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.

Comments

Optus

[smallstepforman]

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.

Re:Optus

[Stormie]

Unfortunately, only portions of large metropolitan areas have access to Optus cable.

Also Optus only provide cable to houses, not apartments. When I enquired about getting connected, as soon as they heard the slash in my address, they said no. Apparently it costs slightly more to hook up an apartment (longer wire needed, I guess) and since they're overflowing with demand, they ignore all apartment dwellers in favour of the more profitable house dwellers.

So here I am with Telstra, wondering if my bill is about to go up $6/month as this rumour would have it. :-(

Go wireless

[jamesbromberger]

Help the free public wireless networks: Perth, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide,Sydney, Gold Coast (QLD), Tasmania, etc.

ADSL in other countries

[muffen]

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.

Re:ADSL in other countries

[bfree]

I hate to break it to you, but I would NOT expect any reasonable sort of ADSL (Always Delayed Slightly Longer) before 2003 in Ireland! If you want economic ADSL try 2004 or later! Currently Ireland is an Internet backwater (and the politicians are far from understanding this). Errorcom^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hircom announced an October 2nd launch of their ADSL service simply to squash any other broadband providers AND to delay the rollout of ADSL as long as possible (if you were supplying 99% of the pots and isdn lines AND 90%+ of the leased lines would you want to launch an ADSL service?). By announcing their intention to launch (and alleged pricing structures) they have forced the Office of the Department of Telecommunications Regulators and their main competitor into legal wranglings to prevent the launch of the service. The basic stumbling block is that the ODTR will not allow Errorcom (fsck them, they seem to be squashing mirrors , the latest casualty which had extra info and links to mirrors is now in googles cache alone, of the already taken down errorcom.com site) to launch the service until the wholesale pricing is agreed (so errorcom can't jump the market thanks to their public funded monopoly). Unfortunatley over 3 months since this debacle there has been no progress and a lengthy war in court is expected. Even if the wholesale prices are agreed tomorrow and both companies launch their services the minimum 30 days later you should not expect the prices to drop, Irish telecoms operators (and in particular errorcom and es(h)at) have a terrible history of pricing by errorcom charging the most ridiculous amount conceivable (you've seen the proposed prices) and then the "competitors" knock maybe 10% off the price to have a slightly less ridiculous extortianate service.

Basically you should be resigned to modem or very expensive ISDN for the next year in Ireland :-(

PLEASE don't pitty me!

[DavidJA]

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.

Irelands situation is far worse

[Gavintheman]

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