www.neighborhoodcable.com.au - any good?

[Tannin]

Here's the link. http://www.neighborhoodcable.com.au/pages/services/internet.html

Anyone tried these guys out? Any comments on their standard of service, pricing, whatever? I'm getting really tired of dial-up.

[Mercutio]

There are plenty (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1321000/1321176.stm) of non-dial-up options out there...

Actually, if you can get terrestrial wireless (ie Cellular) internet service down there, I highly recommend it. Seems less prone to interruption than cable/DSL.

Another alternative: Get a leased line to your office downtown and set up a high-gain directional antenna for 802.11b. If you're within a few miles of your store that shouldn't be a problem (your communications authority might have something to say about it, though), although network security might be. :)

[Sol]

From what I've seen and heard they are not bad. They have outages every now and then but ususaly they don't last more than an hour or so and they seem to be reasonably far between. They have about a 6gig a month download limit on thier standard setup, everyone I know whos got it goes over and none of them ever have to pay any excess fees - note: They may know people on the inside, if you know somone then you may be able to get anything from unlimited downloads to an uncapped line.
I've only really heard good things about it which, when you compare that to what you hear about Telstra and even Optus, would tend to indicate they do a good job.
Gotta be a hell of a lot better than dialup anyway.

[James]

I've heard good things about them too. In fact, I found out about them recently with a view to suggesting them a s a low-cost alternative for your shop's access pipe which you were talking about a few weeks ago. Seems you found them by yourself. :)

[Tannin]

Got an email from Dingo Blue tonight. They are closing up.

Sigh.

Decent speed as dial-up goes, $25 a month, unlimited hours, massive 1.4GB download limit. The next best deal with anyone decent is Netconnect: $30 a month, 400k download. 400k? I can piss more than 400k in a month. If the cable people don't come up to scratch I'll have to go back to Optus. (Who are not too bad. Always had a square deal from Optus dial-up.) But I'll miss Dingo Blue.

[Mercutio]

400k?

That's barely THREE dirty pictures! I hope they at least mean 400MB.

I don't know how you Aussies stand that nonsense. I really don't.

[Tannin]

Excuse me. 400MB. I don't stand for it. Alas, I'm fast running out of options.

[NRG = mc²]

Isn't there anyone that will do totally unlimited access? Heck, I was paying 6 pounds per month (something like $8 US) for no call charges, 56k speed and no download limit. Well, they did cut me off every two hours as their terms specify but leave it on autoredial and you can download around 10gb per month. Thats what I used to do :mrgrn:

I was fearing they'd cut me off and tell me to piss off somewhere else but they didn't, and a week ago I got RADSL installed and to date have downloaded 25.67Gb according to DUMeter :o

[Pradeep]

Isn't there anyone that will do totally unlimited access?

Not in Australia :( I believe Dingo is shutting down because it couldn't keep up with it's generous dl limit (compared to competitors)

[James]

People outside Australia don't appreciate how large the Pacific Ocean is. Stringing cables across it is monsterously expensive, plus US carriers charge us for traffic we send to them but don't credit us for traffic they send to us. Also, there only is one decent cable into Australia from the US, and every time someone needs to build a new one the outlay is approximately AUD1bn.

To give you an idea of the costs businesses are paying, we sell an unlimited 2M connection for AUD12,000/month RRP. On our metered connections, 1GB downloaded from overseas costs you around AUD110-130. So getting a 512K connection and 3GB of downloads for AUD95/month is really the bargain of the century in Australian terms.

All that said, most of the prices being charged today are really reflective of how things were before the new Southern Cross cable - and since people are used to that being the way it is, and there's no real choice - guess what, that's what you get charged.

Still, AUD25/mo for unlimited downloads is not economically viable, I can tell you. It costs even those that own the cable something like 3-5c per MB downloaded, and they charge about 11-13c - about standard margin. It doesn't take all that many 3-5c + support and equipment costs to make up $25.

[NRG = mc²]

Whoah... that is expensive....

[timwhit]

Isn't there some kind of Direct TV satellite system that would be a lot more cost efficient?

[James]

Telstra, iHUG and Austar offer satellite service. Telstra is only allowed to offer it in metropolitan areas.

Austar is going broke.

None of them are particularly fast (400K/s or less). DSL is a better deal if you can get it but it's still not cheap (~USD50/mo for 512/128 and 3GB).