Nu-Shooz

I am with Telstra unlimited downloads ADSL. I find them great.

wmoore

There's no such thing according to their web site

harrip

Dont totally discount the major players (Telstra, Optus etc).

If your not in an area the competition have cherry picked, you may well find that Telstra is the only supplier offering ADSL2+ if you need the faster speeds. Also, with their present half price for up to 12 months offer, their pricing is not as ridiculously as expensive as some people would have you believe.

Going for cheaper offerings may be okay, but when the suppliers are buying bandwidth from upline providers, when things go wrong they can take longer to fix as more parties need to co-ordinate the solution.

worzel

We are on a sub-exchange not a major one. At the moment we cannot get ADSL2+ at all. However, Bigpond are just about to change that. But apparently they have done a deal with the government that in return for doing this they do not have to open the sub-exchange to competitors. So that is another good reason to stick with a telco.

To the OP - it is worth checking whether ADSL2+ is possible or not in your area before you start making comparisons.

Hutch

ADSL2 is only available in the cities and very large towns, so it's kind of irrelevant to many people. I take some consolation in the fact that I have ordinary ADSL here, in my little one-horse town, and yet have an 8Mb/450k line.

As to the whole 'when things go wrong' - I totally disagree. When it's just down to Telstra (who own the copper from house to pole and pole to exchange) - they can and do drag their heels. However when someone from a good ISP (like mine - Internode) is regularly giving them a kick up their arse, they get results much much faster. I regularly install and trouble-shoot broadband connection round here and can categorically state that the big Telcos are dreadful - in order of crapness I'd put Optus worst, then Telstra and then AAPT (who actually aren't that bad).

harrip

ADSL2+ is being rolled out to over 900 exchanges (http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/1776) so whilst I appreciate small bush communities wont be covered, many exchanges will be.

Nu-Shooz

How strange. Well that's who i'm with anyway...good price too.

Hutch

Ermmm no - Telstra-only ADSL2 is being rolled out - which is kind of irrelevant. It's considerably more expensive than ordinary ADSL (particuarly if you're the kind of heavy-downloader who'd be interested in it in the first place), the speed 'improvements' are highly questionable (access to web sites depends on the speed of the server and its bandwidth capacity, rarely the downstream speed of the ADSL to the customer) and it's with Telstra who make BT look like customer-focused experts.

At the moment I'm on an 8Mb line and regularly get speeds up to 7Mb. ADSL2 degrades badly the further you are from the exchange and unless you're living on top of the switch, you'll be lucky to get anything like the much-touted 20Mb/s. In fact if you live more than a kilometre or two away you'll be getting pretty much the same speed as me.

worzel

I am with Bigpond on regular ADSL. In theory I can get 8Mb but in practice just over 3Mb is what I get, so ADSL2+ must be better. I am about 1km from the sub-exchange on a 10 year old estate.

For bigpond pricing plans, ADSL2+ is not any more expensive than regular ADSL, although I do admit Bigpond is a bit more expensive than iinet etc:

http://my.bigpond.com/internetplans/...rs/default.jsp

My biggest worry is that 25Gb per month is just enough but if I could download faster I would be more inclined to download more and thus have to go up a package (and the 60Gb package is extortionate - the mid range packages just came down in price to be reasonably competitive)

wmoore

Are you sure it's actually unlimited downloads? Plans like that are like rocking horse sh!t here. I've got a 20Mb ADSL2 package with 12Gb of data. Even the top of the range plans have limits on data.

Nu-Shooz

Yes i'm sure. I need unlimited, couldn't live without it. It's actually Bigpond Telstra. I also have my telephone with them. All in all my bills come to $110-$120 a month for both. I have free local calls too. Great eh!

Hutch

According to their website, the best package they do is $150 a month for 60Gb of downloads. Once you go over the 60Gb you get shaped to 64k/b. Now admittedly, at most standard broadband speeds you'll have trouble downloading 60Gb a month - but it sure ain't unlimited.

Nu-Shooz

Next time i get a bill i will check what i'm paying for. They used to be alot more, but that's because my daughter used the phone all the time ringing mobiles. She's not here anymore so my bills are cheaper. When i first got here, i remember them saying so much for this, so much for that (regarding downloads), but i also remember them saying unlimited. Now i'm confused.

worzel

I guess literally the 60Mb package is unlimited. It is just that it costs 15c for every Mb thereafter. So a 3Gb TV series over the limit would cost $450!

The 25Gb package is also unlimited. You just end up at dial up speeds after the 25Gb. You could leave the computer on downloading for the whole month and only use another couple of Gig at those speeds

wmoore

Actually yes that's what Nu-Shooz will have read. Technically it's an unlimited plan but in reality it plain-old-big-fat-isn't.