BC, i remembered that you are on Bigpond ADSL. How do you react to their 3GB limit? Compared to cable, ADSL have additional overhead and this is counted towards the 3GB. This is definately not fair from unlimited to 3GB limit. We are already more expensive in terms of price compared to cable and we are now slapped with the same limit.

:bawling:

what are the options, in terms of cable vs. dsl, and where are you? is it a country wide provider or are there different ones for each region? and how much are you paying if you don't mind m asking...

i'm moving there in september, and need a reliable setup...

I was not very impressed at all when I got the email...
I for once don't have any other options :angry: but to saty with telstra bigpond.

But I am not going to stay quite.
The thing is what can we do cause I use more than 3gb a month.

and I think that means transfers upload/download. :angry:

If anyone in Australia knows what we could do about it please lets us know.

Originally posted by DJ
broadband in Australia sucks !!!

Take out the "broadband in!!!!!!!!" :D :D Sorry, /me has finals and needed humor. Australia rules btw :cool:

Feel sorry for you :bawling:

Oooohh.... I get to step on the soap box! :D

DJ : Yes, I'm on BigPond, but not ADSL - I'm on cable. As far as I'm aware the 3GB limit has also only been recently implemented by Telstra on us cable users. In Telstra's new AUP (http://www.bigpond.com/broadband/support/aup.asp) it states that you will be asked to upgrade to a different plan if you go over 3GB from October 1st.

I'll put it this way : consider yourself lucky. Even up to about 18 months ago, bandwidth allotment on plans ranged from 100MBs per month to about 1GIG. They finally changed the plan because too many users were leaving and the majority of users (including myself) had made our displeasure very, very clear.

Right now I'm transferring about 1.3GBs/month so I'm doing OK (and I don't foresee myself going much higher in the near future ;)) but I've heard some very similar complaints.

i am a : you're in trouble if you want broadband. You're stuck with only two main residential providers (Telstra (http://www.telstra.com) and Optus@Home (http://www.optushome.com.au)) and broadband is near non-existent in rural areas (though it's making very slow progress). Setup costs are higher compared to the US but general pricing compared to similar plans in the US is about the same. Problem is you won't get pure cable - you'll get about 150-300KB/second on good days. (blame the 3 or 4 pipes we have from Australia to the rest of the world :( ). ADSL has only recently been installed and unless you live about 3.5 miles from a telephone exchange, don't expect to get it. The ADSL rollout has finally be completed though and you can expect a 7/10 chance of getting ADSL.

Problem is, our dial-ups are so crap (thanks to our phone lines + capacity problems) that if you want any semblance of speed you have to go cable/ADSL. ISDN is so horribly overpriced here that it's not even worth considering.

Currently the cheapest cable/adsl plans are about $26US/month.... Have a look at the two providers' pricing pages to get a clearer idea (http://www.optushome.com.au/pricing.html for Optus@Home and http://www.bigpond.com/Broadband/cable/pricing.asp for Telstra).

eddie : yes, the total bandwidth allocation includes both upstream/downstream traffic. Do what we did last time, and keep track of the bigpond.users newsgroups because if you want to start a mini-revolt, you'll find plenty of willing users there.

BC, you are only transferring 1.3 GB / month? Thats too low for a ADSL user.

For me, i have been surfing for the past 2 hours and i have chewed up 50MB in upstream & downstream ( just surfing ). How am i gonna to survive on 100MB perday? How about downloading software & etc? I subscribe to ADSL to listen to internet radio and etc. Basically, telstra killed all those services that broadband offers. I'm not one of those ppl who download porns & etc, but there are so much things on the web that eats up bandwidth, now with bigger & bigger html files on the web due to flash, graphics & etc.

BC, there is no other plan from 1 Oct onwards, you have 2 options.

1. Once you reached 3GB upload & download, you only have access to email & telstra pages.

2. Pay 0.26 cents for additional 1MB of traffic. Thats like 260 per GB !!!!

Do take note that we ADSL users have additional overhead in our traffic that are not part of the data that we wants to download. So basically, the 3GB limit is like 2.5 GB to us ADSL users.

I have submitted to cancel the service & i'm gonna missed broadband days since optus@home is not available in my area. :bawling:

I think the best way to describe Telstra's ADSL is that it's been "disappointing". I haven't tried it, I'm still on a 56K.

BC -
Problem is you won't get pure cable - you'll get about 150-300KB/second on good days. (blame the 3 or 4 pipes we have from Australia to the rest of the world :( ).

Is that really the problem or are you just exaggerating? I know it sounds like a silly question, but we have the TransACT optic fibre rollout going on in the ACT, so I'm wondering if those pipes will slow traffic down on that too? It's supposedly going to be 4 or 5 times faster than ADSL (from memory, I could be wrong, but that was certainly a comparison of maximum speeds, actual speed will be rather much lower I would suspect), but would those pipes pull it down to only just scrape past ADSL performance for international traffic? Local traffic speed will be giving people blisters, I'm just wondering if international traffic will be "disappointing" as well.

DJ : that's how much traffic I use per month. My parents also use a sizable amount of traffic :D

For all who are interested in the debate, you may want to have a look at The Age's coverage :

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/2001/06/06/FFXHH7FZLNC.html

Lawrence : it depends on the load placed by other users. Obviously the more users you have on the network the more your network performance (i.e. the cable network) suffers. Local speeds are obviously pretty good, but from memory we only have about 3-4 major OCx lines (3 from Telstra, the new one from Southern Cross Cable and 1 from AARPNet which only Universities use) and about 5 backup lines that link us to the rest of the world.

Well what I'm trying to work out is if TransACT will really be all that much better than ADSL for retrieving data from foreign servers if those few lines Australia has tend to get a little crowded. What I'm thinking is that while data will be moving nice and fast on local cables, it's still going to slow when it gets to those international ones, so that TransACT won't have a whopping advantage over ADSL in terms of speed. Is that about right?

For an overview of Australia local connectivity and to the rest of the world, take a look at this page

http://telstra.com.au/bigpond/direct/aboutnet.htm#australia

Lawrence,

What BC said is actually better than the situation. For Telstra cable user and ADSL user, the speed is capped at 512kbps eventhough they could run much faster. It is like having a FERRARI and drive at 50km/h all the time :angry: . For Optus@home user, the speed is so called "uncapped", but the speed is somehow limited and definately much faster than Telstra. Based on what i heard, accessing Aussies site using Optus@home at least 100KB can could go up to 500KB from fast servers. I actually did a test from one of their shop downloaded from weinbar at 200KB/sec. So it do depends on the server serving. Some users said they downloaded at 1MB/sec during wee hours in the morning using flashget.

The reason i'm not accepting this change in AUP is because Telstra said it will improve network performance by having this limit. But what is there to improve? The service is already capped at 512kbps and i'm currently at the MAXIMUM speed. If currently, my speed is at 300kbps and after the limit is imposed, i get 512kbps, then i do agree on better performance.

Another thing is that 3GB is definately too low for broadband contents. If i were to continue, i could have used up the 3GB in 15 days or 20. Then i could just shut my bloody computer off and get no access since the extra MB is gonna be so expensive. I'm a university student doing computing and spends like 6-8 hours online everyday thus the reason for the high load. I just installed Stat & Perf and it shows 170MB (up & down) so far from yesterday night till tonight. Even Optus is having a much more reasonable download limit where it is 10 times the average users.

Today went to get the CD from Optus for dialup access. $37.50 for 250 hours. I will have to fork out extras for telephone charges ( about $18 ). Thus comes to about $55 and still cheaper than ADSL which is at $105. Access will be much slower and i will need to spend more time online due to slower access :( Trying to move to a place with Optus@Home soon, but Optus@Home is not available everywhere. :bawling:

DJ, where are you located? There have been quite a few situations where I've managed to get about 285kbps..... Though generally I'm sitting around 100-150kbps.

I'm located in Melbourne.

BC, if you are talking about kbps which means 285kbps = 28.5KB/sec? then your quality is damn poor. I'm able to hit 512kbps all the time meaning 50KB/sec download which is the capped speed. Thus i will never ever get any improvement due to AUP change.

The latest i heard is 35 cents for extra 1MB after 3GB. Damn, that is $350 for 1GB. Might as well you get another account and get another 3GB for $105. These Telstra ppl are idiots. Then Online gaming at Wireplay is not counted towards that 3GB limit, then this is being UNFAIR to us non-gaming customer.

The article located at http://whirlpool.net.au/

As earlier, i have already said about the unfairness of setting the same limit for cable & ADSL users. Here is another one. It seems that ACCC & TIO cant do anything about it.

By the way, BC, do you have a saved copy of the agreement when you sign up? Do they state UNLIMITED (subject to AUP) in the agreement or they just state (subject to AUP)?

DJ, you heard me. 28.5KB/sec. It's ridiculous.... Though this morning it seems to have improved back to about 400kbps for the first time in about 3 or 4 weeks. I'm going to keep running tests all day to check on this..... It may be another cable user 'hog' living in my area.....

I don't have a saved copy, but I believe it states 'unlimited' as long as it's not unreasonable usage (e.g. hogging about 10-20% of the network).

Much like unlimited bandwidth :rolleyes: