Thread: Fastest Internet Ever?

Dial-up? Fast?!

My connection is (usually) dial-up, and it's anything but fast. It is half-speed dial-up (28.8KB/s), though.

Broadband in Australia is rubbish. Expensive and coverage is patchy. There are no regulations requiring your line to be provisioned, nor maintained, to a standard capable of broadband.

ISDN has now been scrapped. Telsra is forcing ISDN users on to their very, very expensive mobile broadband.

Originally Posted by Elysia

Yes! Seeing as there's even 100 MBps (though you won't reach that, of course) for ~36€, among others. No cap of course.
Or how about 24/1 MBps for €27?
Like I said, crap.

I had 'up to' 20Mb/1.5Mb ADSL2+ at my home but only got 2.7Mb/1.5Mb due to the distance from the exchange.

A fault developed in my line (collapsed conduit) causing drop-outs, noise and speed loss (down to 0.5Mb/0.5Mb).

National phone company (Telstra) refuses to repair the fault and nothing I can do will make them fix it (and I mean nothing!).

My ISP changed me to ADSL (8Mb/0.25Mb) of which I get 1.2Mb/0.25Mb. I have 7Gb + 8 Gb off peak before I am 'shaped' to 64Kb. This costs Au$50 (ADSL) + Au$33 (line rental) + call costs.

Some plans charge up to Au$300 per additional Gb (up+down)!

My home is 8Km from a capital cities CBD (ie inner suburb), not like I am in a remote location.

I didn't have much complaints about with BigPond down under in Port Pirie. The price was a little off, true. But the service was good. The uptime was in fact the best I had seen so far either in Portugal, UK or Canada. I'd go 3 months without getting offline even once. And while not entirely remote, Pirie is some 200 km from Adelaide.

I have to say the best broadband connection I got so far is over here in Portugal. I get a 24Mb ADSL for ~45 Euros a month (15 of that for my option of unlimited access). I get crazy bandwidth (I downloaded openSUSE torrent, for instance at a steady 290Mbs) and very high uptime.

The problem with many of our ISPs is that they pay bandwidth themselves to the companies who own the lines. Usually this is the limited number of communications companies on each country. In Australia or Portugal, for instance, there's only one. On top of that these companies are sometimes shielded by their respective governments. So the lack of competition forces prices up when there's a host of ISPs wanting to tap on those resources. What's worst, those still oferring services on top of X.25 lines have to pay twice; bandwidth and time.

Can you say MONOPOLY, I knew you could. We don't have that problem as much in the states, as we broke up Ma Bell decades ago. We still have local monopolies, so wherever you live you can only get phone service from one company, btu you can get yoru long distance form anyone, and with cable internet, now there is finally some real competition for internet service at least. I used to live in a small town, and they just got DSL about 2 years ago. Basically it took businesses moving out or refusing to move in because they coudlnt get high speed internet for the local monopoly to realize that 'there might be something to that darn interweb fad'. The same migth apply to Australia, it sounds liek a very busines unfriendly country. Money is good anywhere, business's don't have time to deal with countries that play favorites.

Originally Posted by Mario F.

I didn't have much complaints about with BigPond down under in Port Pirie. The price was a little off, true.

The same account I pay Au$50 for is $85 with Telstra, but with Telstra you have to sign up for at least 12 months, uploads are also included in your quota and you pay for excess data.

Telstra sells a 'Broadband' account [256Kb/s, 400Mb up+down, 24 month contract

I

Originally Posted by Mario F.

Usually this is the limited number of communications companies on each country. In Australia or Portugal, for instance, there's only one.

Telstra was gifted the copper phone network when it was privatised, on the condition that it allows other companies access.

Telstra keeps taking the government, ministers and regulators to court trying to eliminate that access (and claiming it built the network with Telstra money rather than public money).

These court actions are designed to discourage other companies investing in new equipment (DSLAMs etc).

I feel for you novacain. I do agree aussies are generally badly served when it comes to broadband connections. I do remember Telstra relationship with its customers and the general feeling aussies have that Telstra is the enemy.

What annoyed me most about Telstra was the abusive use of fine printing on their contracts and call center tactics. They'd phone you and offer a new you-have-to-love-this plan and before you knew things turned out not to be exactly as you were told.

However, Australia has some specificities to it that few other countries share, and I think this plays a major role on prices and maybe even lack of competition. Australia is an island the size of a continent with just a little over 20 million inhabitants, surrounded by underdeveloped countries (NZ exempt) and whose closest IT neighbor is some 12 flight hours away... I mean, c'mon! Things do tend to be a little expensive on the IT side of life over there.

Kiwis complain a lot to for the exact same reasons.

I used to game with a bunch of kiwis a couple years back, I remember them complaining a ton about the internet service down there.