Slashdot Mirror
Pity Broadband Users In Australia
danwarne writes: "Pity Australians who have few other choices for their broadband internet than the country's incumbent telco Telstra.
A broadband community website, Whirlpool, has revealed that the giant telco is planning to RAISE prices on broadband again for the second time in just a few months.
The telco, which has had a technically disastrous ADSL rollout is also going to be offering incentives for customers to sign up to its cable internet service (HFC) instead, in the form of faster plans for cable customers (until now most customers -- cable and ADSL -- have been limited to 512Kbit download speeds).
It seems clear from Telstra's plans that they are preparing to abandon the 'messy' residential broadband market and focus on more profitable business customers." In the next few weeks, lucky Australians will find out if this "leak" is accurate.
Thank god for Optus. Its cheaper than the gov. sponsored Telstra, it doesn't have ridiculous caps, its faster than Telstra and the service is hassle free. In neighbourhoods where both Optus and Telstra have rolled out cables, Optus is mopping the floor with Telstra guts. Unfortunately, only portions of large metropolitan areas have access to Optus cable.
Quick question - why is Slashdot so interested in DownUnder? Most of these telco idiosynchrocies come from Telstra, not Optus.
Revolution = Evolution
Help the free public wireless networks: Perth, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide,Sydney, Gold Coast (QLD), Tasmania, etc.
With the way the broadband industry is in Australia and the way that the Australian government here still regards broadband as only a "fanciful" thing, it is no wonder that a telco like Telstra can survive.
We really have no choice. For instance, I used to live in a newly established estate, but because the developers did not design it with trenches, we could not get broadband cable.
As for ADSL, Telstra is selling it wholesale (it owns most of the exchanges) to competition at or higher then it sells to customers... how's that for competition.
Im the author of BPwatcher, a usage meter program that alot of us have to use instead of teh telstra usage meter program to watch our usage and ill tell you this: we certainly dont like getting pushed around us aussie's, the grouping together we do to help each other, and the help we offer each other, the amount of broadband projects cant even begin to be measured, we have the CBP (community broadband project) whirlpool, and a dozen other little groups all trying to get us what we want:
Decent broadband.
Aussies dont just complain, we do something about it!
Microsoft IIS is to webserving as KFC is to healthy eating
If you think that Australia has it bad, take a look at how Broadband is doing in Ireland. The prices are like USD100/month for a 512/128 kbit connection with a 3 GIG DL LIMIT!!!!
If you feel sorry for broadband users in Australia, I don't think I have words for what you should feel for broadband users in Ireland.
I'm from .au; and my ISP is connexus
They basicly re-sell telstra's ADSL service (they run their own routers, telstra routes my ADSL service from the local loop to their data center)
The speed is 1.5meg down and 256 up. I pay around $au120/month for this, and I can run as many servers as I want, and hog all the bandwidth that I want. No real AUP.
I have to pay per meg over my bandwidth allowance, but I rearly go over that.
Vote for the other guy.
I'm only 17, yet I PAY for my own broadband. In a deal with my parents, they pay for access (US$45 / month) and I pay for ALL bandwidth, I pay US7c/MB for bandwidth. People on Telstra are lucky, they're getting a GOOD DEAL, people on Optus even more so. The reason I pay so much is because I chose to use a business ISP so that I wouldn't get and port blocking (which Optus has) and a garenteed Permanent IP.
Whirlpool is mostly a collection of whining IDIOTS, who don't understand the real costs of running a network (I'm a part-time network admin for several networks includeing Computerbank Victoria (Pro Linux charity www.computerbank.org.au)).
The only problem with broadband in Australia is that the per MB cost is too high, if you use BigPond Direct (one of the main backbone ISP's) the charge is US11c/MB and the cheapest cost that I've seen is with a contract that has cost almost US$50,000 a year for MANY gigs of data at US4.5c/MB.
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
From the article, you can't even get an unlimited service. This means that, should you get hacked, or have some dysfunctionnal software, you could get charged mucho $$$ at the end of the month.
They pay 250 for 10GB download / month, this is just insane.
Here I get unlimited 512kbps (128kbps upload) for 50, with good service overall.
Broadband residential services in Uzbekistan? UZBEKS WANT FAST INTERNET.
Consider yourselves lucky, guys. Here in Ireland we're still struggling with ISDN as being the 'broadband' solution, both for home and business users. And this is almost entirely down to the national telco (eircom) delaying and delaying on the rollout of (A)DSL. It really sux. I'm typing this over ISDN using both B channels. It costs me the price of a local call ($.05) X 2 every THREE MINUTES. And all for a massive 128K bandwidth! Whoopee!! 8-b
[grumble, growl]
For more details on Ireland's Broadband issues, check out Ireland Off-Line
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
At least the people of Oz can get residential broadband! As of yet there are are no ADSL or similar products available to the residential market in Ireland. When it was originally proposed, the old semi-state monopoly, the now privatized Eircom, was going to charge 130 per month for a 512k with a 3GB cap! The regulator wants this reduced and ADSL rollout has been delayed yet again. Cable on the other hand is sold by NTL to a small area of Dublin city. Help us out at www.irelandoffline.com
No choice in broadband + No guns = No way to live!
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
They are in such a sad state of affairs. Their broadband is overpriced. How depressing. And to think I was concerned about all those people in the world who don't have water piped to their towns and have no electricity. Having only one ISP is a true travesty in a world where we're drilling holes in the ozone and bombing whole countries to take down a lone, though devious, man. Lets all put our collective effort into rectifying Australia's poor ISP situation in our quest to better the world. We can make a difference.
- ACPlus
Really, I despise them, their pricing, their services, their customer service is appaling from the experience I had trying to get the flippin dialup off em. And the fact that they might be about to hike prices again according to this leak is damned frustrating.
But this comes along as such a blatant plug for whirlpool, it seems like such a load of bollocks.
whirlpool has the reputation from people Ive talked to that.. well, its comparable to the submission acceptenace / bash windows ratio everyone rants about on slashdot.
It all seems rather sad if you ask me.
I'm an Ozzie, and yes im currently paying for a Telstra ADSL connection.
:P)
First off let me tell you all something; there has been absolutely NO corresponding level in broadband service (let alone customer service, but thats another rant) from Telstra to justify this price rise. I've had an account with them for just on 12 months, and aside from a two month period where their network attained something approaching 80% uptime, its been absolute shit.
Secondly, Ziggy and co. have obviously realised that they cannot continue to support the ADSL network. Why? Because they are incompetent, plain and simple. Its very easy to say 'ADSL isnt making us enough money', but it doesnt really hold up when you consider they made a *half yearly* in 2001 of $4 billion AU (about $30 US
When telstra has a problem with their DSL network, their stockstandard response is 'due to the newness and complexity of the ADSL network, the current problem may take some time to fix' (or very close to that). Ahem, excuse me. ADSL may be new to Telstra, but it sure as heck isnt new to the IT world. That's excuse #1. Excuse #2 is also stock standard, 'its problems with the equipement of our provider.' Hmm, I know Alcatel may not have as good a rep as Cisco, but they're not exactly amature. After hearing this excuse for about the 50th time, I'm thinking its just one of about 10 excuses that all Telstra call centre staff have tacked on their cubicle walls.
As for any other form of residential broadband...well, there's Optus I suppose. However, the strength of Optus was always the fact that the nitty gritty of their network was managed by Excite. Now that Excite has exited the partnership, God only knows how their network will fair the next 12 months.
Other than that, this is just one more example of how Telstra couldn't give a toss about their users. Since they were partially privatised, their #1 priority has been share dividends. Service? They only give service if it will make them a greater profit. If they can screw the users and still make some kind of profit, they can and will.
Janie took my gun...
Rumour has it that the reason Optus don't cable apartments is that the hardware they use for on-property signal splitting can't do it.
I have no factual evidence for this however.
I joined telstra in october with the understanding from the tech guys that 4gb a month wouldn't be frowned on and that I will not incur any additional charges, 6 days later they change the pricing plan so for my 4gb I'm paying $180 a month or whatever.. so I complain to the ACCC and then whoever else will listen - Telstra give me a refund on the install (which I'm still yet to see u bastards...) and I've still got their cable modem (cause no one's asked for it back...).
Next I've signed up with Optus and I have to say the speeds are GREAT and the download limits (15gb a month) are 5 times that of Telstra's.
Telstra, with their chopping and changing don't really care about broadband home or small business users. Their plans are the complete opposite to what a competent broadband provide should offer and their download speeds are atrocious. So long as Optus chooses not to go down the same path I'm never going to use Telstra services again.. We have enough time getting broadband as it is without dealing with painful carriers such as Telstra...
Telstra - as u sink.. I DON'T salute you.
My heart weeps for them, tell me where I can send my donations to.
Is the reason for high cost access in AU because of the fact that it's basically an island, or is it because the service has to reach into areas that aren't so populated?
I know to AU's that may seem so stupid, but which is it? Could satellite access [on the ISP end] solve this problem?
Forgive me for my ignorance. It makes sense that they charge their users so much if there is a cable from Asia/Indo-China or Hawaii going to AU, but other than that... it doesn't make sense at all.
Don't users in Hawaii get better rates than AU?
Get your Unix fortune now!
This is a Whirlpool source from within Telstra who released the information, not some average paraniod anti-telstra/anti-MS/proWhateverIsSaidOnSlashdot nut.
From my experience (as both a whirlpool user and Australian IT journo), they are generally quite good as far as authenticity goes.
Janie took my gun...
While I agree the terms aren't all that great, the changes are both good and bad, not the horrible tragedy the article makes them out to be. Cable is going up to "full speed" (with no explanation of what that is), and is probably done because of the restrictions with DSL. It's a lot easy to get cable speed up high than DSL, and I can't blame them for emphasizing DSL over cable (as long as they offer both, who cares?).
The lowest plan will include move MB and be cheaper on DSL (while cable prices stay the same). The extra MB charge will also drop. This is nothing but good.
The 1GB plan is a bad value no matter which service you use apparently.
The 3GB plan will be increasing by $6 for DSL and $15 for cable, but the excess MB prices is dropping. Seems this is worse for cable, not DSL.
The 5GB and 10GB is staying the same except the excess MB charge is dropping. Seems this is good for everyone.
Seems like DSL is actually getting off pretty good here. Yes, they don't get the "full speed", but they get a price break at the lowest level, and the one service that is going up is going up less than cable. And all excess MB charges are going down for both services. Maybe it's because I'm not from Australia and don't know anything about Telstra, but this seems like a more toward being better, not worse.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
I'm quite happy so far. While I've only been with the service for a few months, the only problems I had were solved by me redialing in. I get peek transfers and much more than the 80% uptime people are claiming...
As for the pricing - it is comparable to what I was paying in the US last year. Half those prices and you get around USD$50-$60.
I don't know why these whirlpool guys love to complain soo much - we have other providers to switch to - if you don't like their pricing then don't choose Telstra. I had only one provider for broadband while living in MA, USA and I'm glad I've moved back here where I do have some choice.
There are different factors at play here ....
.... Which Te$stra charges $0.20-0.30 per megabyte.
Australia is said to be the most urbanized country in the world 87% of the popuulation live in the cities mainly clustered around the eastern seaboard and concentrated in 3 major cities. So there are often few problems with distance restrictions with ADSL (on a percentage basis). In addition the vast majority of the population live with in 1-2 km's of a high badwidth backbone.
But the overseas link is predominatly controled by Te$tra that chargers $0.20-0.30 per megabyte. This control of the internet in Australia means that are large amount of data cross connects (between Australian network providers) across the Te$tra network
So even if business were able to install the last mile link the data cost largley prevent them from providing consumer internet access..
Te$tra also make the last mile difficult for it owns the exchanges and other infrastructure such as local cable ducts and makes it difficult to use or lease this infrastructure.
Now our government has managed to sell 1/2 of something we already own back to us it's time they hung onto what's left and split the services and infrastructure components in two. This would go a long way towards flattening an otherwise uneven playing ground and protecting our precious infrastructure from a seemingly insane services company. There is no excuse for the amount we're paying for broadband Internet (and we call ourselves the 'knowledge nation'... with internet censorship and the banning of online gambling [both of which cost arms and legs in implementation and lost revenue while having no tangible effect on either!] I tend to prefer 'global village idiot'). The fact we pay for the data itself rather than the size of the pipe, and at rates that have been virtually static for many many years is ridiculous.
I really feel pretty lucky to live in norway where we get 640/384Kb ADSL (and of course no extra charge if you want to download 200GB a month) for 32 a month
or 2048/640 for 82
--- Martin
My friend has a Telstra aDSL connection and he gets slow downloads (25-30k/s) compared to the normal download speed (45-50k/s) and not to mention shocking customer support from Telstra (most problems they say "I'm sorry I don't know the answer to that so I can't help you") and lets not forget the recent 3gb download cap.
Oh and the hefty monthly price... you gotta love Australia!! -_-
It's simple business. A broadband ISP has to actually MAKE money off of their customers. Upstream bandwidth is extremely expensive, and the residential market has been proven to hog bandwidth with p2p download services. There's no profit to be made when a customer consistently uses their 768k dsl or cable pipe and pays $39/month (US) for it. Broadband ISP's have to rely on the idea that only a part of those resi customers will chug bandwidth, and the less demanding users will "buffer" the effect. But, the fact seems to be that broadband users are bandwidth hungry. Businesses pay more and use less, and are glad that they have a fast and reliable connection. Residential customers, in my "wireless isp operating" experience, complain that we charge $69.95/month for a 512k package, complain that they don't get a /29 with that, complain that they have to buy a bit of hardware, complain that for 5 minutes their mpg ping times went up slightly, and complain about anything possible. Business clients purchase the same package and are happy to have a reliable service and a knowledgeable staff behind it.
It's no wonder broadband providers are either a) priced more than the competition, b) staying away from residential markets, or c) failing.
The way it is here (Alice Springs) is that there is some 12 ISP's who claim to offer internet access locally, upon contacting them, its more like 8 - of those only one offers ADSL (telstra)
their are options like satalite however its far to costly for anyone i know, even if you have your own hardware telstra INSIST you purchase theirs...
this is also the case for adsl - i rang telstra today and said "im going on holidays and i dont want to give the person housesitting my adsl account cause i know they will use over my limet - can we set up a seperate account for them just for the month - nope, minimum period is 3 months and you still have to pay the connection charges and buy the adsl router from us - i proceeded to explain that i had a router the person woud use and that the connection was already established because i was using it... no matter what i said they wanted to milk me for every cent) you see telstra DONT CARE
I have an interest in satalite technoligy and have the required lmb's i told the guy from telstra - i also said i had the required dish for satalite, again i could only get it if i purchased everything from them
further to being in remote australia some readers may find it intresting that "remote australians" are not looking for crazy subsidisation because we KNOW that should things be fairly priced elsewhere it wouldnt be such a big deal - a ISDN SPC can be relativly CHEEP if you want to run your own data on it between your own offices, its when you want to place internet trafic on it and connect your isdn to an isp that your charges grow so drasticly - living here in alice i expect to pay about 15% on top of the average sydney price but local ISP's are still charging 60$ a month for a 150meg download limet on a regular 336 modem account
a big problem is that people WANT to listen to online music and communicate accross the world while working from home, this CAN NOT HAPPEN - and people dont want to JUST USE what TELSTRA have neet little arrangements for, its not the telstranet its the internet - the "free sites" thing is nice, but they are not that good and it really removes the idea of being on the internet - if your going to have free sites have *everything that doesnt go accross international carriers* and this is prety easy to see with tracert / traceroute folks
i dont see the justification behind charging on a per use structure (telstra own the company they buy from), i have work collegues in england who get 100% free adsl, it came with their telehone...
the way i see it is IMHO the legistators dont understand what they are legistating and so dont understand how to draft up the legistation to take effect properly - they are too old and cant grasp the ideas properly its obvious they want to acheive certain things, but they dont know how to acheive it so write sill blanket laws...
telstra charge for LOCAL TRAFIC within their own network for crying out loud, how can this be alloud - technically they charge for person 1 to send data to peson 2 on the telstra network however person 2 on the network doesnt get charged for the data they get from person 1 (CRAZY!!!! - i cant even play games with my neighbours without being charged or running ethernet over the back fence)
in the week straight after getting adsl i was portscanned constantly from all over the place - at first i was worried, but now i just filter it out, but i DO FEEL like im getting ripped paying for incomming trafic that i didnt ask for because someone on the internet took an intrest... i also "hear" that telstra include the PPOE encapuslation packet data in your 'data charge' so your 3gig is actually 20% less as the ppoe packet encapusliation is roughly 20% of the data... AND they "redefine" 3gig as 3000MB even though their own website's FAQ defines a bite as 1024 bits - i wonder if i should worrie about some redefination of MB at 1000 bytes thus actually reducing the 3gig limet even further
but dont worrie telsta is not just rude when it comes to adsl - for instance you will be charged 3$ a month to NOT BE LISTED IN THE PHONEBOOK - now thats just crazy - a monthly ongoing charge for not wasteing paper.... is that legal??? perhaps i should finish here for risk of going OT or OTT
In Canberra, Australia's capital city, TransACT is rolling out fibre optic cable to all residential properties (not sure about apartments). The prices are about $29USD for 1Mbps/128kbps or $37 for 2Mbps/256kbps.
The bad news is it is going to take a couple of years to roll it out throughout the city. And not all Australian cities are as lucky. But at least it is better than nothing.
Doesn't the little blurb explain itself?
Why should a company lose money on a product offering? If they can't make money on cable at the current price simple business sense says they need to change the product somehow.
Slashdot denizens seem to view cheap bandwidth as a god given right that these evil companies are interfering with, as opposed to the truth: It's a good/service you have to pay for (and the companies that provide it ALSO have to pay for)
southern cross cables which lighted their fiber a year ago? (it was /.d)
i mean all of their gigabits (160x2 i believe) are gone to waste?
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
"Unlucky" Austrailians do have another choice: They can go without service. Be glad you at least have that choice. There are those of us whose only choice is dialup.
The reason why, is you're all winging customers. I'm a shareholder - and when you're a shareholder, and you see they've raised the prices, you think "fantastic" as opposed to "crap".
Of course, I don't use them for my broadband services.
-- james
So, if I told you guys that I was getting 1.5Mbps down and 640Kbps upstream with my Telus DSL up here in Canada for only $40CDN/month ($26US) and unlimited bandwidth, I can be sure you guys will wanna chase me down the street, beating me with a pickle fork and stabbing me with a baseball bat?
--
God did not create the world in seven days; he screwed around for six
days and then pulled an all-nighter.
"The only reason to live down here is because the women are hot."
;))..
.. Oh, nevermind, our broadband providers already suck almost as much arse.
Jeebus. Talk about an oppressed people. First their guns, then GTA3, now their broadband.
Australia is a shining example of why the US is still a nice place to live (for now, at least.
My fellow Slashdotters, let us not forget the fall of our Crocodile-wrestling friends. Let us band together, and universally bitchslap our own broadband providers the minute they
*sigh*
At least they have broadband, I work for an ISP for crying out loud and can't get any because I live in a rural area. No DSL (Ameritech's fault) no cable (i'm 1000 feet away from the road so it's 'unprofitable' for AT&T Broadband to run a cable drop for me and my neighbor, and want $5000 to do it) and no wireless, but that's my best option if I can get a WiPOP closeby...too many hills to block my line-of-sight reception. I'd get satellite, but why spend all the money if I can't game on it? Pity them my ass, pity me I say.
In .de, you're either in a big city, or you don't have much of a choice other than T-Online, which constantly increases prices, and aohell, which requires a proprietary client that isn't even available for any sane OS. And then the govt complains about a lack of IT professionals in the country... They're just all running away to places with sane net access!
My ISP (check elmegil at dslreports.com if you care which one) has raised rates twice in the last 6 months too. First time was a $2 "administrative fee" since I didn't trust them enough to pay them online, second time was the $5 Universal Service Fee, which I thought specifically didn't apply to ISP's. Upon complaint, of course, they say "the other ISP's are doing it!!" and "it was so sudden because we only just recently got our billing software to work right." Reviewing the contract I signed, sure enough, if it's a "tariff" or "fee" they can do whatever the hell they want.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I'm all for starting a new internet, with IP addresses loosely based on GPS coordinates, a sane set of policies for name services, and gateways to the "real" internet. We could fix all the mistakes of the current version, as percieved at this time.
We could use wireless, IP6, and encourage the use of gateways to the LEGACY internet for compatabilities sake.
--Mike--
optus is the only broadband alternative to telstra, but as I am finding out that are just as shit. I've had cable for 1 year, it cost $300 for installation then a one year contract at $75 a month. They suspend/terminate your account for running services. My account got suspended for "apparently" portscanning because some piece of shit paranoid adminstrator can't be confident about his own firewall out there emailed optus with a could be made up log file and said I portscanned him/her/it - so optus decided to suspend my account (no I didn't get hact). Optus also has nazi style bandwidth restrictions, all you get is an average that represents the entire users on the network's download, then if you go 10 times over that average your account gets terminated. Well, I'm still with optus only because telstra are cunts and I don't want to go back to 56k. If another competitor were to ever enter the australian market, and I doubt it for a while coz the cattle herding arseclown govt will most likely stop it, I'm gonna tell optus to shove there cable modem up there arse sideways. Btw, Australia's problem is that there are not enough ppl, 20 million - what kind of market is that, perhaps it's lucky with what it's got.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
There used to be a cartoon at geekswithguns.org that portrayed 3 or 4 terrorists on an airplane, apologetically making excuses for their possesion of box cutters to a mob of angry and armed passengers. The caption read something like, "What may have happened on Sep. 11 if this were truly the land of the free." I agree with that cartoon 100%.
However... the no-guns-and-pricey-broadband thing really is tasteless, guys.
To imply that people should take up arms for something as silly as broadbad just trivializes the concept of an armed citizenry. And, frankly, I'm ashamed of my fellow Americans here at /. who would so quickly (even in jest) make this comment.
Method of processing duck feet
Do any Slashdot readers realize how expensive bandwidth really is? This is not uncommon and you will see broadband providers hiking their rates and reducing throughput. These companies are in business to make money, period. Running new fiber costs money. Maintaining a network costs money. Installations cost money. Bill collecting costs money. Everything costs money when you run a business. If a business expects to stick around they have to recoup their costs. They can't sell a T-1 for $79/month and expect to remain profitable let alone break even. You can oversell bandwidth to a point but that catches up over time. Granted a great deal of broadband users are using it for the convenience of no busy signals and an always on connection. It only takes a couple power downloaders(warez hounds) to monopolize service for the rest of the people who actually abide by the terms of service(read yours sometime.) Another thing to consider is providers will charge what the market will bear. This is true for any industry. The limits are here to stay. DSL users better get used to PPPoE and cable users might as well admit that getting 256k for $29.95/month isn't so bad.
Why bother feeling sorry for Aussies who are going to be charged more for fast connections? Here in the US, Verizon is too busy waiting for their broadband competition to go bankrupt to deploy in high-tech centers. They know we're here, in newly-built houses and apartments with an insatiable bandwidth-hunger and that we're able to pay -- but they also know that the government will make them sell service to Covad and other such competitors who don't mind if we run web servers and they don't want to compete with that... So to get anything at all (144k/144k), we're paying 92USD/month to an ISP & Covad for an IDSL service Verizon doesn't provide.
I'll start feeling sorry for other people when, as a geek resident of a yuppie-geek suburb, I can get some honest-to-God broadband instead of this scrawnyband we try to make do with.
Pity? Get Real.
http://www.theage.com.au/business/2002/01/22/FFXKF C35PWC.html
Hmm, that funny ther very same website sais the price is going down.
"""
Telstra is about to reduce charges on its BigPond broadband cable and ADSL business services, according to unconfirmed rumours from "reliable sources" published on a user-group website over the weekend.
Business users of both cable and ADSL would get "dramatic increase in value", said Simon Wright, who posted the rumour on Whirlpool, the user-group chatroom on the Internet. But residential plans "will become even less appealing than they are now", he said.
"""
Speakeasy will sell you T1 service for significantly less but I don't know if they attach any terms to it. Their DSL service comes with a few restrictions which don't bother me (Don't run porn servers, mainly.) Check your local loop charges before buying though -- even at MCI it was not uncommon for a customer to be paying more in local loop charges than for the service itself.
Depending on the cost of the line you choose and the number of neighbors willing to sling cat5 out the window to share your connection (and its cost) you could get it down to pretty reasonable, though probably still well over what AOL/Time Warner will charge per month. Reasonably good service starts at around $200 a month (YMMV) but not having to deal with clueless fucks at an ISP is worth it (The Speakeasy people appear not to be clueless fucks, which is one of the reasons I am willing to pay a premium for their services.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Damh - where are those mod points when you need them?? This guy speaks the truth (for us all here
in Ireland). Mod him UP!
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
I can't comment on the issues in Austrailia, but I believe I know why we complain about rates going up, service going down, etc. In so many words:
.com boom also picked up steam. "Cheap bandwidth and "flashy" sites for all!" became the cry of the day. A lot of people upgraded from relatively flakey modems, to broadband - and quickly found that always-on broadband changed how they used their computers, and how it affected their lives. Online shopping grew, getting news off the net was better than the TV, sometimes even for local coverage, and finding movie times became that much easier.
We are spoiled.
I can't remember exactly when real home-based "broadband" began to be rolled out here in America on a large scale basis, I think it was around 1996 or so - all that we had at that time was, at best, 56K modems - if you were lucky, and had a good clean line - most people had only 28.8-33.6, and thought it was great...
But then the rollout began, and people loved it - then the
Broadband is fast and cheap - and that has become the meme of today. Now, most of us know that broadband is anything but cheap - try getting a T-1 to your house someday - hell, try to get ISDN (I remember a time between 56K modems and broadband where a lot of people were trying to get ISDN, and the articles being written up about the pain it was to do this)! But the everyday "joe" doesn't. He (and really, all of us) are spoiled by the speed and the price.
It wasn't an incremental change (like from 9600 baud modems to 14.4 to 28.8, etc - a jump from 56kbps to 1.5mbps, and higher in some cases) - and now we are going to be forced to go back to something a little more reasonable - slower "broadband", if you want it to stay at a reasonable price.
We need to realize something though - and this is something the cable companies and DSL providers don't want you to realize.
First off, these businesses should tier the service - and allow the consumer to pick and choose what they want. Say, start off with an always-on 56kbps up/down line - allow the consumer to tier the up/down ratio depending on what they want to use the line for - browsing, serving, or a combo (and let the consumer run servers, or VPN, or whatnot - people WANT THIS, although most think of it as P2P). For those doing more serving than browsing, charge an amount on the bandwidth used on the upstream side after a flat amount (say 3 gig a month or something), let them use as much downstream bandwidth as they can (ok, up to a certain point, of course), but do something different if they uploading data. But allow the user to serve this data - just make them pay for it.
This is similar in scope to a combo DSL and T-x service (and ISDN) work, on the billing side. DSL allows you (but not without a fine granualarity, from most providers) to change the tier of service depending on what you want to pay, and T-x/ISDN charges for bandwidth, etc used (also, they allow finer control on tiering).
Let the consumer choose his bandwidth needs (like he chooses his telephone needs), and let him use the line how he chooses (within reasonable limits, but don't stop him from running servers, etc completely). If this were to happen, the sting of going from "unlimited" bandwidth to whatever would be much less, I believe, because the user would see what he is gaining.
However, I don't believe this will ever occur, because the main broadband providers don't want the average joe to be able to serve content, as that would compete with their services (in whatever twisted sense they think of it).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Where I live, a rural area JUST outside an urban center, I cannot get cable or dsl. I can either do dialup or satellite. Dialup is too frickin' slow, and having dsl in my previous home makes me adamant that I will NEVER go back to dialup again. Satellite is too frickin' expensive and has those nasty latency issues. So, I will get my damn broadband by leaching off any LOS wireless network I can see from my house via a high-gain antenna, and it will cost be squat. THAT'S the way to go.
Quit your whingeing - we in South Africa don't even *have* ADSL. Our lone telco believes that incredibly expensive ISDN is sufficient.
It is my understanding that in the us, cable companies have greater control over their networks than do isp's. I wonder if they in essence, getting the wonderful benifits of technology.. discrimination; one network for businesses and one network for the ignorant masses, the residentials. I suspect that isp's price are rising to give incentive for the masses to migrate away from the "serving network" because of the wide range of information available causing information overload and political chaos(minshare has never been a commodity) and they will most definately correct the problem through filters. Cable companies here in the usa can prohibit servers on end user connections and inforce it with proprietary connection protocols.
So once you've got all the moronic public on one network, and the businesses on another big companies can buy up all the isp's(oops they've allready done it) and make the intenet the big business internet network; hasn't this been their ultimate scheme?
Well, I'm interested in how things work out in Oz because I'm a resident of the United States, which is similarly populated by some large cities and vast territories that are expensive to wire.
This is rather different than, say, Europe, where 90% of their territory is populated with a much greater density of people.
Some have said that Canada's heavily regulated telecom's have provided nice service up there and they, too, have some sparsely populated areas with some urban centers.
So of Australia, USA, Canada, who has done the best job of getting broadband service to the people?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I have experienced Telstra's incompetence first hand in Melbourne.
I recently escaped the collapsing economy to my home of New Zealand to find that Telstra has purchased Clear communications, the majour competition to Telecom. Telecom has been waiting to screw the NZ public for years, but due to government regulations and upstanding competition they have had to play fair(ish).
Now with Telstra as the majour competition, I see the demise of NZ broadband access and alot of golf games being held in remote NZ golf courses.
((SIGH))
lon32, a router in Telstra's Lonsdale St exchange in Victoria which these days handles ADSL connection has been down, according to Telstra's 1800 support number, for for days leaving a few hundred business ADSL uusers without connectivity for 95% of the time since Friday morning (its Tuesday Morning now). The Service Status page doesn't acknowledge this particular outage (though it does acknowledge three others).
I work for a IT Services customer and its worth noting the amount of problems customers who use ADSL ISPs with Telstra as their upstream provider have in comparison to others, particularly ISPs reselling RequestDSL (eg, BRD) or NC/Alternet (Netspace).
I'm no lawyer, but I know if someone wants to launch mass legal action against Telstra for this kind of shit then quite a few customers would be interested.
Frankly, I'm not sure how you read in the suggestion that people take up arms over broadband -- I simply read it as two separate and distinct strikes against living in Austrailia. Perhaps the lack of taste you complain about is less real than imagined, or (at worst) unintended.
Why should anybody feel sorry for the land down under when a large percentage of the rest of us still don't have the availability of broadband. Or had it at one time and then through bankrupt companies etc...have lost it. If you want to feel sorry for somebody feel sorry for people who are starving and don't even know what a computer is.
Having said that, I currently buy no other services from them. The reason? TransACT.
4 twisted pairs (cat-5) into the house. Total theoretical capacity in my house right now: 208 Mbit. Cost to run another similar line? Possibly a few hundred dollars. VOD, pizza-over-the-net, telephony on the same wires.... it's all here.
Now all I need is a television.
Canberra has a few choices for broadband, there's Teltra ADSL, a pile of other 3rd party DSLs, TransACT ether-to-your-door and the WaveLAN group mentioned. In every case, my problem is that even at their extortionate prices, Telstra are still the cheapest bandwidth at $84 for 3Gb/m. Further down the line, you still have quite a premium to get your packts into/out of Australia.
Either TransACT or wireless would be attractive if linked to a bandwidth coop or something.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
I have been working at a company for four months utilising the ADSL network, and twice it has been down for 2-3 days, and every one or two weeks there is a period where the service is flakey (up/down).
On top of that telcos aren't rolling out any more cable so you've gotta been in the right neighbourhood to use it.
*groan* Broadband is -so- crap. *groan*
Not that I need to worry, I live in metropolitan Melbourne and can only receive 28.8k modem access... no ADSL or cable, and due to Telstra's old h/w, 56k modem access is out of the question.
My Telstra Residential DSL just died (again) as I was reading the article on Whirlpool. They're satan!
We'll have dream about a 512kbit down link. Here most have 128kbit. And telecom call *that* broadband.
Is it just me, or are almost all of the articles
/. exclusively for
on slashdot either about things in the US and
Australia? Methinks we have a loud minority of
/. readers down under.
Maybe there should be a
Aussies!
Posting as a Coward for good reason....
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
~..Hi, for those of you who just tuned in, everyone here is a crazy person..~
There was a bit of an outcry when the price was raised from E 45.- a few weeks ago...
http://www.xs4all.nl/uk/adsl/index.php3
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Optus cable is brilliant! I have had it now for two years, and in that time the worst outage was once down for about 36 hours, otherwise i can count ALL of the outages on one hand!
But it can vary, my exchange (carlingford/sydney) is apparantly known as one of the less reliable ones?!? (i have a friend working at Optus@home support)
In terms of the usage cap, your right on! So SO many people (especially here on
The only tiny gripe i have with them is the upstream limit, 128k sure is enough to play games, etc, but damn i hate doing big web updates to my US server from home at only 12k/sec!
Otherwise I love Optus cable, if you can get it then do so!
If so your looking at Oz for the wrong reason.. Australia as a country is slightly bigger than the USA, but 90% of the population lives on 10% of the land. Remember we only have 20million people.
In this way broadband is generally good (in theory) for the 90% at least, because there is significantly less problems with the good old "last mile".
The problem with Australian broadband stems from the problems we have always had (by creation) in Oz with communications. That is up until only about 10-15 years ago, everything was controlled by a govt Monopoly Telstra (back then Telecom), the past 10-15 years has been spent undoing that monopoly, which has still in some areas been only so effective.
A) Apologise to you shareholders and learn from the experience
B) Gouge your customers for the cash
Guess which option Ziggy took? Not just with Internet, but also with mobile phone services which are soon to become one of the most expensive in the world.
The price rises are nothing to do with the pofitability of ADSL operations
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
If only that was the complaint for some of us Aussies...
I live in "Outback" South Oz, and we cannot even get Telstra ADSL. The solution? A pricey (and slow) Sat downlink, with an (extra) 56K outbound.
Don't talk to me about caps or prices for your precious xDSL/Cable. Not all of us live in Sydney or Melbourne to enjoy what you guys are bitching about!
Telstra owns the original telecom backbone of Australia, it sells access to the system to private and corporate users.
Early in 2001, the A.C.C.C, the Australian government's corporate watchdog, issued a notice to Telstra requiring it to explain why it was selling broadband to its residential customers at $65 per month whilst selling it to its corporate competitors at around $80 a month.
If Telstra was determined to be fixing prices and reducing competition then it would be compelled to drop prices and to pay very hefty fines.
The A.C.C.C expected to get Telstra busted and then have broadband costs drop substantially whilst opening up the market. Great idea.
Telstra claimed that it was actually selling at a loss to its residential customers, apparently because the company Australians love to hate, simply adores its general public. Telstra also claimed that the price it was selling to its competitors access to the network (Telstra owns the backbone) was the "real" price it should have been charging ALL broadband users.
End result, Telstra, by virtue of its own deception, is now obligated to raise prices across the board as it wanted from the beginning. Telstra is desperate to raise its share value and revenue after a couple of costly failures, including a billion dollar loss in the Hong Kong.
isn't southern cross the link that we wer paying for traffic bothways?
ie if a US person visited a australian hosted site australian customers payed for it and if we visited US we payed for it?
and sopposably recently internet costs were meant to drop because we managed to force the US to pay for the traffic it generated on the link