I've posted recently about how my wife and I are relocating from Chicago to Melbourne Australia for her job, and I'll be working remotely for my US based company from home. Needless to say, we need reasonably fast reliable internet connection.
We'll be living in Prahran, near Melbourne. My wife signed up for Telstra ASDL++ internet connection and couldn't figure out the install, so paid $130 for someone to come get it setup. She's getting about 6-8MBPS download speeds, which compared to the US is very slow, but still doable for conferencing calls and stuff. This has been setup for about a week.
I'm told with this type of connection the speeds depend on how far you live from the exchange, how many people branch off of that connection in your area, etc. Last night my wife was geting .64MBPS. That's not a typo, .64 MBPS. This isn't acceptable for even viewing webpages, let alone working, so she called to cancel. We have 60 days to cancel and get out of the contract. The customer service did something and the speed got boosted back to 8mbps again.
Anyways, I'd like something faster, even if it costs a good chunk of change. I see Telstra offers Cable internet for $100/month and I'm considering getting this. Is this a good option for reliable fast speeds? I'm not looking for "value" here, since I NEED a fast reliable connection. Any suggestions?
One thing I dont really understand is that the providers all give an "up to XXXX MBPS" rating. One was "Up to 100MBPS" so when i read that I thought "wow that's very fast" and one of my wifes coworkers said "Ummm that's not even close to what you'll actually get though..."
Here in the US if they say 30MBPS that's what you'll end up getting and you can complain if you don't get those speeds.
This is a bit of a whiney-pants post - just frustrated.
Thanks for any info
-Ryan
Yeah, Australian internet kinda sucks if you're not in a fibre area (which are few and far between, and the current government is not exactly helping promote the rollout of fibre).
Telstra cable can do 100mbps (or more, a friend had closer to 110-120mbps with it), but the speeds aren't guaranteed, and congestion can slow down the service. Unfortunately the upload speeds suck (~2mbps). As far as minimum guaranteed speeds, they probably do have a guaranteed minimum service level, but it'd be 512kbps or something like that :)
ADSL is sometimes advertised as 'up to 24mbps', because you could probably get 24mbps if you were right next door to the exchange, on brand new copper phone lines, at 2am on Wednesday. :)
I'm on Optus cable, and these are the sorts of speeds I'm currently getting (for a connection rated at 100/2), at just before 7pm on a Friday:
Last time I regularly checked I used to average about 55mbit in the evenings.
On ADSL I used to get about 12Mbps down and 800kbps up.
Unfortunately the upload speeds suck in most places unless you're in an NBN area. I actually find it's faster to use my 4G phone to upload something than to use cable, let alone ADSL.
Check out
Whirlpool, it's the largest Australian communications-focused forum.
Also, think yourself lucky you even have the option of cable, a lot of people here don't (cable maybe covers 30% of the population). Hell many people don't even have the option of ADSL, and are forced to use mobile broadband, even in the cities.
