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- DeathJux, on 08/04/2008, -0/+58Metered broadband is very much a reality for those of us with broadband in Australia or New Zealand. I'm in New Zealand and, after living in the States for most of my life, coming over here is a sad shock. It seems the lack of competition coupled with the isolation has allowed the ISPs to do whatever they like, including charging up the waz for access.
http://www.telecom.co.nz/broadbandplans
Telecom's broadband, for instance, ranges from $30/month to $150/month, for 200 MB to 50 GB of transfer, respectively. It sucks. - jaxter2010, on 06/17/2009, -3/+54The whole argument for companies making a profit is that they then use the money to innovate and reinvest in the company. If any industry is making a profit, it is the oligopoly that is telecommunications. Pony up, upgrade your network, and stop trying to push the internet back to the 90s.
- karaokekidd, on 08/04/2008, -1/+39Considering that this effects video on demand and streaming video internet services so severely, and that many ISP's are also cable providers, it' some real of anti-competition douchbaggery.
- zen4444, on 08/04/2008, -1/+31Competition between these large companies has become a contest to see who can screw their customers the most!
- Spanca, on 08/04/2008, -0/+24^ As you said, it's the same story in Australia thanks to our infrastructure essentially being held captive by Telstra. Our biggest ISP (Bigpond) was spawned out of a government owned monopoly that has stifled growth and innovation in this country for so long. It's a shame that we're being held back from growing a competitive tech industry here because of a lack of infrastructure (but where isn't infrastructure lacking in Australia...).
- ShoesChrist, on 08/04/2008, -2/+24How about the US gets a modern infrastructure first before trying to charge us for this outdated tech?
- eggie015, on 08/04/2008, -0/+19yep metered downloads are the norm here in Australia, its terrible, but you learn to live with it. I would love to have unlimited, 12 gb isn't always enough especially when bigpond are ***** and count your uploads to your "transfer limit" if you completely seed back a 6 gig torrent to 1.0 that's your limit for the month, and once your limit is up some plans slow ya to 64K others they charge you per mb over the limit
- jer2eydevil88, on 08/04/2008, -0/+19I might as well move into a datacenter and setup a cot to sleep on if I have to pay for metered access it might as well be 100mbit.
- Murdats, on 08/04/2008, -0/+16the problem is it destroys the internet as a viable distribution platform, who is going to rent movies online when most people can at most hire 3 before maxing their connection? why buy a 20gig game on steam when you have to spend a month doing it waiting for your quota to reset so you can finish it.
this is also ignoring the fact that voip and streaming video/audio take up a significant portion of ones quote, add to that programs regular updates, game data, video chat, transferral of documents for work and suddenly 20gb is looking a bit small, and 20gb is an expensive plan here in australia - tarley, on 08/04/2008, -0/+14Welcome to Australia...
- elnerdo, on 08/04/2008, -0/+13The fuss is because it's the opposite of progress! The telecom companies are actually moving their technology BACKWARDS every year, charging more for the same service or making services less useful. That's why there's a fuss.
- Pittance, on 08/04/2008, -0/+9Its very sad that your bandwidth costs more than the same amount of storage in disc hard drives.
- mtduff421, on 08/04/2008, -0/+9i just arrived in australia about 3 weeks ago. im splitting 15gb a month with 5 people and this has been one of the biggest adjustments i have had to make. its tolerable but i really feel handcuffed with my internet usage. the whole system seems archaic to me
- nextbgates95, on 08/04/2008, -0/+8What about the telecommuters?
- DestroyFascism, on 08/04/2008, -0/+8At 4000% per MB yes it does.....
I remember getting a bill from Telstra years back when they first started metering. $1000....
I rang Telstra the next day and told them to shove it. I pulled the cable and rang to have the phone disconnected. I then rang Optus and hooked up to cable which at that time was not metered, but now it too sux...
I paid $80 per month for 512 ADSL and $18pm for the phone line and then for using 1gb more than 4gb they charge $1000 which is criminal.
Telstra can lick my boots, I will never use any of thier crap ever again so long as I live... - kraftj, on 08/04/2008, -0/+7Again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck... It's a series of tubes.
- bossywalker, on 08/04/2008, -0/+7Yeah my housemates and I pay about $60 a month for 80 GB. If we go over this limit we get our speed restricted to 64k. And we don't get anywhere near the speeds in other countries. We are on ADSL2+ which is close to the fastest in Australia and it's about 2MB/s.
- voze, on 08/04/2008, -1/+8We've had this in Australia for years, bout 80 a month for ADSL2 with a 25gb download limit (sigh)
you get used to it though - RyomaNagare, on 08/04/2008, -0/+7Here one company is offering metered access, 10Mbit connections with a cap of 5 Gbytes, I haven't met one single subscriber.
the same company offers a traffic-shaped 4Mbit connection.
choices... so many choices
/sarcasm - gemmakicn, on 08/04/2008, -0/+6The trouble is that in other countries there is a market. In the uk in any moderately civilized area (i.e. not 20 miles from the nearest exchange) I would have had the choice of 20-30 different broadband companies, and inside london at least 60 different companies. Each would offer me different deals and so when unreasonable metering was suggested, it lasted all of a few months because most people left for the alternative.
Here in upstate new york, i get the choice between cable and dsl, (no fios, its not got over the river yet) and there is no other option. You could also argue that since dsl in this country is so slow its not a realistic option…
These companies have sat back and done no work on their network beyond basic maintenance and raked in the profits, because they have known that only a few users would actually make use of the bandwidth offered, ignoring the many service revolutions. Now they are whining because more and more people are using what the internet has to offer and there isn’t the capacity without much more growth.
If there has to be some form of metering then make it reasonable.
For me, a 300GB cap would mean i would very rarely go over my limit, and if there is a small charge per gigabyte over, this would seem somewhat reasonable.
That said, there should be a reasonable option for those who don’t want a cap, there are people who for whatever reason use that much bandwidth per month.
Demand is going to grow, i use a lot of things on the internet, but more demand is coming, including many high bandwidth applications, and as that happens isps need to be ahead of the curve in meeting that demand rather than a year behind it. - Dracusis, on 08/04/2008, -0/+6Some don't have a choice, Telstra are the ~only~ provider is many regional parts of the country.
Those in the Capital cities or nearby suburban areas usually do have a choice, but the end cost to consumers still don't match what's available in many other countries. - DestroyFascism, on 08/04/2008, -0/+6You deal with it, you don't get used to it...
I would really enjoy watching streamed media from around the world, so educational, but not in Australia, here we suck eggs....
Tesltra business model 2.0
Charge 4000% for data, when over the limit charge 10,000% for data, include uploads and streams from local company owned services.. - Ajajadude, on 08/04/2008, -0/+5I can see companies on the internet that live on downloadable content at the very least putting pressure on ISPs to rethink their idea. It's going to kill sites like Hulu and Youtube. It's going to kill services like Netflix's streaming service as well as Microsoft's and Sony's online console experience. I download quite a bit of demos, videos, games and game content for my PS3. I'm not the only one. What are the odds of Sony and Microsoft getting pissed if this metering thing cuts into their profits from online content?
- Dauntless1, on 08/04/2008, -1/+6You're absolutely right. Except that the government gave them 500 billion dollars in '97 to upgrade their infrastructure to fiber. That money was pocketed with the excuse that the government couldn't tell them what to do. They were PAID to upgrade.
- wigren, on 08/04/2008, -0/+5Then Australia's got it wrong. Don't push your ***** ideas other places.
- Taedirk, on 08/04/2008, -1/+6There may come a day when you don't make inane stereotypical statements and instead notice how this horribly conflicts with the current trend in business and technology.
- kooft, on 08/04/2008, -0/+5ISP's should be forced to meter based on actual usage instead of a tiered plan, if they're not going to provide unlimited Internet. if I'm paying $44.95/month for a 25GB cap, that equates to roughly 5MB per cent. So on non-heavy usage months my bill might be $5 and other times it might be $32.
Of course that's the issue, they want you to pay for bandwidth you're not using. - kaph, on 08/04/2008, -0/+4Try living in the sticks 7+ kms from an exchange... 3 gig data cap with a 15c penalty per megabyte that you go over. That doesn't sound that bad, but when they (bigpond) charge $110 a month for the plan and don't offer a higher cap it kind of makes you want to vomit each month. There are better plans out now but when the NextG service came here it was only available to us with a 24 month contract... and we are still locked in. We were on satellite broadband before that and the prices were indeed astronomical, even a 500mb plan with a government grant was about what we are paying now.
Our best hope was the OPEL proposal, although shoddy from the start it at least it offered a glimmer of hope to rural areas. Although Optus on their own seem to have stepped up to the plate offering a 5 gig plan for around $30-$40 I think I read in a paper the other day. This is good news, as the main thing we seem to lack here in Australia is competition but hopefully that will soon change... hopefully but I doubt it. - p3ngwin, on 08/04/2008, -0/+4same here in Melbourne AU.
IInet $79 for 20gig peak, 40gig off peak. then shaped to 64k.
you have to learn new habits compared to unlimited like when i lived in the UK with BULLDOG ISP. - Pittance, on 08/04/2008, -0/+4Wow, I would simply move to a different country if that was an option.
- uberduger, on 08/04/2008, -0/+4I used to (maybe still do) have a cap of 40GB per month. I certainly hope it's been lifted, although now might be the time to check - I just started getting game demos and trailers off XBL. Anyone living in UK know of a decent unlimited plan? By unlimited, I mean the sort with a reasonable 'excessive use' limit, not the 20-odd GB that most seem to have...
- kuttfree, on 08/05/2008, -0/+3Further on tarley's 'Welcome to Australia...' - in Australia the broadband has always been metered. On average it looks to be between 10-30GB, depending on your plan.
When you go over the downloaded limit, your speed gets throttled to around 64 or 128KB. Can't complain too much as we have not seen it any other way! - drewpost, on 08/04/2008, -0/+3BE (not BT) bethere.co.uk Amazing speed, great price 24Mbps (I actually get about 19Mbps) and it is truly unlimited. Virgin will cap your speed at peak times. This is referred to in the following articles: http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2007/05/05/virg ... and http://www.top10-broadband.co.uk/news/2007/05/08/v ...
This is not true on BE. I get unlimited 24Mbps service with a static IP for £18/month. - Suricou, on 08/04/2008, -0/+3Pirates have a huge amount of technological ability. Much of it is about to be directed towards improving video compression technology.
- sndream, on 08/04/2008, -0/+3Google and Microsoft should just invest in technology that can make laying fibre cheaper, then they can build their own network.
- jasmus, on 08/05/2008, -0/+2I'm with TPG as well, this is my first month. I'm about to switch to that plan from the 30gb/20gb $59 plan. I really didn't think i'd get through it, but i've never had adsl2+ before.
- Suricou, on 08/04/2008, -1/+3Virgin cable. No caps, and though they do have a 'fair use' limit (as per usual, exact amount unspecified) all they will do is throttle your connection for a time if you exceed it. I've been pushing through data by the gigabyte, as I do a lot of video editing work for friends and a *lot* of p2p and usenet.
Speaking of which, their usenet server is quite good too. - voze, on 08/04/2008, -0/+2@ DestroyFascism,summed i up pretty well:P
but yeah, it is a pain in the ass, because you can just watch anything anytime on youtube or wherever, every time you do you feel like your wasting precious download limit, which is unbelievably depressing - bradleyland, on 08/04/2008, -0/+2So you can run your cap up quicker?
The problem here is that we have a government funded (yes, literally) oligopoly that is run by private companies. When you introduce profit motive in to public works, you get a big mess. These types of things must either be publicly run or privately run. This hybrid ***** is kicking our asses. - Genma, on 08/04/2008, -0/+2true but still overly optimistic. in areas with no competition, they have no intention of being ahead of the curve, because they believe they control the curve. the nature of the beast is such that, if the network becomes overloaded, there are all sorts of subtle ways to ration it as an artificial resource. their thinking is, it's a resource, but one we control, so metering can be completely arbitrary to allow growth at no significant cost.
imo the real problem in the states, and any area around the globe where there is not enough competition or regulation, is that providers want the best of both worlds in being both a utility and a business.
whenever anyone mentions any type of imposed govt sanctions, they tell us they're not a utility, they provide more than just data, you're stifling innovation, don't tell us what to do.
but then when it comes to *special provisions* to service an area they say, but we're a utility! we should get exclusive rights to an area, the cost of infrastructure is astronomical! we need a garaunteed return on our investment. and while you're at it, you can pay for that as well, just to make sure we profit.
so once they have what they want, they no longer have to work for it, so what is their incentive to give us what we want? nothing, besides losing profits. and the govt has already made sure that doesn't happen. we ain't going nowhere until something changes the situation. that's why users overloading the current infrastructure, and the fcc stepping in to make sure they can't penalise us for it, is a good thing, it gives them a reason to act on it.
so if we want something to happen, all we can really do is keep hammering them with data all the live long day. doesn't matter what it is, as long as we keep it flowing, the more we use it the harder it will be for them to continue adding subscribers for free. - DesdinovaEL, on 08/04/2008, -0/+2It could be, because the article is talking about the Olympics, this is something for international people. They probably have the exact same website translated into every language and metered broadband is probably still used in many other countries. They same argument could be used to say they are trying to force everyone back on dialup based on the evidence in the article. Sure telecoms are huge corporations but so is NBC Universal, the powers behind Hulu; and Apple, the power behind iTunes, both popular video site with massive bandwidth usage. I dont think we really have to worry about telecoms regressing back to the 90s, especially since they still havent delivered on the next-gen fiber network they promised congress years ago.
-abc - katorga, on 08/04/2008, -0/+2Duh. The entire purpose of metered or bandwidth capped ISP service is to nip the "IPTV" trend in the bud and make it so expensive that it cannot compete with the ISP's own cable content. Comcast does not want its internet customers watching any content delivered from any competing source over comcast's wire. itunes movie rentals, Netflix watch now, XBOX360 movie rentals, Hulu, and others are directly in the cross hairs.
- OmegaWolf, on 08/04/2008, -0/+2Metered access = restriction = bad
- johnleemk, on 08/04/2008, -0/+2I don't understand this phenomenon in New Zealand - they're so libertarian they deregulated the postal industry. Seriously, competing mail services. How the hell can you have a market in that and not have a competitive broadband market? I looked and every damn provider has a cap. What is this *****?
- Dauntless1, on 08/04/2008, -0/+2In tech news, Google has actually been buying up some of the so-called "Dark Fiber" that has already been layed.
- SarahC, on 08/04/2008, -0/+2Freemarkets suck sometimes.
- merovech, on 08/04/2008, -0/+2We have the same in South Africa, but worse... we have a telecommunications monopoly, Telkom, who has strong government support. South Africans need to suffer with "capped" and expensive broadband accounts. I believe it is severely handicapping the IT Industry and potentially the economy as well.
For a comparison of prices and caps, see:
http://www.hellkom.co.za/ispprices/adsl-10gb.php - madroc, on 08/04/2008, -0/+2Yeah. Broadband providers in Australia can suck my ass.
TPG has the best deal by far and thats what i have. I watch a lot of HD podcasts and it sucks to have things metered.
$69/40 GB peak + 110 off peak(3am to 9am) - Ajajadude, on 08/04/2008, -0/+1They said the same thing about gas prices climbing out of control. In the end, it didn't stand. Even Saudi Arabia was saying how bad it was for oil producing companies with gas prices climbing out of control. Hell, there wasn't even a good reason for gas prices to climb the way they did.
- pasher1221, on 08/04/2008, -0/+1I am pretty sure the "metered bandwidth" statement is directed to mobile users.
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