bigAPE

Hi all,

We are moving out to Melbourne in March and will be in temporary accommodation for the first 7 weeks before we move into long term rental. I run a business in the UK and will need to Internet access pretty much the whole time. As I understand it Melbourne (and possibly Oz in general) has five potential methods of getting access.

• Dial-up - I would rather stick needles in my eyes, please tell me Australia has moved beyond this in the cities
• Broadband - Australia seems to offer up to 2Mb/s ADSL+ connections, but nothing higher (16Mb/s+) ?
• Cable - Not something I have a lot of experience with seems to be the fastest method with BigPond offering up to 17Mb/s. The problem seems to be that it's only available in patchy areas
• WiFi - Melbourne seems to have a metropolitan area WiFi network covering a good 70% of the city that's run by Telstra but the costs are staggeringly high and very low GB limits
• Satellite - I have used this before, reasonable download speeds but usually is dial-up back channel for upload. Is not good for most business use.

Has anyone got any direct experience with this in the Melbourne area ? Things I am interested in are:

1. If a house does not have Broadband how long does is take (ballpark) to get it installed ?
2. If a house is not cabled how long does is take (ballpark) to get it installed ?
3. What's the average download speed of Broadband in the Melbourne suburbs ?
4. Does anyone know any websites that compare these ISP's ?
5. What's the average maximum monthly GB limit for ISP's in Australia (we transfer huge files for business) ?
6. Do you get Foxtel (i.e. Sky) via Cable or Satellite ?