It is not just you, I think exactly the same. The UK service is far superior, in essence it is the opposite to what you said above. There is far more competition in the UK so you can get great deals there.

HI Ya

Have a look at

http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/ enter in your postcode & get a list of ISP's & costs etc

site also has a great forum.

cheers

I am with iinet and pay $49 a month for 24Mb connection speed with a 10Gb peak + 10Gb offpeak limit. When I compare like for like against the UK it still seems as reasonable deal. There is definately more choice in the UK but I do not think it seems substantially cheaper...

http://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/calculator.asp

The two ISP's mentioned as being consistently the best by everyone I have spoke to, and these people knew what they were talking about, have been iinet & Westnet.

Unfortunately I have Optus. It's going slow tonight, I hope they change the hamster soon.

Whilst the 'big names' appear good watch out for the small print. Most if not all will shape you, i.e. reduce your speed to dial up if you exceed the 'unlimited' offer. e.g. Dodo unlimited is generally a collosal 10gb download per month, Telstra and Optus vary up to about 40gb a month.

If your not a heavy user then go for any of the big names but they will tie you into a contract, read their teeny tiny print.

Me I shopped around and went for an unknown at the time, Wild internet who are now number 9 on Whirlpool. The actually offer truly unlimited connections for $95 a month, 1500mb line, no download limited do phone packages etc also.

True their still realtively new and have some minor hiccups, and their customer service can be a bit hit or miss, but when the MD of the company is posting in their forum in Whirlpool you can generally get your issue sorted.

Dont know about how much they charge for jumping for one address to another, but if you havent signed up already have a chat becuause they are smaller they can bend their own rules.

Bert

Go with a 2nd tier ISP, one other than Telstra or Optus. You will get a better deal and faster service etc.

Another thing to remember with Telstra is that their load limit (xxx mb) counts uploads as well as downloads. And as the Internet depends on feedback of at least 20% of the download it is quite easy to go over your limit. Prior to signing up, just check what the exccess charges per mb are. Just remember that 3cents per mb is $30.00 per gb. And that's very ugly when you get your Telstra bill.

As an earlier post said have a look @ Whirlpool.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/ has the answers give internode a look they have a very good rep for service and they also have free voip to ring uk at 5 cents per minute

We've just signed up with dodo - but with dial-up and no contract.
It costs $9.90 per month - you can download accelerator software and it should go up to 19 times faster than normal dial-up. The download limit is 70Mb and then after that is is 18 cents per Mb. Plus there is the charge of the local call each time you dial up.

We thought we would give it a go - will let you know what the bill is like at the end of the month. This will give us time to think about who we want to use for broadband for when we move into our house in a couple months time.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions and for the whirlpool link.

Trust me - it won't!

good luck with that one hun. I live in perth adn it took two weeks for me to get a broadband modem from Telstra. Now that I am on with them though I have had no problems.

Hope you get sorted

hugs lace xxx