Internet Connections - difficult choices

[pmrid]

We've bought a house on Bribie Island and I'm looking for advice on which typeof internet connection I ought to consider.
Having lived for 20 years on the farm with satellite NBN internet, we've never had to confront the maze of differences out there. Also, we ditched our fixed landline phone 4 years ago and now use the unlimited calls and a bit of data on our phones instead.

I don't partocularly want to go back down the road of fixed phone services or even VOIP-types. Our mobiles work fine. But apart from the bare ADSL-type services I may not have any choice.

Anyway, we only need about 40-50 GB in peak hour internet. So should I be looking at an NBN service, naked ADSL/ADSL2+ etc or what? The new house is in a FTTN location. But that's all I know.

Be happy for some suggestions.

Peter

[billdan]

Go NBN Peter, I changed over from ADSL2 in January to NBN and its heaps faster and also $10 per month cheaper than ADSL2. Westnet also told me that their ADSL2 support finishes at the end April.

[lazjen]

Peter, you will eventually have to go NBN anyway, so you might as well go straight for it to save the hassles of changing over later.

[Icearcher]

They are right, if you have NBN in the area, I think you have about 18 months before they cut off the older connections.

This week I switched from ADSL to NBN and its a huge improvement, besides just the speed increase I also get much better ping times, doesn't seem like a big thing but everything feels snappier now.

Also, I had heard so many horror stories from mates that took 3 weeks to get their NBN connected, took me 15 minutes and I was up and running, super easy.

I went with superloop, cheaper than my adsl and they are aussie based, their call centre is in Adelaide.

[LewisM]

We were supposed to get FTTP NBN here mid-April (after the 3rd delay over 2 years). Now we are scheduled for July to September, FTTC instead.

I'll bloody just go 5G at this rate (Optus is rolling out 5G here as a trial)

[The_bluester]

Count yourself lucky if you get FTTC, it is the second best technology they use.

[julianh72]

Peter,

FTTN SHOULD be a significant step-up from ADSL - you SHOULD be able to get AT LEAST 25 Mbps, possibly up to 100 Mbps. There are some horror stories around where some FTTN are no better (or even in some cases worse than) the ADSL services they replaced, but this should be the exception rather than the norm.

One an area is connected to the NBN, you probably won't be able to connect a new ADSL service, your only options will be to accept the NBN connection, or go to some sort of wireless broadband plan. Existing phone / ADSL services are given 18 months to transfer over to a new NBN plan, but I doubt you'll be able to create a new ADSL account in the new home.

When taking up an NBN service, you have no obligation to take a bundled phone service, although the RSPs will offer it as an optional extra to all plans.

[Merlin66]

Look seriously at TPG as a NBN provider.
They have looked after me for the past 5 years.
Good performance and pricing - Unlimited fast broadband for $69/ month.

[Tandum]

Hey Pete,
You'll need a copper line regardless of adsl or nbn fttn. If nbn is there you have to get it cos as has been said, it's a monopoly now, that'll be all you can get eventually.

It's almost here for me. You buy it by speed. We're going for 50mbs. Some suppliers don't buy enough bandwidth from NBN so it can get slow at night. My kid works for microsoft now and swears by aussie broadband but I've already signed with TPG as I've always had good deals/service through them.

I've heard they are trying to recoup their investment/loan in 3 years instead of the normal 10years, hence the high cost of service. ie: it's no cheaper than adsl. A home phone comes with all offerings. I can't find a deal without a home phone. It's VOIP and you don't have to have it but they normally charge for calls if you get it. The phone plugs into the modem.

[Ukastronomer]

We get 100Mbs and could not live with slower

Do you mean GB or Mbs

[Tandum]

A 100 Mbs plan is about 50 pounds/month
A 50 Mbs plan is about 38 pounds/month

I think both are expensive.

Peter is thinking volume not speed.

[Ukastronomer]

We pay £35 for 100Mbs

[pmrid]

Thanks everyone. I appreciate the recommendations and suggestions.
In a way, NBN is a but like petrol; lots of suppliers but essentially the same product no matter how you name it or brand it. It's still the same - a "rose by any other name etc etc".

The Standard 50 seems about my size and it seems I'll end up paying about $70 a month. I resent paying that much but I would be willing to bet that a large component of that price eventually finds its way back to Telstra as the price for access to the copper network. Has very little to do with the actual cost of supplying the core service, just the way you get the last 50 meters to your modem.

Peter

[Ukastronomer]

modem !!!!

Haven't had a modem for so decades :) :)

Is it THAT expensive over there for £39 we get high speed fibre AND unlimited TV/films etc

Tonight is slow then it is 20:00 and everyone is on with TV and gaming


.

[Sunfish]

+1 for TPG. I am locked into business plans with Telstra , but I would happily go back to TPG. Basic well priced good service without the expensive singing and dancing. Be prepared for pain as some of the old connections in the last copper part are pretty bad and some of the equipment sent out is cheap. So complain early if there is any fault and prepare to have the line in tidied up if connections are dropped. Funnily enough the business line to the same premises has no faults and comes with mobile backup, other than hopelessly disorganised installation, where the bare NBN phone line has endless line faults which require repair of Trujillo parts in the street.

Some streets here have the original pre Malcom plan with FTP. Lucky *******s. NBN FTTN is not really much quicker some days than the old ADSL guaranteed line.

[Sunfish]

Wow. I wrote a common Australian term of endearment starting with the letter b and was *****.

[pmrid]

That's a real b !!!

Peter

[Camelopardalis]

You might be disappointed to learn that all your high speed fibre downloaded tv and films would be impossible without a modem :P

Whether it’s an ADSL modem, a cable modem, or a fibre modem, they all do the same job....which is to “modulate/demodulate” the electrical signals going up and down the wire into digital 1s and 0s.

Btw, $70 is roughly £40, so it’s not all that different. The biggest difference is your government heavily funded 21CN many moons ago, whereas successive governments here have bickered about why public money should bear the brunt for an expensive and complex infrastructure program. It’s very different when you have a large population in a very small space.

Which brings us to geography, which is a significant challenge. Australia is roughly 32x the size of the UK. You may think it’s a long way to go to the nearest shopping centre, but until you understand the scale of this country you really have no idea. While Australia is highly urbanised, meaning about 85% of the population live in the relatively few cities, there’s an Australian concept called fairness that prevails and that means that folk living outside of the cities should have access to (roughly) comparable public services as those in the cities.Indeed, it’s an absolutely crucial connection to people living in more remote locations.

So, as you can see, it is not as simple as just mocking our cost of internet ;)

[Camelopardalis]

Indeed, they did the same thing in the UK 10 years ago, called it “broadband unbundling”. The idea was to make the market more competitive by forcing the incumbent (BT) to wholesale its services and, theoretically, eliminate their dominant position and make decent internet more affordable.

Of course, what happened was that every time you experienced a problem, you would call your ISP and they’d tell you the problem was with the wires and since they didn’t have access to those they’d have to get BT to investigate and quote you a 7-10 business day lead time.

To cut a long story short, there’s something to be said with cutting out the mindless drones in the middle and going with the infrastructure provider...it may not eliminate the thorns pricking your fingers, but it might reduce them.

[The_bluester]

Actually I would argue with that definition of a modem. Once you go to light, you are not modulating anything any more. the Modulate Demodulate that the acronym stands for does not apply to optical services as it is meaning generating an analog waveform to represent a digital bitstream.

regards the OP and making a choice between NBN or ADSL. By my understanding you won't get that choice, if NBN is switched on then there is generally a "Cease sale" applied and carriers are not allowed to sell new DSL or other similar services. It has caused a lot of grief in the HFC areas in the past when people were moving to NBN services as the old service they had would be cut off, the NBN install would fail for one reason or another and the "cease sale" regs meant they could not even get their old service re activated. That at least has been largely resolved now, but as far as I know they still cant sell you a new non NBN service.

[pmrid]

I'm wondering about the choice of service provider. The theory I'd like to explore is this: whether it would be better to go for a small player rather than one of the "names". The rationale is that the smaller player will not yet have oversold their slice of the bandwidth they have bought into: unlike the big players who seem to oversell by wide margins so that as soon as little Johhnie and Jane come home from school and want to live stream themselves doing their homework, the line speeds anywhere near their Node drop away dramatically.

Any thoughts?

peter

[The_bluester]

I am not sure that it really works that way. They buy the bandwidth in blocks. It is not even a matter of being near the particular node either. It is the POI (Point of Interconnect) with the NBN, which thanks to the ACCC there are 140 odd or around the country instead of the 7 that NBN originally proposed.

If they do not buy enough capacity into your POI (Either backhaul to get to it or between themselves and the NBN within it) then you will see congestion.

NBN actually changed the way the services were sold some time back and it is likely to be less of an issue now.

[Camelopardalis]

Granted, it wouldn’t apply to optical, but the number of domestic premises needing to use optical transceivers of some kind are far fewer that the advertising would infer...

[Sunfish]

Get an ABN. Call yourself a business. Go with a big no nonsense provider and pay for installation with mobile backup for the base level speed.

My home phone was threatened with termination if I did not NBN. Then it did not work. And it did not work ....and it did not work, after a year of off and on The wires in the street were repaired. Again my business wires were faultless and except for the older relatives I would have cancelled the home spam phone.

Where the old self powered system was foolproof. Shame we could not have NBN for those who wanted internet, and the old self powered phone for those who did not. The installation was free , but then so was the pain.

[pmrid]

Again, my thanks to those offering advice and making suggestions. All appreciated. I've decided to go down the Aussie broadband road for $69 a month. It seems the middle ground in the field of thousands.
\
Peter

[lazjen]

Peter, Aussie Broadband is actually one of the better choices at this time, mostly because they tend to provision their services properly (i.e. get adequate bandwidth). So far I've found them to be pretty good and overall better than TPG I was with previously.