Pity Broadband Users In Australia

danwarne writes: "Pity Australians who have few other choices for their broadband internet than the country's incumbent telco Telstra. A broadband community website, Whirlpool, has revealed that the giant telco is planning to RAISE prices on broadband again for the second time in just a few months. The telco, which has had a technically disastrous ADSL rollout is also going to be offering incentives for customers to sign up to its cable internet service (HFC) instead, in the form of faster plans for cable customers (until now most customers -- cable and ADSL -- have been limited to 512Kbit download speeds). It seems clear from Telstra's plans that they are preparing to abandon the 'messy' residential broadband market and focus on more profitable business customers." In the next few weeks, lucky Australians will find out if this "leak" is accurate.

Optus

Thank god for Optus. Its cheaper than the gov. sponsored Telstra, it doesn't have ridiculous caps, its faster than Telstra and the service is hassle free. In neighbourhoods where both Optus and Telstra have rolled out cables, Optus is mopping the floor with Telstra guts. Unfortunately, only portions of large metropolitan areas have access to Optus cable.

Quick question - why is Slashdot so interested in DownUnder? Most of these telco idiosynchrocies come from Telstra, not Optus.

Re:Optus

Unfortunately, only portions of large metropolitan areas have access to Optus cable.

Also Optus only provide cable to houses, not apartments. When I enquired about getting connected, as soon as they heard the slash in my address, they said no. Apparently it costs slightly more to hook up an apartment (longer wire needed, I guess) and since they're overflowing with demand, they ignore all apartment dwellers in favour of the more profitable house dwellers.

So here I am with Telstra, wondering if my bill is about to go up $6/month as this rumour would have it. :-(

Go wireless

Help the free public wireless networks: Perth [e3.com.au], Canberra [air.net.au], Melbourne [dyndns.org], Adelaide [air.net.au],Sydney [air.net.au], Gold Coast (QLD) [xtreme.com.au], Tasmania [air.net.au], etc.

We had this coming.

With the way the broadband industry is in Australia and the way that the Australian government here still regards broadband as only a "fanciful" thing, it is no wonder that a telco like Telstra can survive.

We really have no choice. For instance, I used to live in a newly established estate, but because the developers did not design it with trenches, we could not get broadband cable.

As for ADSL, Telstra is selling it wholesale (it owns most of the exchanges) to competition at or higher then it sells to customers... how's that for competition.

good to see teh aussie spirit in this though

Im the author of BPwatcher, a usage meter program that alot of us have to use instead of teh telstra usage meter program to watch our usage and ill tell you this: we certainly dont like getting pushed around us aussie's, the grouping together we do to help each other, and the help we offer each other, the amount of broadband projects cant even begin to be measured, we have the CBP (community broadband project) whirlpool, and a dozen other little groups all trying to get us what we want:

Decent broadband.

Aussies dont just complain, we do something about it!

ADSL in other countries

If you think that Australia has it bad, take a look at how Broadband is doing in Ireland [irelandoffline.com]. The prices [eircom.ie] are like USD100/month for a 512/128 kbit connection with a 3 GIG DL LIMIT!!!!

If you feel sorry for broadband users in Australia, I don't think I have words for what you should feel for broadband users in Ireland.

Re:ADSL in other countries

I hate to break it to you, but I would NOT expect any reasonable sort of ADSL (Always Delayed Slightly Longer [thegreenbacks.com]) before 2003 in Ireland! If you want economic ADSL try 2004 or later! Currently Ireland is an Internet backwater (and the politicians are far from understanding this). Errorcom^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hircom announced an October 2nd launch of their ADSL service simply to squash any other broadband providers AND to delay the rollout of ADSL as long as possible (if you were supplying 99% of the pots and isdn lines AND 90%+ of the leased lines would you want to launch an ADSL service?). By announcing their intention to launch (and alleged pricing structures) they have forced the Office of the Department of Telecommunications Regulators [www.odtr.ie] and their main competitor [esat.net] into legal wranglings to prevent the launch of the service. The basic stumbling block is that the ODTR will not allow Errorcom (fsck them, they seem to be squashing mirrors [google.com], the latest casualty [foot.ie] which had extra info and links to mirrors is now in googles cache [google.com] alone, of the already taken down errorcom.com site) to launch the service until the wholesale pricing is agreed (so errorcom can't jump the market thanks to their public funded monopoly). Unfortunatley over 3 months since this debacle there has been no progress and a lengthy war in court is expected. Even if the wholesale prices are agreed tomorrow and both companies launch their services the minimum 30 days later you should not expect the prices to drop, Irish telecoms operators (and in particular errorcom and es(h)at) have a terrible history of pricing by errorcom charging the most ridiculous amount conceivable (you've seen the proposed prices) and then the "competitors" knock maybe 10% off the price to have a slightly less ridiculous extortianate service.

Basically you should be resigned to modem or very expensive ISDN for the next year in Ireland :-(

PLEASE don't pitty me!

I'm from .au; and my ISP is connexus [connexus.com.au]

They basicly re-sell telstra's ADSL service (they run their own routers, telstra routes my ADSL service from the local loop to their data center)

The speed is 1.5meg down and 256 up. I pay around $au120/month for this, and I can run as many servers as I want, and hog all the bandwidth that I want. No real AUP.

I have to pay per meg over my bandwidth allowance, but I rearly go over that.

An Aussie Broadband Users Perspective

I'm only 17, yet I PAY for my own broadband. In a deal with my parents, they pay for access (US$45 / month) and I pay for ALL bandwidth, I pay US7c/MB for bandwidth. People on Telstra are lucky, they're getting a GOOD DEAL, people on Optus even more so. The reason I pay so much is because I chose to use a business ISP so that I wouldn't get and port blocking (which Optus has) and a garenteed Permanent IP.

Whirlpool is mostly a collection of whining IDIOTS, who don't understand the real costs of running a network (I'm a part-time network admin for several networks includeing Computerbank Victoria (Pro Linux charity www.computerbank.org.au)).

The only problem with broadband in Australia is that the per MB cost is too high, if you use BigPond Direct (one of the main backbone ISP's) the charge is US11c/MB and the cheapest cost that I've seen is with a contract that has cost almost US$50,000 a year for MANY gigs of data at US4.5c/MB.

Pretty expensive, and low cap

From the article, you can't even get an unlimited service. This means that, should you get hacked, or have some dysfunctionnal software, you could get charged mucho $$$ at the end of the month.

They pay 250 for 10GB download / month, this is just insane.

Here I get unlimited 512kbps (128kbps upload) for 50, with good service overall.

What about...

Broadband residential services in Uzbekistan? UZBEKS WANT FAST INTERNET.

Broadband in Ireland

Consider yourselves lucky, guys. Here in Ireland we're still struggling with ISDN as being the 'broadband' solution, both for home and business users. And this is almost entirely down to the national telco (eircom) delaying and delaying on the rollout of (A)DSL. It really sux. I'm typing this over ISDN using both B channels. It costs me the price of a local call ($.05) X 2 every THREE MINUTES. And all for a massive 128K bandwidth! Whoopee!! 8-b

[grumble, growl]

For more details on Ireland's Broadband issues, check out Ireland Off-Line [irelandoffline.com]

Irelands situation is far worse

At least the people of Oz can get residential broadband! As of yet there are are no ADSL or similar products available to the residential market in Ireland. When it was originally proposed, the old semi-state monopoly, the now privatized Eircom, was going to charge 130 per month for a 512k with a 3GB cap! The regulator wants this reduced and ADSL rollout has been delayed yet again. Cable on the other hand is sold by NTL to a small area of Dublin city. Help us out at www.irelandoffline.com

Yes, pity the Australians

They are in such a sad state of affairs. Their broadband is overpriced. How depressing. And to think I was concerned about all those people in the world who don't have water piped to their towns and have no electricity. Having only one ISP is a true travesty in a world where we're drilling holes in the ozone and bombing whole countries to take down a lone, though devious, man. Lets all put our collective effort into rectifying Australia's poor ISP situation in our quest to better the world. We can make a difference.

- ACPlus

I hate bigpond/telstra as much as the next person.

Really, I despise them, their pricing, their services, their customer service is appaling from the experience I had trying to get the flippin dialup off em. And the fact that they might be about to hike prices again according to this leak is damned frustrating.
But this comes along as such a blatant plug for whirlpool, it seems like such a load of bollocks.
whirlpool has the reputation from people Ive talked to that.. well, its comparable to the submission acceptenace / bash windows ratio everyone rants about on slashdot.
It all seems rather sad if you ask me.

Telstra honestly couldn't give a toss about users

I'm an Ozzie, and yes im currently paying for a Telstra ADSL connection.

First off let me tell you all something; there has been absolutely NO corresponding level in broadband service (let alone customer service, but thats another rant) from Telstra to justify this price rise. I've had an account with them for just on 12 months, and aside from a two month period where their network attained something approaching 80% uptime, its been absolute shit.

Secondly, Ziggy and co. have obviously realised that they cannot continue to support the ADSL network. Why? Because they are incompetent, plain and simple. Its very easy to say 'ADSL isnt making us enough money', but it doesnt really hold up when you consider they made a *half yearly* in 2001 of $4 billion AU (about $30 US :P)

When telstra has a problem with their DSL network, their stockstandard response is 'due to the newness and complexity of the ADSL network, the current problem may take some time to fix' (or very close to that). Ahem, excuse me. ADSL may be new to Telstra, but it sure as heck isnt new to the IT world. That's excuse #1. Excuse #2 is also stock standard, 'its problems with the equipement of our provider.' Hmm, I know Alcatel may not have as good a rep as Cisco, but they're not exactly amature. After hearing this excuse for about the 50th time, I'm thinking its just one of about 10 excuses that all Telstra call centre staff have tacked on their cubicle walls.

As for any other form of residential broadband...well, there's Optus I suppose. However, the strength of Optus was always the fact that the nitty gritty of their network was managed by Excite. Now that Excite has exited the partnership, God only knows how their network will fair the next 12 months.

Other than that, this is just one more example of how Telstra couldn't give a toss about their users. Since they were partially privatised, their #1 priority has been share dividends. Service? They only give service if it will make them a greater profit. If they can screw the users and still make some kind of profit, they can and will.

Optus apartments

Rumour has it that the reason Optus don't cable apartments is that the hardware they use for on-property signal splitting can't do it.

I have no factual evidence for this however.

telstra is sinking

I joined telstra in october with the understanding from the tech guys that 4gb a month wouldn't be frowned on and that I will not incur any additional charges, 6 days later they change the pricing plan so for my 4gb I'm paying $180 a month or whatever.. so I complain to the ACCC and then whoever else will listen - Telstra give me a refund on the install (which I'm still yet to see u bastards...) and I've still got their cable modem (cause no one's asked for it back...).

Next I've signed up with Optus and I have to say the speeds are GREAT and the download limits (15gb a month) are 5 times that of Telstra's.

Telstra, with their chopping and changing don't really care about broadband home or small business users. Their plans are the complete opposite to what a competent broadband provide should offer and their download speeds are atrocious. So long as Optus chooses not to go down the same path I'm never going to use Telstra services again.. We have enough time getting broadband as it is without dealing with painful carriers such as Telstra...

Telstra - as u sink.. I DON'T salute you.

Silly question.

Is the reason for high cost access in AU because of the fact that it's basically an island, or is it because the service has to reach into areas that aren't so populated?

I know to AU's that may seem so stupid, but which is it? Could satellite access [on the ISP end] solve this problem?

Forgive me for my ignorance. It makes sense that they charge their users so much if there is a cable from Asia/Indo-China or Hawaii going to AU, but other than that... it doesn't make sense at all.

Don't users in Hawaii get better rates than AU?

Not horrible, just mixed

While I agree the terms aren't all that great, the changes are both good and bad, not the horrible tragedy the article makes them out to be. Cable is going up to "full speed" (with no explanation of what that is), and is probably done because of the restrictions with DSL. It's a lot easy to get cable speed up high than DSL, and I can't blame them for emphasizing DSL over cable (as long as they offer both, who cares?).

The lowest plan will include move MB and be cheaper on DSL (while cable prices stay the same). The extra MB charge will also drop. This is nothing but good.

The 1GB plan is a bad value no matter which service you use apparently.

The 3GB plan will be increasing by $6 for DSL and $15 for cable, but the excess MB prices is dropping. Seems this is worse for cable, not DSL.

The 5GB and 10GB is staying the same except the excess MB charge is dropping. Seems this is good for everyone.

Seems like DSL is actually getting off pretty good here. Yes, they don't get the "full speed", but they get a price break at the lowest level, and the one service that is going up is going up less than cable. And all excess MB charges are going down for both services. Maybe it's because I'm not from Australia and don't know anything about Telstra, but this seems like a more toward being better, not worse.

As a Telstra ADSL user...

I'm quite happy so far. While I've only been with the service for a few months, the only problems I had were solved by me redialing in. I get peek transfers and much more than the 80% uptime people are claiming...

As for the pricing - it is comparable to what I was paying in the US last year. Half those prices and you get around USD$50-$60.

I don't know why these whirlpool guys love to complain soo much - we have other providers to switch to - if you don't like their pricing then don't choose Telstra. I had only one provider for broadband while living in MA, USA and I'm glad I've moved back here where I do have some choice.

The problem with Telstra

Now our government has managed to sell 1/2 of something we already own back to us it's time they hung onto what's left and split the services and infrastructure components in two. This would go a long way towards flattening an otherwise uneven playing ground and protecting our precious infrastructure from a seemingly insane services company. There is no excuse for the amount we're paying for broadband Internet (and we call ourselves the 'knowledge nation'... with internet censorship and the banning of online gambling [both of which cost arms and legs in implementation and lost revenue while having no tangible effect on either!] I tend to prefer 'global village idiot'). The fact we pay for the data itself rather than the size of the pipe, and at rates that have been virtually static for many many years is ridiculous.

ADSL in Norway

I really feel pretty lucky to live in norway where we get 640/384Kb ADSL (and of course no extra charge if you want to download 200GB a month) for 32 a month

or 2048/640 for 82

great shows how devoted Telstra is...

My friend has a Telstra aDSL connection and he gets slow downloads (25-30k/s) compared to the normal download speed (45-50k/s) and not to mention shocking customer support from Telstra (most problems they say "I'm sorry I don't know the answer to that so I can't help you") and lets not forget the recent 3gb download cap.

Oh and the hefty monthly price... you gotta love Australia!! -_-

It's business?

It's simple business. A broadband ISP has to actually MAKE money off of their customers. Upstream bandwidth is extremely expensive, and the residential market has been proven to hog bandwidth with p2p download services. There's no profit to be made when a customer consistently uses their 768k dsl or cable pipe and pays $39/month (US) for it. Broadband ISP's have to rely on the idea that only a part of those resi customers will chug bandwidth, and the less demanding users will "buffer" the effect. But, the fact seems to be that broadband users are bandwidth hungry. Businesses pay more and use less, and are glad that they have a fast and reliable connection. Residential customers, in my "wireless isp operating" experience, complain that we charge $69.95/month for a 512k package, complain that they don't get a /29 with that, complain that they have to buy a bit of hardware, complain that for 5 minutes their mpg ping times went up slightly, and complain about anything possible. Business clients purchase the same package and are happy to have a reliable service and a knowledgeable staff behind it.

It's no wonder broadband providers are either a) priced more than the competition, b) staying away from residential markets, or c) failing.

TransACT

In Canberra, Australia's capital city, TransACT [transact.com.au] is rolling out fibre optic cable to all residential properties (not sure about apartments). The prices are about $29USD for 1Mbps/128kbps or $37 for 2Mbps/256kbps.

The bad news is it is going to take a couple of years to roll it out throughout the city. And not all Australian cities are as lucky. But at least it is better than nothing.

ummmm.....

Doesn't the little blurb explain itself?

Why should a company lose money on a product offering? If they can't make money on cable at the current price simple business sense says they need to change the product somehow.

Slashdot denizens seem to view cheap bandwidth as a god given right that these evil companies are interfering with, as opposed to the truth: It's a good/service you have to pay for (and the companies that provide it ALSO have to pay for)

what happened to...

southern cross cables which lighted their fiber a year ago? (it was /.d)

i mean all of their gigabits (160x2 i believe) are gone to waste?

There is another alternative.

"Unlucky" Austrailians do have another choice: They can go without service. Be glad you at least have that choice. There are those of us whose only choice is dialup.

Telstra gets bagged too much

The reason why, is you're all winging customers. I'm a shareholder - and when you're a shareholder, and you see they've raised the prices, you think "fantastic" as opposed to "crap".

Of course, I don't use them for my broadband services.

-- james

DSL

So, if I told you guys that I was getting 1.5Mbps down and 640Kbps upstream with my Telus DSL up here in Canada for only $40CDN/month ($26US) and unlimited bandwidth, I can be sure you guys will wanna chase me down the street, beating me with a pickle fork and stabbing me with a baseball bat?

--
God did not create the world in seven days; he screwed around for six
days and then pulled an all-nighter.

Pity them my ass...

At least they have broadband, I work for an ISP for crying out loud and can't get any because I live in a rural area. No DSL (Ameritech's fault) no cable (i'm 1000 feet away from the road so it's 'unprofitable' for AT&T Broadband to run a cable drop for me and my neighbor, and want $5000 to do it) and no wireless, but that's my best option if I can get a WiPOP closeby...too many hills to block my line-of-sight reception. I'd get satellite, but why spend all the money if I can't game on it? Pity them my ass, pity me I say.

Much the same in .de

In .de, you're either in a big city, or you don't have much of a choice other than T-Online, which constantly increases prices, and aohell, which requires a proprietary client that isn't even available for any sane OS. And then the govt complains about a lack of IT professionals in the country... They're just all running away to places with sane net access!

US ISPs raising rates too...

My ISP (check elmegil at dslreports.com if you care which one) has raised rates twice in the last 6 months too. First time was a $2 "administrative fee" since I didn't trust them enough to pay them online, second time was the $5 Universal Service Fee, which I thought specifically didn't apply to ISP's. Upon complaint, of course, they say "the other ISP's are doing it!!" and "it was so sudden because we only just recently got our billing software to work right." Reviewing the contract I signed, sure enough, if it's a "tariff" or "fee" they can do whatever the hell they want.

thank god for optus - BULLSHIT!

optus is the only broadband alternative to telstra, but as I am finding out that are just as shit. I've had cable for 1 year, it cost $300 for installation then a one year contract at $75 a month. They suspend/terminate your account for running services. My account got suspended for "apparently" portscanning because some piece of shit paranoid adminstrator can't be confident about his own firewall out there emailed optus with a could be made up log file and said I portscanned him/her/it - so optus decided to suspend my account (no I didn't get hact). Optus also has nazi style bandwidth restrictions, all you get is an average that represents the entire users on the network's download, then if you go 10 times over that average your account gets terminated. Well, I'm still with optus only because telstra are cunts and I don't want to go back to 56k. If another competitor were to ever enter the australian market, and I doubt it for a while coz the cattle herding arseclown govt will most likely stop it, I'm gonna tell optus to shove there cable modem up there arse sideways. Btw, Australia's problem is that there are not enough ppl, 20 million - what kind of market is that, perhaps it's lucky with what it's got.

The cost of bandwidth

Do any Slashdot readers realize how expensive bandwidth really is? This is not uncommon and you will see broadband providers hiking their rates and reducing throughput. These companies are in business to make money, period. Running new fiber costs money. Maintaining a network costs money. Installations cost money. Bill collecting costs money. Everything costs money when you run a business. If a business expects to stick around they have to recoup their costs. They can't sell a T-1 for $79/month and expect to remain profitable let alone break even. You can oversell bandwidth to a point but that catches up over time. Granted a great deal of broadband users are using it for the convenience of no busy signals and an always on connection. It only takes a couple power downloaders(warez hounds) to monopolize service for the rest of the people who actually abide by the terms of service(read yours sometime.) Another thing to consider is providers will charge what the market will bear. This is true for any industry. The limits are here to stay. DSL users better get used to PPPoE and cable users might as well admit that getting 256k for $29.95/month isn't so bad.

Why we complain...

I can't comment on the issues in Austrailia, but I believe I know why we complain about rates going up, service going down, etc. In so many words:

We are spoiled.

I can't remember exactly when real home-based "broadband" began to be rolled out here in America on a large scale basis, I think it was around 1996 or so - all that we had at that time was, at best, 56K modems - if you were lucky, and had a good clean line - most people had only 28.8-33.6, and thought it was great...

But then the rollout began, and people loved it - then the .com boom also picked up steam. "Cheap bandwidth and "flashy" sites for all!" became the cry of the day. A lot of people upgraded from relatively flakey modems, to broadband - and quickly found that always-on broadband changed how they used their computers, and how it affected their lives. Online shopping grew, getting news off the net was better than the TV, sometimes even for local coverage, and finding movie times became that much easier.

Broadband is fast and cheap - and that has become the meme of today. Now, most of us know that broadband is anything but cheap - try getting a T-1 to your house someday - hell, try to get ISDN (I remember a time between 56K modems and broadband where a lot of people were trying to get ISDN, and the articles being written up about the pain it was to do this)! But the everyday "joe" doesn't. He (and really, all of us) are spoiled by the speed and the price.

It wasn't an incremental change (like from 9600 baud modems to 14.4 to 28.8, etc - a jump from 56kbps to 1.5mbps, and higher in some cases) - and now we are going to be forced to go back to something a little more reasonable - slower "broadband", if you want it to stay at a reasonable price.

We need to realize something though - and this is something the cable companies and DSL providers don't want you to realize.

First off, these businesses should tier the service - and allow the consumer to pick and choose what they want. Say, start off with an always-on 56kbps up/down line - allow the consumer to tier the up/down ratio depending on what they want to use the line for - browsing, serving, or a combo (and let the consumer run servers, or VPN, or whatnot - people WANT THIS, although most think of it as P2P). For those doing more serving than browsing, charge an amount on the bandwidth used on the upstream side after a flat amount (say 3 gig a month or something), let them use as much downstream bandwidth as they can (ok, up to a certain point, of course), but do something different if they uploading data. But allow the user to serve this data - just make them pay for it.

This is similar in scope to a combo DSL and T-x service (and ISDN) work, on the billing side. DSL allows you (but not without a fine granualarity, from most providers) to change the tier of service depending on what you want to pay, and T-x/ISDN charges for bandwidth, etc used (also, they allow finer control on tiering).

Let the consumer choose his bandwidth needs (like he chooses his telephone needs), and let him use the line how he chooses (within reasonable limits, but don't stop him from running servers, etc completely). If this were to happen, the sting of going from "unlimited" bandwidth to whatever would be much less, I believe, because the user would see what he is gaining.

However, I don't believe this will ever occur, because the main broadband providers don't want the average joe to be able to serve content, as that would compete with their services (in whatever twisted sense they think of it).

ADSL access

Quit your whingeing - we in South Africa don't even *have* ADSL. Our lone telco believes that incredibly expensive ISDN is sufficient.

The rest of us...

Why should anybody feel sorry for the land down under when a large percentage of the rest of us still don't have the availability of broadband. Or had it at one time and then through bankrupt companies etc...have lost it. If you want to feel sorry for somebody feel sorry for people who are starving and don't even know what a computer is.

ADSL in New Zealand

We'll have dream about a 512kbit down link. Here most have 128kbit. And telecom call *that* broadband.

Telstra's confirmation.........

Whirlpool's Article on it [whirlpool.net.au]

It's official....Telstra's screwing over it's broadband subscribers yet again....

Times like this I remember why I Love my 56k modem :)

You didn't have to read it that way...

Frankly, I'm not sure how you read in the suggestion that people take up arms over broadband -- I simply read it as two separate and distinct strikes against living in Austrailia. Perhaps the lack of taste you complain about is less real than imagined, or (at worst) unintended.

Re:Australians again?

Posting as a Coward for good reason....

Yea, I wouldn't take digs on a whole country like that, especially THAT country. :) I completely understand why you'd prefer that nobody know who you are.