NBN Providers

A few months back we got the dreaded mail telling us as of 09 October we will no longer have access to our Cable internet service and will have to select an NBN provider before that date.

Personally I'm not too fussed about speed but for the past 10+ years being connected to cable with speed usually around 110-115 mbps I wasn't keen on going backwards, my son is a competitive gamer (has earned $$ playing) so he really didn't want to go backwards

I looked at staying with Telstra, as well as Optus, Vodafone, iinet, internode, TPG, superloop, tangerine plus dozens of others

There was plenty of options up to NBN100 (best speeds around 90 mbps) but very few faster than that including the following that advertise a NBN250 plan

Telstra
Optus
Vodafone
Iprimus 
Aussie 

The costs varied between $125 and $180 per month, I really didn't want to have my total telecommunications bill rise and if it did not by too much, my son said he was willing to pay up to $30 p/m to keep the faster speeds

I've had 3 vodafone mobiles I pay for on separate accounts (yep, should have sorted that years ago)

By bundling the 3 mobiles and going with Vodafone I ended up with a $15 p/m increase in total bills (son paying that + $5) for 12 months and $25 a month after that (Son contributing $30 after that)

One thing none of the internet service providers told us when I first started looking, no matter what the plan, their routers aren't good for anything more than 100 mbps even though they sell a 250 plan. They also all said don't expect speeds higher than 150 -180 mbps, that's ok, still pretty quick

Off to a tech store and $400+ later, a ASUS AX3000 router.

Today was D day, hooked everything up, relatively pain free, first speed test on my basic PC, over 250 mbps, my son's gaming computer got just over 280 mbps download speed. Upload speed is marginally quicker than what we had, around 24, and ping (important for the son's gaming apparently) is 17

Considering we had the fastest of the old technology I'm pretty happy with those results especially considering the small extra cost is out of my son's pocket, not mine

Any internet upgrade where you don't go backwards is a win Chook.  

I was in charge of the federal government fibre network in Canberra before I retired, had fibre everywhere, so when we moved to Tassie 8 years ago I though great, fibre to the house, that's going to be a bit better than the 5/10MB we're getting on the old ADSL lines.  The George Town just north of us was getting their fibre to the premises installed so we checked on when ours was to be scheduled, "nope sorry mate, the fibre is running down the highway and will cross the Tamar River at Batman Bridge".  Missed us by 10km, so now our NBN is a radio link across the river.  Can't complain too much, can watch Netflix without too much trouble except when it rains and the signal drops off.  At least our router then switches to 4G and keeps us running.

Saw an advert for Burnie up on the northwest coast, they were looking for tech companies to move in, seems they can offer gigabit (1,000MB) to the premises.

I've been living in Northern Thailand for the past eight years (great motorcycling roads up here) and over the years have been upgrading my internet connection as I move from house to house.  Here is the speed test result of my latest connection.

 

I'm planning on returning to Oz in the near future (as Covid allows),  it'll be hard to go back to the slow internet available there.  

I've had mobile thru TPG, Dodo and presently with Amaysim.

For $10.00 per month for unlimited talk and text I'm pretty happy.

Its on the Optus network just like TPG and Dodo so no change to service.

Amaysim give me 2GB of data per month of which I use around 5%

They also keep offering me extra data at no cost which I do not use

Money saved on phones could compensate for extra internet charges

palexxxx wrote:I've been living in Northern Thailand for the past eight years (great motorcycling roads up here) and over the years have been upgrading my internet connection as I move from house to house.  Here is the speed test result of my latest connection.

 

I'm planning on returning to Oz in the near future (as Covid allows),  it'll be hard to go back to the slow internet available there.  

You'll be very disappointed with the speeds here
This is my latest test,


even worse if I turn on the VPN

What plan is that mm?

A couple of mates get about that with NBN100, others get around 80-90

Chook wrote:What plan is that mm?

A couple of mates get about that with NBN100, others get around 80-90

Telstra
Unlimited Internet (standard Plus)
unlimited local, national and mobile calls
$90

It does everything i need and is 20x faster than what I had

GSX1100G wrote:

madmax wrote:

Chook wrote:What plan is that mm?

A couple of mates get about that with NBN100, others get around 80-90

Telstra
Unlimited Internet (standard Plus)
unlimited local, national and mobile calls
$90
Same plan for me, but, for some reason the price has dropped to $80 .
It does everything i need and is 20x faster than what I had  

Damn you Telstra!
How's your performance on this plan GSX1100G?

Usually around 36 & 8 after we got the NBN techs out to refresh our wiring connections as modem would switch over to wireless modes lot and speed was restricted on wireless.

We're on the same $90 Telstra Plan, I don't think you have anything to complain about up on the big island, this is Fixed Wireless at 1:41 in the morning:

Hope you didn't get up at that time just to do a speed check for us
That is what we were getting before the clean up and wireless was about 3& 0.8.
Must say it was only a problem when watching stuff.
My computer is a 13 yo Dell Vista, with Windows 7 & MS 10 on it . No Rush, have a coffee or amber

A lot of it comes down to how far away from the exchange you are. I'm less than 1km (as the crow flies) from ours.