TweakTown have taken a close look at Telstra's broadband services in an article titled Telstra Broadband - The Facts Revealed. They take a look at the change in prices as well as the reliability of the service. Could be a handy article to show any foreigners you are trying to explain Australia's broadband situation to, as there's a fair bit of background information there.

On that note, Bigpond's new plans are available from today, including new dialup plans starting from $5.95 per month, however an interesting aspect of some of these plans is that help desk support will no longer be available free of chrage, you will get charged a fee.

Back on the broadband side, according to Whirlpool Telstra will be discounting excess usage charges for the month of December by 50% because so many people blew their limits by so much.

I hate telstra... Just getting that out of the way first thing off...

yeah great but i didn't use any excess usage for any month so f*** them

umm I have to ring htat f***ing help desk every week, jsut to ask why is my adsl down...

they are going to charge some ppl for help desk?? they have got to be joking. Ne help u do get from the help desk is a complete joke.

WHAT

Paying for HELP DESK! This is a f ucken survice you get when you pay. SO what are you paying all this extra money for then?

This is getting beyond a f***en a joke.

Something REALLY has to be done to tel$tra.

Comon, there are a fair few pissed off gamers out their, why dont you just up and protest. Block Tel$tra's entrances and whatnot, stop their mail. Stop anything.

go and cut the cables ?

FFS, your paying for it, there for you are the idiot, not them.

Do you relize how many business connectiuons telstra has? They could lose every residentual conection, and still be making a profit for a year.

Instead of sniffling like a little bitch, do somthing YOURSELF and pull the plug.

Its ovoisly better than dialup, otherwise you would have gone back.

telstra dont give a f*** about the normal home user, they are only interested in business people.

No dial up is better the only problem with dial up is the fact that you're not connected all the time.

I d'led 1.4 gig last month on my Gaystra Bigpoof 150 Dial-up plan last month (which cost me all up $44 including phone calls) and they want you to pay $65 for just one 1 measley gig on the new cable plan???
Man if I had cable I'd d/l one Gig in a day!! What a joke!
Nah I thought the new pricing and d'l limits would be reasonable what a gullible f00l I was.

Meh Slaps Ziggy's Forehead.

Ed's I'm on Optus. I left Tel$tra ages ago.

I still think it is FULLY f***ed up though.

u don't seem to understand eds. Why is it that optus can offer such a better service, charge less and have some real tech support when fagget Tel$tra that makes a 4Bn profit a yr can't.

Maybe the reason is...

That optus broadband doesn't make a profit?

Whereas telstra is sucking all the money they can from the "leechers", hence a $4bn profit.

I'm sure if telstra weren't money grabbing scumbags, then theyd be happy to lose money on broadband, and subsidise it from other business sectors.

/me cries at $20 price increase, and dreams of optus.

Yay! I have the new email and let me see... My Freedom Standard Plan (256k, 3gb/month) is gone and I now have to go to the Deluxe plan which costs an extra $16.95/month. Mmm very nice.

I said I'd cancel if they did this and I will. Wish me well on my journey back to the realm of dialup :(

I go to teh dialup....who will come with me?

I'm off back to dialup too.

Tel$tra, keeping Australia in the Dialup age.

I'm still on dialup. Never got this so-called `broadband' :0

WhoopAss, no ADSL? XiS give you an unlimited du account with theirs.

Tel$tra, keeping Australia in the Dialup age.

Too true, the liberals have yet again shown us that they lack foresight - the IT/Telecomms/Computer industry is being shafted by nearsighted little pricks with no regard for anyone but themselves. You can get webhosting in the US with unlimited data traffic for about $40 a month. Here, you can get 1.5 gig of data a month for around $600. Good work little Johnnie.

can i have a link to the unlimited data webhosting for $40US?

Man dialup 0wns j00 :P But u have to understand....residential broadband makes up like less than 1% of their customer base....and probably uses up 10% of their bandwidth....now i'm not saying their pricing plans are good - i'm just saying that they're understandable if they're trying to turn massive profits...

ahem ...what about optus! They provide a mint service for less. Do you hear them crying about their loses from broadband. If Telstra give you 3gb capped at 50k/sec and they are worried about the bandwidth that that utilises then imagine what Optus must be thinking. They must be ready to dive off the broadband bridge head first.

I think not. Optus have done the math and have won customer satisfaction. Telstra have WON 4billion of your $ while you sit here and complain using there bandwidth again!

I

I dont care about the 64k/sec cap, I didnt even mind the old 5k/sec cap, but I really object to the 3 gig cap.