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I recently moved to western Sydney for work, and found an apartment which seemed reasonably priced, perfectly located and reasonably modern.
The rather massive catch, which only became apparent after I moved in and signed the lease, was that it had absolutely no internet connectivity. I worked my way through various ISPs and finally just called Telstra to find out that the phone line couldn't do naked DSL, couldn't do regular ADSL because all the ports in that area were taken, couldn't do cable, NBN is still years away and it was also outside the vivid wireless coverage area so, less than 30km from the centre of Australia's largest city, the reality was I couldn't get any form of regular home internet. Hurrah for Australia.
I toyed with a mobile broadband package but I have housemates and the idea of paying 80$ a month for 20 gig of downloads with massive excess fees doesn't sound particularly appealing.
I then found a very sketchy company which claimed to be able to offer high speeds and unlimited downloads from properties Telstra couldn't service for 79 a month, no lock in contract.
I called them up, got put through to someone who sounded a lot like the comic book guy off the Simpsons and was vague about how it worked and told someone would be out to install my service within 2 hours.
By this point I am seriously skeptical but also quite curious so I say go ahead.
Bloke rocks up within an hour, walks around my house looking out windows, finally picks a window, sticks a aerial device on a suction cup to one of my windows and plugs in a modem and is like okay you're right to go, don't move this device it needs line of sight.
He points out a red flashing light on a high rise building about 5km and says that's the antenna, as long as this antenna is pointed at that antenna it works fine.
A day later it does seem to be working fine, the speed is quite a bit faster than what I got previously at other addresses with adsl and there have been no drop outs. I'm amazed and can't believe I've never heard of anything like this before, but still expect the whole thing to pack up shortly. For the time being though, I'm stoked.
Has anyone used something similar before?
The rather massive catch, which only became apparent after I moved in and signed the lease, was that it had absolutely no internet connectivity. I worked my way through various ISPs and finally just called Telstra to find out that the phone line couldn't do naked DSL, couldn't do regular ADSL because all the ports in that area were taken, couldn't do cable, NBN is still years away and it was also outside the vivid wireless coverage area so, less than 30km from the centre of Australia's largest city, the reality was I couldn't get any form of regular home internet. Hurrah for Australia.
I toyed with a mobile broadband package but I have housemates and the idea of paying 80$ a month for 20 gig of downloads with massive excess fees doesn't sound particularly appealing.
I then found a very sketchy company which claimed to be able to offer high speeds and unlimited downloads from properties Telstra couldn't service for 79 a month, no lock in contract.
I called them up, got put through to someone who sounded a lot like the comic book guy off the Simpsons and was vague about how it worked and told someone would be out to install my service within 2 hours.
By this point I am seriously skeptical but also quite curious so I say go ahead.
Bloke rocks up within an hour, walks around my house looking out windows, finally picks a window, sticks a aerial device on a suction cup to one of my windows and plugs in a modem and is like okay you're right to go, don't move this device it needs line of sight.
He points out a red flashing light on a high rise building about 5km and says that's the antenna, as long as this antenna is pointed at that antenna it works fine.
A day later it does seem to be working fine, the speed is quite a bit faster than what I got previously at other addresses with adsl and there have been no drop outs. I'm amazed and can't believe I've never heard of anything like this before, but still expect the whole thing to pack up shortly. For the time being though, I'm stoked.
Has anyone used something similar before?
