Who is your broadband internet provider? Rate them?

Hey guys,

We will be looking to quickly sign up to a new broadband internet plan when we get back to Australia in just over a month

We have always been with Optus and for the most part they have been good and reliable. I feel at times they have been a bit slow and their plans seem rather expensive.

However we want to keep our options open and look at other providers.

Who are you with? How fast are they? Good value? Would you recommend them?

Anyone with Dodo? They have an unlimited ADSL2+ broadband internet plan for $39.90 p/m. Worth it?

IT guys, any official (or unofficial) word on which providers have the fastest speeds?

Thanks in advance for your help!

I’ve had mates who went with Dodo and had nothing but problems. They got billed twice, they got calls from Dodo saying they had found out they had been looking at other providers and that was breach of their contract so they were going to have pay a couple of hundred bucks (it wasn’t even true!?). So weird. I’d stay right away.

We use exetel and they are so good! They have relatively short contract periods, too which can be handy. Never had a single problem. Never had the connection go slow, never had the connection drop out or anything.
I think we pay $70 p/month and have a home phone (for freddy to call sweden with cheap calling cards) and 50gig downloads.

Definitely recommend them!

I use iinet. And love them $70 a mth including the phone line and the $10 extra for the phone handset.

The great thing about iinet is if their plans change (for the better) they change your plan. My plan allowance doubled and my parents tripled!!

When they got to Jindy last year they only had a 5g peak/5g off peak. Now they have 20/20! No increase in price.

I think mine was 25/25 and is now 50/50

My sister has Exetel and I can’t get her to change (and they have put her price up! with no increase in allowance!) But she has currently been without the internet (and phone!!) for over 3 weeks. Exetel say it is Telstra’s fault… but still…

Re speeds - it all depends on how close your home is to the exchange and what cabling is used. No matter how fast the provider says they are it all depends on those two things.

There is a website where you can enter your address and it will tell you the above answer. One of the IT geeks will prob know more.

Thanks cords.

Anyone with iinet? http://www.iinet.net.au/index.html

TJ and other tech dudes, any recommendations? Speed, reliability, and value is what I’m looking for (hehe I think those three things cover it).

See my answer

I’m with SpinTel!!!!!

An Aussie company that has Aussie Tech support!!!!!

Won a few Money Mag Awards!!!!!

And oz is right about speed/reliability of service lies with the exchange!!!!!

And if ya have got a shit exchange, don’t expect it to be improved now the govt is rollin out the NBN!!!!!

At lot of IT geeks go with Internode. But they are expensive. But I think their (pretty close to) unlimited plan is reasonably priced which may be a plan you would need Rider?

iinet or Internode are both good. We never had any drop outs and no problems with customer service either!!!

My dad is with Bigpond and I hate it the speed is terrible and we are only 100m from the exchange! They can’t even give us an answer why and cbf to look into it either!

I’ve been with a few different budget ADSL providers over my time so can give you a bit of feedback.

Back in ADSL1 days I was with exetel. They were the standout bargain at the time and originally I was fairly happy with them. However then it started getting dodgy. Every couple of months you would get an email telling you that the current plan you were on was being made redundant and they would force you onto a new plan (sometimes it was worse value) The general attitude towards their customers in the emails and blog posts was pretty condescending as well.

My next ISP was TPG. They were very good to start with and for the price I didn’t have any complaints. Unfortunately though they started getting very popular with the masses and congestion became a problem at specific hours.

I’m now on a unlimited Dodo ADSL2+/Phone line bundle. The reason I’m with dodo is once again price but also the fact I could get no contract (It’s just so easy to churn between ISP’s these day’s that I didn’t want to be locked in) The initial signup process went smoothly enough (was a complete new connection to apartment) in the first couple of weeks I had some downtime (which I believe was nationwide) and I was worried I’d made the wrong decision. However since the “upgrades” I’ve been pretty happy with the connection. I download at a pretty consistent 16000KB/s with the rare slowdown. I’m easily able to do over 400gb/month without even breaking a sweat. My one annoyance is the fact that I was patched into an optus dslam which resulted in my sync speed being slower than it potentially could have been (probably would have been around 20000KB/s if optus didn’t have the conservative SNR margin)

In the end it’s important to know that most ISP’s are simply resellers of the big boys products. The connection is running through the same lines/dslams so you are essentially paying for the name and technical support. I’ve never had to/plan to use an ISP’s tech support (where they will simply tell you to check the lights and turn it off and on again) so for me something cheap with unlimited download limits suits me fine. As I mentioned earlier as long as you aren’t locked into a contract churning between ISP’s is a very simple process so if you aren’t happy you can change so why not start at the bottom and work up if you aren’t happy?

Personally if it is a mission critical connection and price is no issue as much as it hurts me to say I’d probably go Telstra. The reason being if you do have a line related problem it’s one less hoop to jump through. I’ve heard internode and iinet are also decent options but to me just aren’t good value for money.

Do you have any idea how far you will be from the exchange? as this is the biggest factor in stability/speeds. This site can give you a rough idea http://www.adsl2exchanges.com.au/ 

It also changes what the optimal modem chipset choice would be. Modem/Router configs can have a large influence on speed/stability so if you need advice on that give me a yell.

One more site that may help you narrowing down ISP’s and plans based on your criteria. http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/

Hope that helps!

Distance from the exchange is one factor, along with how old its technology is, and how many users are tapped into it at any one time!!!!!

And at the end of the day Telsta own the infrastructure, no matter who ya go with!!!!!

i have unlimited adsl2+ with tpg.

costs me $59/month

apart from taking about a month to connect (problems in the mains pit) i have had nothing but fast, glorious internet (see below picture for my proof)
i download around 20-30 gigs a month on average of stuff. slowest i get is around 500 Kb/s fastest is around 1100kb/s

had it for just over a year and never had a problem.

Thanks Oz!

Thanks for all that awesome info, drc13. Really appreciate it. Checking out those links now.

Deano, I’ve been looking into TPG. They seem like a solid option. Definitely considering it.

And best of all ya in good health, deano!!!!!

haha so it seems!

rider26 - 07 April 2012 11:23 PM

Thanks for all that awesome info, drc13. Really appreciate it. Checking out those links now.

No worries mate, let me know if you need any more info.

I think it’s hard to go wrong with dodo or tpg initially and if you aren’t happy simply churn from there (beware of TPG’s contract though)

SpinTel go month to month also!!!!!