I'm looking to get an ADSL2+ and Voip provider.

I'm not a leecher and need a reliable service.

Exetel is very cheap but I'm concerned about their quality and customer service. I also hear that the only people with them are major leechers. Do the pings stink?

iinet seems to be a quality company but not as cheap as exetel, and have game servers.

My main uses will be:

Voip for a business phone and fax line (can u run a fax on voip?)
surfing the net, small downloads, and updating my websites
maybe the occasional video game if any good ones come out


I'd rather post here than on whirlpool as whirlpool seems to be full of whingers and leechers and not very many 'general' users.

Cheers

plenty of whingers here too fyi

iiNet are good when it works, but when it falls apart, it really does just completely go to s***. We've had a few multiple day outages in the last three years with iiNet, as a business connection.

We're now looking to replace it with a dedicated Optus ADSL2+ line.

you get what you pay for

fyi, iinet is totally awesome and worth every cent i pay for it

Internode, iiNet...

Why don't you tell us what sort of plan you're looking at (ie. price / speed / download limit) ?

Internode.

i agree with internode but u probably wont get adsl2 with internode yet...

If you're getting VoIP then go with an ISP who can provide it direct to you. Less hops to travel means better call quality generally.

On the Extel VS iiNet thing - I'd say iiNet but only because I've never heard of Extel.

Which ISP's can provide it direct?

just telstra and optus?

Almost all ISPs have some sort of VoIP offering these days to bundle with your ADSL. What I meant was don't sign up to a VSP that's hosted out of an iiNet data centre but you end up getting broadband from Uncle Dans Home ADSL who runs his whole network from under his house and is prone to flooding.

Which ISP's can provide it direct?

just telstra and optus?

um... neither Telstra or Optus. The phone companies generally want you to use their phone network. I think optus have business voip, but its hardly cheap...

iiNet, Internode are the two main companies who do voip. There are others, but I'd say they're likely to be the most reliable.

I've been an Exetel user for around 12mnths. As a rule the service has been reliable. I use the VoIP and find it excellent, speak to my sister in Canada on it all the time and quality is great. I switched last month to ADSL2+ (resold Optus). I'm a fair distance from my exchange so I only get 4-5Mbits down and 800Kbits up. I play a little counterstrike and ET-QW on it.....pings around 40ms to Internode servers. I download around 50Gig a month (its all linux ISOs, I swear) and find the speeds really good.

The only downside I would say is that their customer service is s***zen, there is not really any helpdesk other than online. You can call them between 9-5 M-F but pretty tough getting through their IVR to speak to someone. The only major outages I've had with them (24hrs or longer) was when I first joined and lost my connection after 2 days. They did comp me the months fee though.

Hmm exetel sounds like the go.

Does your suburb location alter the performance of adsl2+, or does it just depend on how close you are to your exchange?

Your exchange has to have ADSL2+ hardware for your isp in it. Then, your speed is affected by how far away you are from that hardware.

hardware!