Telstra finally the frontrunner in CABLE connections?

[mighty mick]

as isaid before i wouldnt go with telstra on the principle of being burnt before when the cable was down.

do the new telstra plans give you dialup back up? if they have problems, many other adsl isps do. netspace being just one of the many.

actually found out who voted bigpond the best isp. this was taken from the telstra hompage:

As voted by Australian Telecom Magazine Awards 2003. gees they voted for themselves

 

[Seb]

Optus have hit back with a 'temporary' plan. Whilst many people are ecstatic with these temporary deals, i still feel that the price isn't really justified.

OptusNet customers may have received the email, if not the details of the 'temporary' plans can be found here

I would have enjoyed a drop in price, might be worth reverting to a 550MB account, simply because it's cheaper.

 

[Grendel]

This is the cheapest that I've come across.

Unfortunately still to much for my poor finacial state to cope with... (dial up for me.. and thats sending me broke too) but a mate does have it... and I spend a LOT of time at his place nowdays!

 

[topdon]

Was going to switch to Netspace (i have Optus cable), but thankfully Telstra has thrown things right open. Optus have announced that the 3GB limit will be doubled to 6GB for January and Febuary, and new plans will be realeased in March. I expect Optus to outdo Telstra, like they always have. Sadly, i don't believe that us Optus cable subscribers will see the return of Netstats

For ppl interested, cheak out the Whirlpool forums:

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/

 

[error404]

the one thing I have found is you get what you pay for, but being a reseller, I get my ADSL paid for me by my ISP

http://www.ozzienet.net/default.asp?ID=595

An email from my ISP:

After several months of research and negotiations we are please to launch our new range of ADSL Broadband accounts. The ADSL broadband market is growing rapidly and for some people this is becoming a good proposition when evaluating the difference between paying for a second phone line and dial up cost compared to pricing becoming available in the market place.

Whilst we have seen a lot of cheap ADSL accounts being promoted by various ISPs like most things you get what you pay for, we have build our business on providing Premium Products and we do not intend to change this philosophy.

Having said that it is important that you our Distributor are aware of some of the pitfalls in the ADSL Broadband market especially in relation to pricing the main issue here is contention ratios (what is contention ratios?).


Contention ratios are the number of people being allowed access to a particular data feed and how well it is managed. i.e. if you sign up for a 512kbps download speed account and the ISPs contention ratio or the amount of people given access to this data feed is say 10 to 1 (which by the way is an extremely good ratio) the average download speed is going to be around 50 kbps in other words you do not get the full download speed of 512kbps. Many ISPs are running contention ratios of 60 and up to 100 to 1 or more this effectively means that at peak load times they are getting download speeds of 5kbps or less depending on how the data feed is managed, which in effect in some cases is slower than existing 56K dial up speeds. This is obviously why they can offer far cheaper prices than what we have been able to offer. Unfortunately some people have signed up for contracts which run for 12, 18 or 24 months and whilst they initially were getting good speeds as more people have come on board they have found that their download speed has reduced dramatically but unfortunately they are locked in for the contract period.


We have had several ex customers phone us and advise that our dial up accounts were faster than their new ADSL Broadband accounts and that they wished they had never changed.


The current ADSL Broadband accounts that we offer are on the basis of an average 10 to 1 with a maximum of 15 to 1 and are therefore classed as premium accounts and we are unable to change that situation with our existing data provider.


As mentioned earlier after exhaustive investigations and negotiations with various data suppliers we have entered into a supply agreement which will allow us to offer ADSL Broadband accounts at a substantial reduction in price but without a major compromise in quality. These new accounts will run contention ratios of an average of 30 to 1 which is extremely good in comparison with equivalent or cheaper priced products in the market place. We still intend to offer our Premium accounts for those people that require premium ADSL access.


To enable us to give the best prices possible we are offering these in three categories depending on the Telstra classification of your telephone exchange which are Metro, Regional 1 and Regional 2.

 

[mighty mick]

links to price plans for telstra adsl and cable

and here are the adsl plans


if you take note of price plans and download limits before you get free unlimited downloads, theres at least $70,00 bucks to pay a month.

many will be caught in the cheaper price plans paying by the meg
without shaping many will be up for big bucks before they know it.

give me account shaping anyday, i knew id find the fine print sooner or later, remember many are not computer savvy and will jump into these plans without looking and eventually we will hear the complaints against expensive telstra products once again

cheers mm

 

[error404]

Most of the people I have signed up for the internet have come to me after a bad experience with their ISP. eg: newbies that signed up for $9.95 per month with unlimited time and download. What a lot of people don't under stand with ADSL is many ISP's charge for upload as well as download. leave kazaa on over night and see how much has been uploaded. Ask your ISP about contention ratios ( 10-1??? 60-1??? )