traffic. Rather it will respond only to complaints lodged with Optus by copyright owners, Optus@Home chief executive Chris Chapman told Australian IT today."

I have optus cable & their AUP is less restrictive than Telstra's (The only competitior in the market). Our downloads aren't at a capped rate & the service by all reports is more reliable.
Since the CEO has now qualified his statements & they aren't proactively checking downloads, I don't see a problem. Australian law makes ISP's liable for their users activities. If I was running the show I'd be keeping track too. Yes the law is wrong, but given that it stands I think this is the best way for them to approach it. Follow up on complaints from copyright holders.

http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/444

I'm sure that all the optus@home pirates tune into that newgroup all the time!! Thats a great way to pretend that you've announced something important.

Shouldn't they be informing everyone via email about them graduating from cop school?

Also, something thats interesting is their response, they believe they'll be "reactive" rather than "pro-active". Snooping is snooping, no matter how you do it. Thanks Optus!

http://australianit.news.com.au/common/storyPage/0 ,3811,2668089%5E442,00.html

Yeah, but in my city Optus aren't available, and according to a response on Whirlpool, it's not coming. (Unless they can get XYZed ADSL going)

There is a good article, and a good discussion thread available at http://www.whirlpool.net.au. It outlines the fact that the passwords would never be stored in plaintext (the passwords are stored on industry-standard enterprise servers), and that many of the released passwords were extremely strong (suggesting the passwords were not cracked).

It seems only natural to assume someone has spent some time collecting logins and passwords via another method, and is posting their results with the view of creating FUD over Telstra's service. Just because 69 passwords have been obtained, doesn't mean there exists a vunerability for the tens or hundreds of thousands of subscribers of the service.

I don't particularly like Telstra, nor do I use their internet, but I dont believe they are this stupid.

Well, we just pulled out of Telstra Bigpond because we had noticed a decrease in speed.

Also, it should be noted that they did cap the speed to 45kb/s ... and then they put a hard limit of 3GB on the amount of traffic per billing period.. all round badness.

A good site for any Australian boradband user, or potential user to check out is Whirlpool

Michelle

----

• Legislation they cannot realistically enforce. Banning Internet gambling, attempting Internet censorship, making web caching illegal, making PlayStation mods illegal. Censorship laws have so far been a complete failure, with people circumventing them. Internet censorship is said to have cost $2.5 million, while providing no benefit. It's genuinely frightening that the people writing these laws have no knowledge of what they are trying to control.

• Partially privatising the previously Government-owned telco (49% so far) for political purposes, which has made them give clear priority to profit and share price over service. Access to affordable telecommunications in rural areas is getting gradually worse (though the private sector is helping). They restrict their broadband net access to 3Gb/month after selling it as unlimited, while ensuring they are the only available broadband provider for many Australians. They were force to give other carriers access to their DSL network, so they now sell wholesale network access at $69/month, while selling broadband DSL net access to consumers at $70/month (line + access + equipment), and placing limits on the service. Just today, they are refusing to give any rebate to a broadband customer who had a 13 day outage. Somehow the government don't see any of this as a problem, and still plan to sell the rest of Telstra.

• Various laws with no regard for the privacy of citizens, like allowing spies to crack systems, and remotely tap and alter data.

For what it's worth, even Microsoft realise they are hopeless. Hopefully they'll be voted out at the next election (probably later this year?), and this insanity will end.

• Legislation they cannot realistically enforce. Banning Internet gambling, attempting Internet censorship, making web caching illegal, making PlayStation mods illegal. Censorship laws have so far been a complete failure, with people circumventing them. Internet censorship is said to have cost $2.5 million, while providing no benefit. It's genuinely frightening that the people writing these laws have no knowledge of what they are trying to control.

• Partially privatising the previously Government-owned telco (49% so far) for political purposes, which has made them give clear priority to profit and share price over service. Access to affordable telecommunications in rural areas is getting gradually worse (though the private sector is helping). They restrict their broadband net access to 3Gb/month after selling it as unlimited, while ensuring they are the only available broadband provider for many Australians. They were force to give other carriers access to their DSL network, so they now sell wholesale network access at $69/month, while selling broadband DSL net access to consumers at $70/month (line + access + equipment), and placing limits on the service. Just today, they are refusing to give any rebate to a broadband customer who had a 13 day outage. Somehow the government don't see any of this as a problem, and still plan to sell the rest of Telstra.

• Various laws with no regard for the privacy of citizens, like allowing spies to crack systems, and remotely tap and alter data.

For what it's worth, even Microsoft realise they are hopeless. Hopefully they'll be voted out at the next election (probably later this year?), and this insanity will end.

• Legislation they cannot realistically enforce. Banning Internet gambling, attempting Internet censorship, making web caching illegal, making PlayStation mods illegal. Censorship laws have so far been a complete failure, with people circumventing them. Internet censorship is said to have cost $2.5 million, while providing no benefit. It's genuinely frightening that the people writing these laws have no knowledge of what they are trying to control.

• Partially privatising the previously Government-owned telco (49% so far) for political purposes, which has made them give clear priority to profit and share price over service. Access to affordable telecommunications in rural areas is getting gradually worse (though the private sector is helping). They restrict their broadband net access to 3Gb/month after selling it as unlimited, while ensuring they are the only available broadband provider for many Australians. They were force to give other carriers access to their DSL network, so they now sell wholesale network access at $69/month, while selling broadband DSL net access to consumers at $70/month (line + access + equipment), and placing limits on the service. Just today, they are refusing to give any rebate to a broadband customer who had a 13 day outage. Somehow the government don't see any of this as a problem, and still plan to sell the rest of Telstra.

• Various laws with no regard for the privacy of citizens, like allowing spies to crack systems, and remotely tap and alter data.

For what it's worth, even Microsoft realise they are hopeless. Hopefully they'll be voted out at the next election (probably later this year?), and this insanity will end.

http://australianit.news.com.au/common/storyPage/0 ,3811,2085164%5E442,00.html

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/2001/06/06/ FFXHH7FZLNC.html

http://it.mycareer.com.au/breaking/2001/06/06/FFX7 G6FZLNC.html

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/telco/story/0,2000020 799,20227632,00.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/nat/newsnat-6j un2001-50.htm

http://www.whirlpool.net.au

http://www.a1h.com