Aust. 'innovated' that ages ago, unfortuantely.

Post #34,906 by Meerkat 4/9/02 9:42:48 PM Reply	Aust. 'innovated' that ages ago, unfortuantely. It's pretty much the standard model for all dial-up connections - pay so much per month, get so much free. Or you pay a higher monthly fee for "unlimited" service. With Cable there's basically Optus and Telstra. Telstra's most popular Cable plan is 3GB a month, and 11c per MB thereafter (I think). Optus (currently) have a much better idea - use what you like, but don't overdo it. If you're using more than ten times the bandwidth of everyone else, you're kicked from the service. It's on a two week rolling average, and you can check the average at any time. Funny in a way - kinda encourages everyone to download as much as possible so the average is kept high :) ADSL - the general consensus still seems to be It's Too Sucky. Expensive, and low quality service. My ISP (dial-up) changes $9.95 a month, for 80MB a month. It was 100MB but they just dropped it. After that it's around 17c a MB I think, but a monthly bill will never rise above $29.95 a month. On and on and on and on, and on and on and on goes John.
Post #34,922 by static 4/10/02 12:11:22 AM Reply	And N.A. starts moving into line with everyone else... ... <rant> which is one of my pet peeves of a number of North American internet-enabled offerings: they expect your Internet link to be unmetered. Grr. </rant> ADSL in Au has only one problem: and it's called Telstra. Telstra are in the highly suspect position of providing raw ADSL as a wholesale service whilst also being a customer of same product. They had to be forced to sell raw ADSL to other ISPs because they wanted the whole market for their own. Unfortunately, BigPond ADSL is widely regarded as the worst ADSL provider in AU, so little wonder the ACCC got the sharp stick out and began poking. They need to keep poking because I've heard that there are no SLAs between Telstra and the ISPs so when there are problems Telstra really don't care. (Techs who have worked on the network blame all the troubles on the PPPoE Authentication equipment, BTW. If you can get an ADSL service that doesn't use PPPoE Authentication, the service is very stable, I hear.) Naturally, none of the Telstra shareholders - including the government (specifically Senator ack spit Alston) - want to fix this. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #34,925 by Meerkat 4/10/02 12:54:59 AM Reply	It's a glowing recommendation... ...when all the Telstra ADSL ads say 'Always On'*. With the asterisk being along the lines of 'there will be outages from time to time, deal with it, we're not obliged to have this thing running 24/7.' When the ads tell you it's unreliable, you have to wonder. I haven't even enquired about getting ADSL at my place while it's in such a mess. (And due to living in an older place I expect I'd be 'pair-gained' out of ADSL access anyway...) On and on and on and on, and on and on and on goes John.
Post #34,938 by ben_tilly 4/10/02 8:05:48 AM Reply	So "always on" really means... we don't bother scheduling the downtime? Cheers, Ben "... I couldn't see how anyone could be educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything." --Richard Feynman
Post #35,047 by Meerkat 4/10/02 9:45:55 PM Reply	Good point - I like it! :) On and on and on and on, and on and on and on goes John.

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