Australia Gets 8Mbit/s Broadband now, 20Mbit Soon 407
danwarne writes "Whirlpool is reporting the 'bad old days' of slow, expensive broadband in Australia might be over, with the large ISP iiNet unveiling broadband internet up to 8Mbit/s, from $29/mth. It has been installing its own DSLAMs into the exchanges of Australia's incumbent telco, Telstra, which limits internet access speeds to a maximum of 1.5MBit/s. iiNet boss Michael Malone says as soon as the ADSL2+ standard is approved for use in Australia (which should be in a month or two), he intends to switch the DSLAMs over to offering 20Mbit/s speeds. It looks like Telstra and Optus, the two incumbent telcos in Australia might have their duopoly on high speed broadband (10Mbit/s cable internet) challenged, with potentially great ramifications for price competition in Australia. The only downside noted by Whirlpool readers is that iiNet is forcing customers to take their long distance phone service as well to get access to the 8Mbit/s speeds, a move which is ironically reminiscent of the tactics used by Telstra and Optus."
capped to 5GB/month (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:capped to 5GB/month (Score:3, Funny)
Wow thats slow.
Re:capped to 5GB/month (Score:2)
Re:capped to 5GB/month (Score:2)
I'm with iiNet on one of their old 256/128 plans. I get 12 Gig peak, 12 Gig off peak for A$49.95 a month. That same price gets 1 Gig peak, 1 Gig off peak. I think I'll wait for the quotas to move to something sensible before I switch.
Re:capped to 40GB/month (Score:2)
Thats still only 128kbit/sec. Horrible.
Re:capped to 40GB/month (Score:4, Informative)
it is 8Mbit/s.
No one in Australia is ever under the misaprehension that they have unlimited downloads, so they always look at both the speed and the download allowance, and therefore choose a plan that has the right combination of download size and speed.
Leechers are probably always better off with slower plans with larger allowances (and unlimited ones do exist at a lot of ISPs, but obviously cost a little more than capped ones), but the rest of us are quite happy to be able to download the occasional
We have better things to do with our time than spend all day, every day downloading DVDs we'll never watch.
40GB is more than enough for most mortal uses.
Complaining about caps simply DOES NOT APPLY to Australian broadband, because apart from the very early days when barely anyone used it and Telstra and Optus cable were the only way you were going to get it anyway, ISPs have always capped the plans, and always been very clear about the capping.
Re:capped to 40GB/month (Score:2)
Re:capped to 5GB/month (Score:3, Informative)
iiNet usually upgrade the plans every 3 months or so, and the quota is quite often doubled each time.
Re:capped to 5GB/month (Score:2)
An equivalent home plan without fixed IP looks like it's about fifty bucks a month. I'm not complainin
Re:capped to 5GB/month (Score:2)
Plus free national phone calls through the ADSL router (which also gives me an extra phone #), and access to a few TV channels, or a lot through subscription. TV eats into the bandwidth though since it is delivered through VLC.
That might sound fine (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That might sound fine (Score:5, Informative)
Part of this of course (it's not like ISP's don't want more bandwidth) is the enormous costs of DS-3/OC-3 etc lines. While a 1.5/384 or 8/1megabit, etc line might run the customer $40 a month a single DS-3 in my neck of the woods (even if you are on the fiber loop and they don't have to charge you per mile runs) will easily run > $8,000 dollars a month depending on your service agreements, etc.
Re:That might sound fine (Score:3, Interesting)
I use roadrunner in austin, If I wanted to send a file to someone else in austin, it goes at my normal upstream cap of 50kB/s. If I could get a good 500Kb/s or so, they arnt really hurting (The line to my house is easily capable of it, and if it never leaves roadrunners edge, they arn't paying for it..). And then the free adver
Re:That might sound fine (Score:3, Informative)
I think the problem is that the system you described is it would be hard to implement. Currently, for both Cable and DSL, the circuits are provisioned at a set speed - at the DSLAM (for DSL) and at the Cable Modem for Cable. For your system to work you'd have to allow whatever provisioning you'd want at the DSLAM or Cable modem (whatever, 10mbps/6 mbps) and then run QoS controls on a router to traffic shape everything else. This would cost more - you'd have to invest in some beefier routers - and be harder
Re:That might sound fine (Score:2)
Re:That might sound fine (Score:2)
If you have your own sxc connection you can also reduce your international transit costs significantly.
Plus even if you do use telstra as your upstream provider when your buying more than 155mbps the cost is massivly cheaper. The more you buy the cheaper it gets and t
Re:That might sound fine (Score:2)
Telstras list price (as of last week) was still $18,000/mo.
I can get cheaper access in New Zealand than in Australia but all that is back hauled to Sydney before it hits the US so I don't buy into the expensive international transit. Besides most of the pacific links are far from capacity and the capacity goes up every year.
What I've noticed is bandwidth to smaller users is increasing in p
Nice, now when are the RIMs going? (Score:4, Insightful)
You bastards! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You bastards! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You bastards! (Score:2)
Bah...lucky Australians (Score:3)
Re:Bah...lucky Australians (Score:2)
How often do you actually download something at 5.0Mb/s? There are only a handful of servers in the world that would let a public internet connection download at that speed...
Re:Bah...lucky Australians (Score:2)
I max out my 4 megabit line pretty routinely, actually. I'm having difficulty feeling envious, though, as I nearly never have to wait for anything.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Bah...lucky Australians (Score:2)
As for how often do I actually speeds? Well, whenever I'm downloading torrents, I get around 600kbps (steady, not peak).
Re:Bah...lucky Australians (Score:2)
How often do you actually download something at 5.0Mb/s? There are only a handful of servers in the world that would let a public internet connection download at that speed...
Pretty much every few days with Gentoo updates and such. http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/ [aarnet.edu.au], http://mirror.pacific.net.au/ [pacific.net.au], and http://planetmirror.com/ [planetmirror.com] are all open to the public (well, mirror.aarnet.edu.au is reportedly .au only, I've never had the chance to see for myself), and very fast from my broadband connection here in Melbourne.
Re:Bah...lucky Australians (Score:2)
Re:Bah...lucky Australians (Score:2)
Hey at least SBC will likely let you use the full 6TB/month that you could pull with 20mbit, right?
Re:Not so lucky (Score:3, Insightful)
It's available to such a small slice of the population with such small data allowances, only the truly stoned and miraculously wealthy will be in line for it.
Picture a pair of cans connected by a string hanging over a cesspool. That is the current Australian "Broadband" situation.
Re:Bah...lucky Australians (Score:2, Interesting)
99.9% of australian broadband adsl servers provide download caps. Normally this is between 5gig to 15/20gig and is split into peak/off peak hours. Once that is passed there will be an extra charge or the service will be slowed down to 32-64kb/s depending on the provider.
Also on the story in order to get that you need to bundle with their phone service too ($29.95 per month AU), and you need to be on their DSLAM. Otherwise you are limited to 1.5Mb.
Alot of users are complaining ab
Re:Bah...lucky Australians (Score:2)
Re:Bah...lucky Australians (Score:2)
Re:Bah...lucky Australians (Score:2)
only 256k up? (Score:2)
Re:only 256k up? (Score:2)
Re:only 256k up? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:only 256k up? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me tell you about telstra.
When I had my internet connection moved from another ISP to iiNet, they had to plug me into the iinet DSlam. Normally this would be a simple thing to do- just move the cable to the next rack and plug me back in.
Telstra, however, turns this into:
1: request disconnection
2. after a few days, tech goes out and unplugs me
3. Telstra sends a bill
4. Pay bill
5. request connection
6. after a few days, tech goes out and plugs me in
7. Pay bill
8. Line doesn't work. Turns out telstra fucked up
9. request telstra to fix it
10. wait a few days, tech goes out and fixes it
11. Telstra sends a bill
12. pay bill
well, you get the point.
Re:only 256k up? (Score:2)
However, in Areas where iiNet have installed their own DSLAM's, the upload speed is unlocked, i.e it will go right up
Re:only 256k up? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nowadays it's cheaper to buy hosting at XYZ company for $100/yr and do it that way rather than host your own web site, and very rarely do buisness customers (I assume) go through their telco for webhosting, so it would make sense to no longer artifically restrict the bandwidth to home users.
Re:only 256k up? (Score:2, Insightful)
"The ITU has approved a global industry standard for full-rate ADSL, known as G.992.1, or G.dmt. This specification calls for operation rates of up to 10 Mbps downstream and up to 768 kbps upstream when operating over telephone lines at distances of up to 18,000 feet."
So basically the specification for the signalling has allocated a slab of the frequencies to upload, and the rest to download. Your provider can mix and match within that, but I expect that due to sign
Re:only 256k up? (Score:2)
Thanks for solving/helping me solve this mystery.
Re:only 256k up? (Score:4, Informative)
The reason is that most ISP data centres run servers (lots of outbound, little inbound) and retail customers (lots of inbound, little outbound). This "evens out" bandwidth usage.
Even if I had 20M... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sliding Windows Re:Even if I had 20M... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Even if I had 20M... (Score:3, Informative)
Nice, but I cannot get DSL! (Score:2)
Re:Nice, but I cannot get DSL! (Score:2)
Re:Nice, but I cannot get DSL! (Score:2)
TV Commercials in US? (Score:2)
I reflexively call bullshit and assume they just want to kill the CLEC's and are holding broadband hostage for it, but maybe someone here can verify or refute this.
RTFM (Score:5, Informative)
yeah, (Score:3, Funny)
Unfortunately, bandwidth costs in Australia... (Score:4, Informative)
There are various plans at various rates - one provider offers 512/128 for $70/month with no restrictions, not sure about the cost for higher peaks. I wouldn't look for any vast improvement over this sort of capped plan for at least another 5 years, and that's only assuming the standards don't improve the peak speed even further.
iiNet have spent $10M on installations, and only have customers numbering in the tens of thousands of dollars. They obviously can't give the service away, but the rates are still reasonable especially compared with the telco offerings. As I understand it, there are still per Mb costs from at least some of our international trunk providers too. Anyone who can refute that, or that has details?
Re:Unfortunately, bandwidth costs in Australia... (Score:2)
It's a little bit like the United States [slashdot.org] here. You can provide for the areas along the coasts where most Australians live, but attempting to expand beyond that means providing more and more infrastructure for not nearly as many people, and therefore much less return on investment.
Having said that, iiNet's new plans still don't beat cable. I'm paying $60/month for "unlimited" (possible traffic shaping after 10Gb--last month I transferred 30Gb without it) data transfer, unlimited downstream (I've gotten up
Re:Unfortunately, bandwidth costs in Australia... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not quite true; Australia is one of the most urbanized 1st world countries.
>95% of the population live in the major cities.
Which is also why they are offering wireless internet (http://www.unwired.com.au/ , http://www.iburst.com.au/ )
Re:Unfortunately, bandwidth costs in Australia... (Score:2)
The problem with expensive stuff in Australia is a result of anti-competitive upstream providers and paperwork that is just nasty.
Re:Unfortunately, bandwidth costs in Australia... (Score:3, Informative)
I believe many Australians are still dreaming of 180+ square metre homes on quarter acre blocks, and even if they don'
I am with iiNet and on the new plans (Score:4, Informative)
There is also an error in the above summary
The only downside noted by Whirlpool readers is that iiNet is forcing customers to take their long distance phone service as well to get access to the 8Mbit/s speeds
iiNet are not forcing you to take their long distance phone service, you need to sign up with their complete phone service, not just long distance. My local calls and line rental charges are all through iiNet now, not just long distance.
Got datacap? (Score:2)
I don't see any
Re:Got datacap? (Score:2)
They don't offer unlimited, I have a 10GB limit.
By saying "download heaps" I mean have say iiNet's internet radio service running and downloading a few files at high speed while browsing.
Their heavy plan has 80GB limit which would be enough for most people I would imagine and still is a good price.
Re:Got datacap? (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Require LD? (Score:5, Funny)
I live in the USA. For an 8Mbit/s line, I would not only gladly accept having to use their LD, I would also turn over my liver and owe them some unspecified favor involving dead bodies.
bandwidth (ATM/IP) and a poll (Score:2)
I'd like to start a poll (I hope there isn't some good-manners-principle here on
Please tell your *actual* bandwidth, in Mbps (megabits per
Re:bandwidth (ATM/IP) and a poll (Score:2)
Re:bandwidth (ATM/IP) and a poll (Score:2)
no cap limits, all for 399 SEK/month ($57 USD). my bandwidth utilization over a month is well over 1TB per month. capping sucks. if you have speed; you dont want to be restricted as to how much you can download.
Re:bandwidth (ATM/IP) and a poll (Score:2)
As a broadband using Australian (Score:2)
However press like this can only be good, even if it is a bit shifty.
Sure, nice speed... (Score:2, Funny)
Situation in France (Score:2, Informative)
Sure, the country is not as wide as Australia (people are more concentrated), and only half the population is covered (others can get a 512k. the providers should yet reach 80% of
Upload still 256k!!! (Score:2)
http://www.iinet.net.au/broadband/
256k is useless to me. I don't even need 2mbit download.
What would be perfect would be a cheaper connection at say,
- maybe half the price
- maybe even only 256down
- but 1mbit up
Re:Upload still 256k!!! (Score:2)
Switzerland (Score:2)
So I am now in Switzerland. Beautiful country. However, the bandwith situation is pretty bad: 786kbs up / 128kbs down dsl for a monthly cost of 32 euros (US$42).
Basically it seems that the historic operator (Swisscom) controls the lines and there is no competition. The situation was the same 4 years ago in France, until under the pressur
The 'quota' might suck... (Score:2)
iiNet should be congratulated for dragging the rest of Australia's Telco industry kicking and screaming into the modern day of broadband.
Wait a second... (Score:3, Funny)
No more "you americans whine about your crappy broadband but here in australia, we won't get internet for another 30 years" ?
Thank god.
Re:Wait a second... (Score:4, Funny)
10mbit connection... and signing up for long dist. (Score:2)
You have a 10mbit connection, sue you can sign up for thier long distance, and then make all you own VOIP calls. Heck use Skype. The real problem is many companies are geared up to make money off providing packet switched network telephony, but every man and his dog can easily use free voice (voice to landline is like 2 cents a minute intl. over Internet)
That is like saying, we will give you this hydrogen car for free, but you must buy your petrol from us (th
italy (Score:2)
(to say in a low voice: 640.. KB/sec... damn...)
will work for bandwidth. (c)
broadband2 not worth it (Score:2)
I pay 40 dollars for this plan. Yes, i have iiphone packaged with it which means i get $10 dollars off the original price of $50.
For a similar price, this is
Re:VoIP (Score:2)
Re:VoIP (Score:2, Interesting)
If iiNet force us to sign up and preselect to their long distance (i.e. you get carried by them by default) can't we just override on a per call setting?
If so, we can still use our preferred long distance carriers, while getting the benefit of 8M broadband...
Re:VoIP (Score:2)
Re:Michael is gone! (Score:3, Interesting)
Michael's departure, if true, would be the best thing to happen to Slashdot in a long time... and I've got two karma points to burn for saying so.
Anyone got the sordid details?
Re:Michael is gone! (Score:4, Insightful)
Michael's departure, if true, would be the best thing to happen to Slashdot in a long time... and I've got two karma points to burn for saying so.
I've been reading slashdot for a few years, but have no preferences amongst the editors. I've never noticed anything negative about Michael.. However I have noticed the frequent "MICHAEL SUXX!" posts from a bunch of AC's.
Why do people dislike him so much?
Can someone please enlighten me?
Re:Michael is gone! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Michael is gone! (Score:3, Interesting)
If Fox news (say) comes out with something equally as biased (eg. some company didn't get good support with open source, well what do you expect from a bunch of commie hippies who make it in their spare time) then
Re:Michael is gone! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I don't live in Australia (Score:2)
Re:I don't live in Australia (Score:2)
Well, there's nowhere as cold as New England, but Northern Australia would get as hot as Florida. And both countries have sizable deserts (although Australia has a greater proportion of desert).
I've never lived in Melbourne, but I love visiting there. It's a wonderful city.
Re:I don't live in Australia (Score:2)
Re:I don't live in Australia (Score:2)
and the humidity is 99.9%, don't forget that. It can be really uncomfortable if you are not used to it, like me.
Re:Yay Australia (Score:2, Informative)
It's about time we get decent broadband, too bad its from some no name company that no one has ever heard of.
Re:Yay Australia (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yay Australia (Score:2, Informative)
We've had telstra hindering our speeds for years, and we've been paying for it... iinet has worked around this by rolling out its own infrastructure. trust me, if you lived here or been following it a bit more closely you'd know how many australians envied the US... of course now we envy Hong Kong and Korea :)
Re:Yay Australia (Score:2)
Re:I wonder.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead there are upfront and well documented (sometimes part of the plan name itself) limits.
Usually fairly small too by North American Cable based broadband standards.
But we know they're there, they're not hidden, and you usually choose your plan based on the right combination of speed vs downloads for you.
Re:Meh. (Score:2)
Re:Sounds like a move in the right direction (Score:2)