Death of Decent Australian Broadband

iamplasma writes: "As reported by several Australian newspapers, Optus cable internet services will be switching their standard plan to a 3gb "soft-limit" broadband service (once the limit is passed, the service slows to 28kbps). This is effectively the end of decent broadband in Australia, with Optus being the only major provider to offer a service without a highly restrictive usage cap. This is also the ISP who proudly promoted themselves over their main competitor specifically over the issue of the competitor's 3gb limits."

Comments

Unofficial soft limits

[AlaskanUnderachiever]

While I know the vast majority of broadband packages I've used either don't have a cap, or simply have a "per gb" fee after a cap is reached, I have the sinking suspicion that my current provider (1.2mb DSL) puts "heavy" users on a cycle that gradually decreases bandwidth with total amount used. In talking to others in my area with a similar file sharing setup, as we approach 2-3gb of data per week, our speeds slow to a trickle (only to mysteriously appear at 12am monday). Could this be the implementation of an unoffical soft limit? Could similar tactics be in place already with many other providers across the US with most users not aware of it? The "gradual" drop in bandwidth is the scary part though. Until I talked to friends and realized the relationship between amount downloaded and speed, I didn't see anything other that occasional "traffic jams" down the line. Now my paranoia has kicked in. . . .

Perhaps broadband should charge 'per megabyte'?

[wackybrit]

What are they thinking? 28kbps is slower than what you'll get out of the average DIAL-UP, let alone broadband.

In fairness though, they have a point. $54.95AUS per month does compare favorably with getting a second phone line and hooking a modem up to it all day.

And it's also true that regular users don't need anymore than 3Gb per month. Unless you're a techie and downloading a lot of Linux ISOs or watching independant movies, 3Gb per month will get you a long way. It applies to Web hosting, so why not here?

Perhaps it's time for ISPs to charge per megabyte? There's no such thing as 'unlimited' or 'free'.. you end up paying in the end. So why not charge per megabyte, which will force users to consider what they're actually downloading. US$0.01 per megabyte sounds fair.

(In the UK, BT is also trying a similar scheme with dial-up. That is, their 'Anytime' service is not actually 'any time' anymore.. you can only use it for a maximum of 12 hours a day!)

Re:Perhaps broadband should charge 'per megabyte'?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as "unlimited?" That is what my ISP advertised and it is what I am paying for. I have absolutely no sympathy for a company that deceitfully promises unlimited bandwidth then proceeds to pull a fast one effectively screwing their customers. The company was quick enough to take their business and the customers paid their dues, but the company failed to live up to its end of the bargain.

3GB is NOTHING. Your average webpage is around 100K. You use about 50M for an hour of gaming. The streaming video that features prominantly in almost every broadband commercial will take much more than that. Game demos, streaming music, all of the reasons to use broadband. To say that someone who has broadband should not use it to its potential pisses me off. I however agree that there is a difference between abuse and power "use"...but I certainly don't put that point anywhere near 30GB.

Re:Perhaps broadband should charge 'per megabyte'?

[E-prospero]

...regular users don't need anymore than 3Gb per month. Unless you're a techie and downloading a lot of Linux ISOs or watching independant movies, 3Gb per month will get you a long way

However, you will notice that the people complaining about the 3GB limit are ususally those who were sucking 10GB of warez a month. The "normal" consumer in Australia hasn't even considered ADSL yet.

Admittedly, some people do have a legit claim - Telstra sold their service as "unlimited bandwidth", and then imposed a limit. However, now that limits are here, I for one expect them to stay.

Perhaps it's time for ISPs to charge per megabyte? There's no such thing as 'unlimited' or 'free'.. you end up paying in the end. So why not charge per megabyte, which will force users to consider what they're actually downloading.

There are already some ISP's in Australia doing just this. TPG for instance charges A$26.95 per month, plus 15c a meg. Note - this is not intended as an advert - I know nothing about their quality of service, or their terms and conditions, just their pricing scheme.

US$0.01 per megabyte sounds fair.

Sounds fair to whom? I don't know about the rest of the world, but here in Oz, whenever paying for bandwidth gets mentioned, the same figure of $0.15-0.18 per meg gets mentioned (eg, this figure was always mentioned at uni whenever volume billing was suggested to a department).

That said, I notice that TPG sells high levels of bandwidth at 5c/meg - I have no idea where their figures come from.

It may be fair for the consumer to pay 1c/meg, but not if the supplier is paying 1+Xc/meg, X>0...

Russ %-)

Re:Perhaps broadband should charge 'per megabyte'?

[qeL3-i]

You see, internet usage in the USA is subsidized by users who aren't in the USA. That's because ISPs in say Europe have to pay for traffic both to and from the USA. If a European user downloads an ISO from the USA, the European ISP has to pay for it. If a US user downloads an ISO from a European site, the European ISP still has to pay for it. It's the same in Australia.

This fabulous deal is called "peering". If you're a Tier-1 ISP, you don't pay for data. This is by agreement amongst the ISPs. All the Tier-1 ISPs are in the USA, and guess what? They won't let any non-US ISPs join the club.

Eventually the principals of "free market forces", "globalism", and "user pays" will take over, and people in the USA will face a dramatic increase in internet costs. Then we're going to see a lot of complaining! But it'll actually be a fairer system, except for people in the USA who won't be getting a free ride any more.

There's no point saying "But the USA INVENTED the Internet!!!1!". Weren't cars invented in the USA? But you don't get free cars. And sooner or later, you won't get "free" internet any more either.

Re:Perhaps broadband should charge 'per megabyte'?

[_Knots]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but fundamentally, the cost polynomial for the cable company has a large constant (buying equipment, getting upstream, etc) and smaller per-month fees (price on a OC-3, salaries, etc). There is no per-bit cost here, so why should they be passing on a second-order polynomial to the next guy?

A streamlined company (efficiency keeps the costs down) could cover most, if not all, of its setup costs by passing those directly on to the customer (like they do now, via a "setup fee") and then divvying up their monthly costs between their customers, add $1 and make $customers profit. No per-bit stuff involved.

-knots

I'm going to disagree with some of what you said

[suzerain]

In truth, your post is coherent and logical, but let me play devil's advocate:

And it's also true that regular users don't need anymore than 3Gb per month.

I've heard I don't know how many times that "xxxx is enough for the average user" in computer-speak, and every time it's short-sighted. It may be enough given usage patterns right now, but as soon as video is distributed on the network, all software is distributed that way, and as soon as The Next Big Thing (tm) comes along, your point becomes moot. Believe me, 3GB a month will seem like a pittance sooner than you think.

Computers in general aren't even 1 1,000,000th as powerful as they need to be. Look at the latest greatest game, look at how beautiful the 3D is, and then look out your window and realize how truly shitty it looks and you get the idea. We will need more computing horsepower for graphics and AI and everything else, and we will definitely need more bandwidth than 3 lousy GB per month.

Perhaps it's time for ISPs to charge per megabyte?

Well, it makes business sense, pure and simple. If I want to download the 500 MB Lineage installer, and that alone takes one sixth of my monthly allotment, then it ought to be my problem, right? Wrong. The problem is, the Internet is as much an entertainment medium as anything else, and it's competing with technologies that are not pay-as-you-go, like television and so forth. I think the public will demand unlimited access, if given a choice. The first time they get a bill for $1000 in a month, they'll be looking elsewhere.

Of course, the industry coould just collude and force per-download pricing, but it's ridiculous.

As a consumer, I'm already pissed off that my cable company won't allow me to broadcast. It's their way of keeping distribution in the hands of the few; a way to maintain the status quo. Yes, I understand the reasons why they don't want to host my pr0n and wArEz, but I'm being selfish here; this is about what I want.

I for one will always seek out unlimited pricing if possible.

After a few weeks of rumours...

[_madness]

I'd be lying if I said I was surprised. Fortunately our equipment here has been set up to count the data going in and out. We're planning to setup a huge squid cache (not to mention a dumping ground) and we should be able to stay under 3Gb per month.

Two things that deserve a mention though are the speed being "throttled" and no extra charges. At least you don't run up a massive bill as you do with another company we know well!

Re:Live With it or Build Your Own Network

[zardie]

For Melbourne users, there is a group called Melbourne Digital and Wireless who are dedicated to building a community wireless network. Other states have the same (there are links on that page).

There is the Planet Mirror archive and the AARNet mirror site, which are both located on the AARNnet not-for-profit network, which is currently operated by Optus backbone-wise. It would be a good idea if we had unmetered traffic to these sites. Telstra may win me as a customer based on their mirror archive on GameArena.

Neat idea but it should be a daily limit.

[tomstdenis]

First off 28kbps is far too low for a "cutoff". Also monthly setups mean you can go quite a while at low bandwidth. While I have posted this idea before [the idea of a cutoff] I normally mentioned a daily cutoff not monthly.

What they should have done is say limited the connection to a couple 100 MB a day, then after that quarter the bandwidth. If you normally get around 2Mbps down 28kbps is 1/71'th of the bandwidth!!!

Seriously while it would be nice to be able to listen to shoutcast 24/7 and download fresh ISO's of *nix every two weeks you have to face the fact that this "unlimited inet pipe" was really just a fluke. It wasn't supposed to happend yet!

Tom

End of Australian broadband? Pfft.

[lpontiac]

There are plenty of decent deals out there. You just have to be reasonable. Leechers should get their head around the fact that they are *not* profitable customers, and will be treated accordingly.

In Perth, Western Australia, Arachnet offers ADSL at pretty much the same price points, which the bonus that traffic to and from WAIX, a local peering point, is free. (Subject to fair use; don't run a heavy-traffic VPN across to your other office in Sydney over it). PlanetMirror is on a network peered to WAIX, so that's all your ISOs taken care of.

The wholesale situation with exchanges and the local loop has finally reached the point where companies other than Telstra and Optus can offer decent pricing. They just need people to start buying the services they offer.

There are others here in WA too; Westnet, iiNet and probably more. I personally don't have any of these products at home (can't justify a long-term contract) - I'm a satisfied Arachnet dialup customer. At work, we have iiNet's offering and it's very, very nice.

You think THAT's bad????

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in canberra which has the fortune of being slowly connected to the Transact network which is FAT fibreoptics. It all sounds great until you look at the prices ISP's are charging their customers ... $25 for 300mb / month (!). I sometimes download that much in 1 day on my 56k modem (I pay $25 for 1.5gigs/month)so the chances of me switching are approximately zero. So all you guys who can get optus stop whinging because there are lots of people out there in a much worse position than you.

Re:I'm going to disagree with some of what you sai

[drsoran]

Calculate the bandwith costs to cover four million people listening to 128 kbps Internet radio instead. To serve this, you'd have to be thinking 4,000,000 * 16 * 1024 bytes per second. Each OC unit (Optical Carrier, as in OC-3) transmits data at 51.84 Mbps, or 6,794,792 bytes per second. Divide out and you're going to need an OC-9645.

Or you could get an ISDN line and multicast your Internet radio program to the entire Internet. The only problem with that is that it seems the average commercial ISP doesn't deal much with multicast users and definitely doesn't promote it like it should, especially with home users. I suppose it'd be a support hassle in their minds, but it'd save a ton of bandwidth.

In the end though, do ISPs really care? You're paying them for bandwidth and they don't really have any incentive to help you conserve it.. especially if you're a large Internet radio broadcaster as their customer. They'd rather sell you some massive pipe when you could have gotten by with a much smaller arrangement and used a more efficient "broadcasting" technology.