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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.
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.
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$50,000 a year for MANY gigs of data at US4.5c/MB.
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
Broadband residential services in Uzbekistan? UZBEKS WANT FAST INTERNET.
Consider yourselves lucky, guys. Here in Ireland we're still struggling with ISDN as being the 'broadband' solution, both for home and business users. And this is almost entirely down to the national telco (eircom) delaying and delaying on the rollout of (A)DSL. It really sux. I'm typing this over ISDN using both B channels. It costs me the price of a local call ($.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
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...
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!
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"
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.
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
"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.
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.
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--
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?
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
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."
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.
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"
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."
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"