Massive panic attack today, my peak usage hit 30gb for the month to June 28. Anyone reading this inside the United States will have no idea what I’m talking about but it works this way: you buy broadband on a plan in Australia, even though they claim it’s unlimited (well some companies do,they lie…by unlimited the don’t charge you extra to use), you get X number of GB per month to download. Depending on the ISP and plan your uploads might also count to your quota (mine counts them đ ). When you go over your quota you are “shaped” meaning that I was facing 3 days on an ADSL 2+ connection with a 64k limited speed. This is my phone pipe as well because we only have VOIP, so my phone calls would be screwed until the 28th.
Cheaper plans at around the $30/ mth mark might come with as low on 200mb a month. Until 5 minutes ago I was paying $89.95/ month for 30GB peak (defined as midday-2am) and 60GB offpeak (the rest of the time). I’m now paying an insane $119.95 for 65GB peak/ 65GB off peak. Usage last month was 30GB peak, 20GB off, but probably my bad because I haven’t been scheduling downloads to watch the usage…well actually I have, we did 5GB peak in 3 days, and it turns out it was my wife AND son. The wife was downloading work related clips, doing online conversions of large files, and the boy has been spending hours on YouTube. Still, this is what the internet if for, we are not the ones in the wrong here, it’s the ISP’s who impose these restrictions in the first place.
What next? If I look at my online consumption is has grown month after month and continues to grow. HD video online: bonzer, streaming video, you beauty, Podcasts via Apple TV…I never have enough time to watch them all. Australia risks slipping even further behind the rest of the civilized world, and most of the third world as well if it doesn’t start recognizing that true unlimited broadband is a key feature in keeping us competitive.
How the h*** can you put a quota on broadband? It's OK if the user only uses the internet to check emails and a few other things, but the standard product should/must be unlimited.
I'm surprised that Australia is so far behind. Is it lack of competition?
WTF $89.95…..move to adelaide. We here at Adam Internet have 40 gig for $69.95. đ
I thought Time Warner has also started trialling metred downloads earlier this month so our US brethens will soon understand what we are talking about đ
I'll say feed your requirement through http://bc.whirlpool.net.au and you'll find quite a few cheaper alternatives.
That's exactly what it is Dennis. Telstra *is* the network here. All other telcos are just pretty much renting their lines
That is really crazy. You should move to China! I negotiated the internet into my rent. If I paid myself it would have cost about $15 a month. Speed is not bad and still better than Telstra. My rent on a fairly nice 1 bedroom place in Beijing is only $500 a month.
In Denmark we have one company that basically owns all the lines too, but their monopoly is long gone. They are forced to rent the cable and not over-charge.
Duncan, funnily this is the second metered internet conversation I participate in this week. And it proves that the US majority of the web 2.0 community simply fails to realize that broadband can (or should) be anything but unlimited. But here in Russia the situation is even worse – only last year some ISPs started to offer unlimited internet to home users – until then everyone had to pay per Mb and it was actually supposed to be normal here. If I used 30 Gb per month, I would have ended up paying something close to $1K at the time đ Fortunately now the times are changing and we seem to actually have the unlimited plans now – though I still can not sympathize with the US guys complaining about limited internet being something ridiculous.
The US had better never move to a quota for internet usage.
Can you get Internode ADSL2 on your exchange? I know its download quotas aren't as high as whoever you are with but you do have the option of buying more quota in bitesize chunks instead of having to upgrade your plan. Also, while NodePhone VOIP service does use up your quota, the VOIP is never shaped even if the rest of your downloads are.
Customer service is second to none in my experience as well.
I'm not in anyway associated with Internode in any capacity beyond being a very happy customer.
yes. I'm holding out for Annex M on the naked ADSL, otherwise I would have switched already. I also didn't know about the ability to buy extra chunks, I might have to take another look.
And to add insult to injury, in other news today:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080625-j…
http://www.internode.on.net/support/faq/data_bl… has all the information you need on data blocks.
I didn't realise you wanted naked ADSL though. I'm not sure if Internode is as competitive when it comes to naked pricing. I stand by its customer service though.
Virgin Media has introduced speed capping for heavy up/downloaders – it's very unpopular. BT still seems to honour “unlimited” on its top plan – at least, I've not hit a problem as yet.
You might want to try
http://www.getitinaflash.com/
Get your big files there and save your quota for when you need it đ
You might want to try
http://www.getitinaflash.com/
Get your big files there and save your quota for when you need it đ
You might want to try
http://www.getitinaflash.com/
Get your big files there and save your quota for when you need it đ
We are facing same problem here. We are also buying a certain limit of data but in the most cases I exceed the data limit. It is also bit costing for me to bear the additional data.