ISP and phone providers

[Feral]

Well my ISP has just told me they are screwing up my broadband prices again. $45 am month for 15 gig they want to charge me know. I started with them at $30 a month 3 years ago- 512 and 4 gig.

A 50% price hike in 3 years is to much, so I am looking around.

Mate has gone with Virgin's mobile based setup. It combines your home phone and broadband internet in one service, as it works over their mobile network you can get rid of your landline. Price is $70 a month, all calls to landlines in Australia are free, and you get 4gig broadband at 512.

Thats much cheaper than getting ripped off by Telstra for line rental etc with broadband and phone costs on top.

My mate reckons his service is excellent, but he lives right in town, I am wondering if anyone is using it in the boonies and can tell me how reliable it is?

[ellicat]

Virgin doesn't have a good coverage reputation outside the cities, but you're probably close enough when at home. When you go off ob your "work" jaunts to the countryside, it may be a different matter though.

For broadband plans have a look here -

http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/

[Shrimpo]

Just gone to iprimus from aapt couldnt be happier, aapt customer support 45mins if ure lucky iprimus 15minutes max

[rayke1938]

Was with I primus and wasnt impressed with their help line. All very hard to understand and got shirty when asked to speak to someone else. Was enough for me went back to telstra at least they care and respond to a complaint.

Wifes mobile is with virgin and i think they piggy back off optus.

Cheers

Ray

[shortie]

telstra, telstra,telstra.

Have been caught 2ce with providers.

Originally Blue sky. Paid for 12 months. thet went broke 2 months into my term.

Onetel.

Telstra only for me now. Not as cheap as some but can connect anywhere in the country for a local call. And it is reliable.

[Lozzel]

Telstra all the way, Been with the others and wasn't happy with service ,kept droping out, But you get what you pay for.

With telstra Landline,2 mobiles and broadband

with the discounts and freebees isn't too bad. I can live with it to get good coverage and service.

[werewolf]

ellicat wrote:

Virgin doesn't have a good coverage reputation outside the cities, but you're probably close enough when at home. When you go off ob your "work" jaunts to the countryside, it may be a different matter though.

For broadband plans have a look here -

http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/

Ahhh whirlpool, my second favourite website (after AFO of course). The forums have some great info as well for sussing out ISPs, Telcos and anything else to do with computers.

Feral "Naked DSL" is another option you can go with if you want to get away from Tel$tra. Internode are ramping up their NDSL offerings atm and a few other companies are doing it as well. Basically you get an ADSL2 service but without the dial tone, hence no Tel$tra landline $$$. Do a search on Whirlpool on naked DSL and it will tell you all you want to know.

Does the package from Virgin bundle in your VOIP costs? If not check out mynetfone Whirlpool special plans here: https://www.mynetfone.com.au/whirlpool I highly recommend mynetfone as a VOIP carrier! For anyone still paying Tel$tra big $$$ for calls, you can save a packet:woohoo:

[obone]

We're now with an awesome optus plan that has saved us a lot

- no line rental fee

- unlimited free landline calls anywhere in Aus

- unlimited free calls to any optus mobile anywhere in Aus

- 20mb/s direct dsl with 20gig cap

with the amount of calls my sisters make it's really reduced our bill. I think it's called optus fusion 99 or something like that.

Joel

[Shrimpo]

yeh their good obone but the 20gb is your uploads aswell and we do alot of torrents and stuff so we thought we might go over.

[Terry H]

Ah the joys of joining optus back in the netstat days... if only they kept it at that

obone optus are pretty good in my opinion. I came from Bigpond before Optus (3 years ago or more) and the service is top notch. I think I've had 1 outage in 3-4 years. Compared to the bigpond which would drop out every other morning.

Then again, I'm on one of the older, 12 gig/24 gig plans with no uploads counted.

[obone]

Shrimpo wrote:

yeh their good obone but the 20gb is your uploads aswell and we do alot of torrents and stuff so we thought we might go over.

That's a good point Shrimpo i didn't realise that. I'll have to check azureus (torrent thingo) to make sure i'm not going to max out on bloody uploads! Cheers for that.

Joel

[Biggles]

As an independent "Telecommunications Broker", I am more than happy to assist AFO members in establishing and maintaining a telecommunications platform that will suit their needs. If you are on a plan, how do you know it's the best plan based on your current call or usage patten??, chances are you don't. Independent brokers will, our head office is at Banyo should we be able to assit anyone. Fell free to send me a PM if you think we can help.

Warmest Regards

Al

ps, My wife is the Managing Director not me, I just empty the bins some nights. :woohoo: