Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Don't be Fooled with Fast NBN Internet

corrected and updated 2 October 2010

My terminology - Please note:

"speed" is the speed per second
"download" is monthly download usage

Preliminary:

I do not download music or movies
I have been using twitter full-time over past month
I am a consumer not an IT expert and should not have to be IT expert, I am one of millions

On 21 September 2010, I went into my internet account to downscale my plan as I had only used approx 16 gig download for the month of August-September.

I was on 1.5 mbps speed + 50 gig download ADSL. I have been fine with 1.5 mbps speed but did not need 50 gig download. Maybe 25 gig download would have been fine.

When I arrived at the "Change your plan" page there were no options for ADSL.

The only plans I could choose were ADSL 2+. It was cheaper than my slower speed plan so took it. That was one sure sneaky way to get me to sign up for faster broadband.

New plan was to commence on 24 September 2010, when it changed exactly is not clear but somewhere on or after this date it changed.

My current plan speed is now (up to) 20 mbps. I wonder why pages do not download any faster than before.

One thing I have noticed is, today 30 September 2010 (6 days after changeover date), I have used up 10 gig of download since being on the higher speed plan. I am using the internet in the same fashion as last month. Last month download was 15.89 gigs for the month total.

I have noticed in the past, when I went up to 5 mbps on ADSL the download was chewed up faster even though I was not using the PC any more than usual, in fact it was less during that particular month so reverted back to 1.5 mbps and sat. For me monthly usage is very important.

In July 2010, in one day I used less than 3 gig online gaming continually for 24 hours on 1.5 mbps. Now I chew half that up in 4 hours (tested on 1 October) and only logged in and did not else within the game, no chat, no music, no moving, no building, nothing.

As of today, I am supposedly on the faster speed plan as per my internet account details.

1 There is no difference in speed, pages are not downloading 20 times fast I am still waiting.
2 My monthly usage has been chewed up at astronomical rate
3 21% of my monthly usage has been chewed up within 6 days
4 At this rate I will have to move to 200 gig per month download costing me the same as before.
5 ALP fast speed broadband will not be cheaper than before, it will still be expensive.

This tells me:

1 I have been dictated to
2 I will have to up my monthly plan to more download gigs which will end up costing me big time
3 It is a con because from the box to my home is still copper!
4 Something is up because I have not seen any fibre being rolled out in my area.

Then I ask:

1 When plan says up to 20 mbps deceives, I can only get 8 mbps max, not even close.
2 If copper can't give me 20 mbps speed then why are my plan choices ADSL 2+ stating up to 20 mbps speed?
3 Since 8 mbps is considered extremely slow, and yet the faster speed results in chewing up monthly download usage, then what is the ALP going to do about that for families they are conning?
3 Why are there only 3 choices in download monthly usage? eg 2 gig per month, then jump to 50 gig or 200 gig per month
4 Why are the choices for 12 gig and 25 gig for monthy download usage missing?
5 Do the internet providers know something about speed and download usage they are not telling us?
6 Most providers are similar in pricing with their plans, no competition really exists.

I would like to mention here that when I changed my plan from my memory I signed up for:

5000 kpbs = 5 mbps
50 gig download = $39.95 per month

but the plan seems to be higher speed of 20 mbps (which is not possible on my rim) and $69.96 per month to find out afterward the price they gave me was if I signed up for 24 months and $10 dearer at $49.95.

They did not send me email to confirm my initial plan and I did not get a print out of the original plan choices. However, they are advertising the $49.95 plan on their site I noticed yesterday.

If you call up to complain about the excess download usage which is quite alarming figures, they do not acknowledge something might be wrong.

High speed internet will result in need for more download usage costing families astronomical internet costs.

It would be like going to get fuel, it gives a per litre but the fuel pumps less than you are paying.

Don't be fooled.

Feel free to post on this, yet another ALP failure, "A Woman of Poor Judgement" leads.





7 comments:

  1. I think what this article shows is that you are ignorant of what gigs means.

    You weren't on 1.5 'gig'. You were more than likely on 1.5mbps (megabits per second). This is pretty basic ADSL 1.

    You upgraded to ADSL 2 which provides a theoretical 24mbps. You never get this as line contention, signal degradation thwart you. I have ADSL 2 too but only get 8mbps and I'm only 2kms from the exchange.

    ADSL 2 is not 20 gigs.

    Faster broadband will not magically cause your download amount to increase if you download the same things. You need to look closer at what you are downloading or viewing online. You could have been hacked, got a virus or someone is using your wireless otherwise.

    1. Copper will not give you what the ISPs tell you it will due to the problems highlighted above. In fact 1.3 households have no access to ADSL.
    2. Depends on the ISP.
    3. ALP don't provide internet plans. They are funding the infrastructure for NBNCo to provide wholesale services for ISPs to provide plans (including download limits).
    4. Depends on the ISP.
    5. Depends on the ISP.
    6. Ask them.

    Not sure why your lack of education on the subject or your poor choice of ISP is ALP's fault.

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  2. Personally I'm interested in the hostile commenter's use of spurious numbers like 1.3 households... Who on earth is living in 0.3 of a household?

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  3. I'm a lunatic? Um where did I say that 1500mbps isn't 1.5gbps? Can you highlight that for me?

    Yes you did say ADSL2 was 20 gigs. Read point 2 after you say "Then I ask:"

    Um, I think you'll find I didn't correct your maths but corrected the fact that you don't have a 1.5Gbit plan. That is 1.5 times the proposed max download rate of the NBN.

    How are ADSL speeds anything to do with the ALP? I think you need to make sure your understanding of technology is up to scratch!

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  4. PS. I meant to say 1.3m households.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ok have corrected speeds as required.
    Does not change the fast speed scam even though my plan is still very slow. In fact makes it more compelling.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Michele, you may want to check up on the definitions of mbps. In industry terms, it stands for megaBITS per second. 5 megabits per second is only 0.625 megabytes per second, which is still incredibly slow.

    Pages wont load any faster until the country is covered in fibre optical. Once that is done, our connections to international servers (which are fibre optic) won't be slowed down once they hit our national network, which is currently copper.

    Even if you don't buy into the NBN, you will notice the speed difference once the network is lit up, as interstate connections will be the faster fibre optic.

    For now I am inclined to agree with stinhambo and suggest that you revise your terminology and knowledge of how the internet works.

    It's not a speed scam if the ALP haven't even laid out the fibre yet. Your anger should be the fact that it has taken this long to even consider rolling out fibre optic nationwide, anger at the Howard government for trusting private corporations to lay fiber optic to regional australia, and anger at your ISP for offering you such restrictive data allowances.

    Question: do you live in a major city?

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  7. Here's a question: Do you use a wireless network in your household? it might explain some things about your data usage.

    Secondly the issue with speeds and access to different types of connections comes down to your isp and what types of exchange are located near you and how far away. If you lived in a city on the eastern seaboard, you can do quite well with decent speeds and decent plans whereas out in regional areas it is restrictive as to choice and slow as to speed. one of my collegues who comes from rural nsw once told me that they could only wish to get adsl speeds. Why is this the case? Because of the free market. The howard government allowed for the free market to dictate the growth of Internet services in australia and for someone like me in a large city, it has been a good thing allowing me cheap access to decent speeds and large data allowances but at the same time the free market has failed rural areas and small cities. ,If you live in a disadvantaged area dont blame the ALP, blame capitalism. If you live in an area that is well catered for,dont thank the alp, thank capitalism. In a free market there are those who win out like us in large cities and those who dont. Thats the nature of the free market.

    A hard right blog complaining about the result of the free market. oh the irony.

    ReplyDelete