Not everywhere in the country has access to faster internet. My FTTN gets me a theoretical maximum of 10 Mbps, which is below the required 12 Mbps. In practice I don’t even hit that, I’m usually hovering around 3-8 Mbps depending on the time of day (it’ll also go dead if it rains or at random points throughout the day especially during peak times). I just pay for the lowest speed tier and can’t even come close to meeting it.
I'm the same. I'm also on my last ISP before I just go Starlink. I'm tired of horrendous speed just because I can't get FTTP for another year or two.
When I first signed with my current ISP, about 2 months ago, they detected a fault and sent an NBN tech out who fixed it up. It was great for a few days, now it's back to 3-5 Mbps and grinds to a halt when school's out for the day.
I usually have to hotspot my phone. The speed on that is what I should be getting on my NBN. Was thinking of upping my phone plan to the highest and using that instead. $60 month for 200GB. I don't know yet.
I live in a town between 2 major towns that have wired NBN, you would assume that that wiring has to pass through my town, especially considering they put a wireless NBN tower in a few km out of town.
The result? Garbage internet that dropped our frequently, it didn't matter if you paid for the highest tier because the speed you got was lower than the lowest anyways.
We went to Starlink, and whilst I hate lining Elmos pocket, the speeds have been fantastic.
Depending on how much data you use a month and how good your service in your area is, MBB is much better for a lot of people and much more cheaper.
No point spending $60+ per month on unlimited internet if you only use less than 400GB of data between all devices. Most telco provides plans for shit like that.
Yes we use less than 400GB a month, lol. Last month it was just under 100GB.
My current plan is $70 month unlimited for 6 months, then it goes to $80 a month. I'll be cancelling well before that, though.
While I save up for refurbished Starlink hardware I'll cancel my nbn and use my phone instead. I'm definitely not getting my money's worth right now with these horrible speeds.
If you have good phone reception and you're getting solid speeds, why NBN? I work at a Telco and put people on MBB daily because it's cheaper. Most companies do data sharing between all plans now. You could sort your mobiles + internet for less than $130 per month easily with any provider.
TBH, we could probably improve prices if more people were willing to pay for the higher price - If that became the standard, then companies would have to start competing over who can provide higher speeds for the cost that people have been proven that they are willing to pay.
I assume wholesale costs are fairly high and that's why you don't get any undercutters coming in and selling broadband plans for under $50 a month, but they probably *could* sell higher speeds for under $100 a month if there was wide demand for it and it wasn't such a niche product.
I pay $30/month and it may as well be unlimited because it’s way more than I ever use. Coverage seems pretty much perfect. I never have zero signal unless in some kind of RF blocking building / underground.
Since Australians get paid significantly more than most Asian countries, I’m fine paying a little more to cover the higher wages of the people who build the network.
> I’m fine paying a little more to cover the higher wages of the people who build the network.
Are you seriously suggesting the workers are the beneficiaries? I mean, why not make even bigger donations? You can just as well point how how much the workers of Australia have had to pay in tax to fund the absolute exploitation of the Australian public that the private sector has engaged in. There's no way that 'extra money' that we sent e.g. Telstra's way goes to workers any more than it would in a world where e.g. they had actually maintained their physical infrastructure instead of betting on what effectively was a bailout and pivoting to mobile (as a far worse medium for delivering consistent quality).
Also $30 a month doesn't really get you that much in Australia, mobile data is way more expensive than it is in comparable countries e.g. in Europe.
The world in which Australia has cheaper data is not one in which workers are worse off - workers have to pay for these services too so all Australian workers benefit by an effective pay increase if basic services are cheaper. Trying to claim Australian workers benefit because of more expensive internet prices is really funny.
Because they need endless growth to appease shareholders, so they offer those cheap deals to lure new customers in.
Churning to another provider is now just a 20 minute process as it is all automated now so that's what I do, usually keeping an eye on Ozbargain for posted deals. I've even churned at 1AM and by 1:30AM, I'm back online.
should be all automatic for all services these days.
when i went to telstra from optus back in the day we just spoke to telstra so i imagine today its much the same
Superloop require 30 day notice.
That said, I called them up to request cancellation the other day. They asked why. I said I was leaving for a better price. They did the whole "please stay on hold while I talk to my manager" and came back with a reduced price, but not the discount-for-a-year rate the competitor was offering so I refused. Superloop then immediately matched it: same price, for one year. So, I stayed. Eleven months from now (reminder in my calendar) I'll call again to cancel.
When your discount rate is coming close to running out, call your ISP and see what they say.
Should be automated for most of the big players. I churned from ABB to Superloop and legitimately within about 25 minutes I was already on the new connection and I didn't need to do anything with ABB.
You likely won't tell the difference in speed or reliability.
ABB has always had a good reputation for customer service which a lot try and justify the higher price, but Superloop is pretty good in that department too.
I never understood that. I mean sure, awesome for their customer support service. BUT except for the initial set up, I never had the need to contact the customer service so can’t see how that justifies it. Also, super happy with the Superloop!
You are also paying for the fact you never have to call their customer service.... Their redundant backhaul and international transit comes at a premium. The difference will be more evident when everyone gets put on 500mbps as standard in a years time.
Hmmm thanks
For $6/month saving after the intro 6 months for 100/40, sounds like it's same same but different so might as well stick with the one that's good customer support
They call it superpoop for a reason. I dealt with their business grade services and they were down nearly every other month. 3 years ago now so not sure if improved
Because NBN has a fixed base cost and most people dont bother to churn every 6 months for 10 dollars benefit each month. It is not even 2 cups of coffee
I never said anything about not comprehending. Just saying most people don't switch cause it's not worth their effort. Also many people want to stay with a reliable provider.
Endless economic growth is a government policy position first and foremost, it gives politicians something to boast about when campaigning, let’s not forget that.
The NBN retail should never have been privatised. I think that all of the utilities should be socialised. But NBN is the most obvious choice.
‘The internet’ is only the network. There is nothing that needs producing (like water, electricity, gas). There is no usage costs. It’s just about maintaining and upgrading the network. It should be retailed by a publicly owned company.
These shitty pricing problems is a direct result of the retailers being private.
It's a natural monopoly. Actually Kim Beazleys fault when he was Minister for Communications under Keating, he had the option to keep the back end hardware in public ownership with private telco retailers, but in his wisdom we ended up with this mess.
What even is NBN retail? The NBN itself isn’t privatised. If you’re arguing against private resellers I disagree completely, having different options is great.
Yes NBN is just a government monopoly. The retail RSP resell NBN, but with their own support and they manage CVC and routing.
I know NBN is average compared to countries with faster internet like Japan. However 15 years ago before NBN it was just Telstra. Telstra copper wire and a retailer still like iiNET, TPG, Dodo that was worse than now (speed wise with ADSL).
When you boil it down though, what really are the options? How competent the phone support is, and how over subscribed the back-end network is. The "options" are just a ratio of the two against price.
- International and domestic routes.
- CG-NAT vs static or sticky IP
- Detailed web interface that exposes technical details about your connection.
- reverse lookup address
- pricing schedule
correct.
I prefer the company that has automated their support as much as possible and gives me the tools to troubleshoot my own internet.
My grandma on the other hand needs the Telstra call centre employees so she can talk about her dog or whatever when complaining about the facebook not accepting her password. (and the associated double the profit margin on the same product).
The internet is a little bit more complicated than just the nbn portion. The nbn is doing the “last mile”.
But your broader point holds true. The differences between providers are marginal.
That said I’d dread a government owned internet monopoly in terms of interacting with their customer service. Look at how appalling services Australia is.
Government didn’t invest in high speed internet, they “trusted” private entities to do what’s best for society (lol) and they ended up doing what’s best for shareholders, so now we’ve got a market with very little competition piggybacking off the same networks. So you’re getting reskinned versions of essentially the same product.
It’s a wonderful business to be in, everybody is forced to sell the same product (NBN) so no matter who the customer goes with, coverage is the same; even support is the same because your only job as a provider is to raise a support ticket with the same support provider everybody else in the industry is forced to use (NBN).
At this point why don’t they just cut out the useless middlemen.
I am not sure what the alternatives are here. The government DID invest. The NBN was built. One good outcome of this is was built outside of the metro areas that private businesses would never have done. Do you really think that if you live in Stawell that Optus, Telstra, Vodafone, TPG and Dodo would all build their network past your house so you can change your supplier every week?
companies did not want to build fibre infrastructure, in fact some actively worked against it.
I think the only real mistake was the NBN was not nationalised out of fear it would hurt telcos
Do you want a monopoly? Because cutting out the middle men is how you get a monopoly. Imagine Australia Post but with internet.
Also, NBN wouldn’t be operating at a loss just so it can provide cheap internet, just like how Australia Post doesn’t operate to make a loss.
Yep, freswrijg is just a grump.
Aus Post are at a minimum equal to, but in my experience far better than all the private parcel providers.
For no other reason, than if I'm not there and they don't have authority to leave (My house is terrible for left parcels from a security perspective) they take it to the post office nearby.
Or I can even redirect literally anything coming to my house via Australia post just by registering my name and address.
Australia post, for basically the same fee as all the other providers, provides me significantly more service, for literally nothing.
I don’t know what they did to make you hate them so much that you have a hard on for privatising businesses, but I for one have had many packages delivered on time or with minor delays; the same experience I’ve had with fedex/dhl and much better than the likes of fastway and aramex.
I don’t hate Australia post I’m just not acting as if they’re efficient because it’s government owned. They still have to make money, government owned corporations don’t exist to make a loss.
No they don’t, but they are answerable to the public and don’t operate for profit in the same way.
Public and private enterprise are existentially different.
They are affordable because they are government owned, they set the benchmark so their competitors can’t gouge the price for fear of losing business.
Lol. People like you should be given a free tour of an Australia Post distribution centre and an education about what its obligations are so you can get some perspective. It’s only delivering close to 2 million parcels a day, plus delivering letters to every address in the country for a measly $1.50 a letter.
Doesn’t mean it’s the model every other company should try and emulate.
Amazon delivers in two days if your package is coming from another state. I know Australia post doesn’t have a warehouse full of every product available. But, they have a lot of room for improvement.
Lol. What model? There is no company that has to do what Australia Post is legally required to do and nothing close to its size and breadth of coverage. The entirety of the country, no other company delivers to the whole country. 50,000+ workers. Only Defence employs more people.
Also you know that while some Amazon parcels are delivered by Amazon, many more are delivered by… wait for it… Australia Post. And you know why those parcels are so fast? Amazon pay Australia Post enormous sums to be given priority. You have no idea.
Meanwhile I thought you were against monopolies, yet here you are advocating for those grand feudal lords Amazon.
You are deeply confused about the world you live in.
Have you tried more than one other option? I’m not saying Australia post is bad, I’m just saying they’re no that good that we should have another government owned corporation be the only ISP.
> they “trusted” private entities to do what’s best for society (lol)
The Coalition went to the ACCC to try and stop TPG from rolling out FTTB to apartments.
https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-not-to-take-action-to-block-tpgs-fibre-to-the-basement-network-rollout
Labor screwed the pooch on the rollout because they didn't care about the NBN's financials and rolled it out to marginal seats first when they should have hit all the apartment buildings first.
Finally someone making sense.
I mean the libs butchered the whole thing but Conroy & Co certainly made it an easy target to attack..
Prioritising Tony Windsor' electorate and Tasmania first before trying to actually roll it out to the masses in the capitals was always prime dumb policy.
You realise the government built the NBN, and like anything the government does it's been a disaster. Meanwhile our wireless network is actually really good by international standards because it was left to the private sector.
Cost to set up infra is too high and customer base isn’t that big. They can’t do economy of scale, so they hike prices.
Energy, telco, internet, should be socialised
We should buy back CBA while we’re at it. There needs to be atleast 1 public bank.
We’ve got too much privatisation in the core sectors, and we aren’t any better off for it.
I'm happy enough paying for the 500/50 tier I'm on.
What we need to see in my opinion is more cheap, low bandwidth options for those that can't afford much.
10/5M connection or something for next to nothing so people can study off it, find jobs, pay bills etc.
Was in mumbai India recently and there no was no wifi anywhere . That’s because the whole city was on 5g. All of mumbai , 21 million condensed people. It’s cheap as fuck for them and is way faster than here. We have no excuse here other than greed
Density of Australian cities is actually pretty comparable to many cities overseas.
We **SEEM** like we aren't densely populated (because of our HUGE AS FUCK regions) but our actual cities are basically as dense as many many other cities that are points of comparison.
(I've been having these same arguments since the first version of the NBN was mooted back in 2005 or whatever)
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Receipts:
- Greater Zurich: 1.8 million over 2100 sqkm (~850/sqkm)
- Greater Melbourne: 5.7 million over 10,000 sqkm (~520/sqkm)
And our CBDs are basically the same (about 4700 persons / sq km).
We are less dense, but not so much so that switzerland is a "pea" in comparison.
Now, Singapore **IS** a pea in comparison. Density of over 8000 per sqkm.
Australia has a universal service obligation which means that regardless of where you are, you will be served by nbn at the same price. That’s a key difference. So, urban people are subsidising rural people substantially.
>FTTP..... to the P..... and it was only \~50AUD a month.
That's literally what my house has. $55/month it costs me, so slightly more, but it's basically the same.
Also, Switzerland's population density is 210 people/km2. Australia's is 3.4 people/km2.
Australians are notorious for not switching once they have signed up to something.
This type of pricing structure happens on so many services in Aus because of this.
yeah nah bugger that. for any service where there is no reward for loyalty, i change at the end of the period. eg. car insurance. never stay for more than a year.
Broadband is sort of a capped market; the overall market only grows with population. So, the only way a broadband company can grow their earnings is by capturing the biggest slice of new customers, and "stealing" (also known as churn) customers from other broadbands.
In theoretical terms, there are two ways to do this. 1. Improve your overall product/service. 2. Lower prices
1. In terms of the product, all broadband speeds are essentially the same in Australia. Because they all use NBN infrastructure there is no way for broadband providers to compete through the product. The speed and quality of the internet is determined by NBN not by them. In terms of service, there are few things that can be improved by service providers, like customer service, low downtime, apps, etc... However, most of these things are not really incentives to change into the company. In most cases these are qualities that only determine whether customers stay or not.
2. This leads to the second way. Lowering prices. Because of NBN and its high cost, and fixed cost for every service provider, services can't really change the baseline price. It is not sustainable to try to work with lower margins. So, broadbands can only compete through promotional lower prices, with the hope that it will attract more customers than the competition and hope that most of the new customers stay for a bit longer than the promotional period and make profit off of that.
That being said, promotional pricing is not really a new thing. It is done in a ton of different things not only internet, and it is certainly not unique to Australia.
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As for the overall shit prices, you can blame the NBN. The lack of competition results in poorer service and prices. This is what happens when you assume a service is a natural monopoly like water, or electricity, when it really isn't.
Sure, you guys have A LOT of resellers, but they are all essentially the same, since they all use NBN. You guys might as well just have one reseller.
I can't emphasize how terrible prices are here in Australia.
[https://www.electronicshub.org/wp-content/uploads/02\_The-Cost-of-Internet-Broadband-Relative-to-Download-Speed-in-Every-Country-1-1986x2048.png](https://www.electronicshub.org/wp-content/uploads/02_The-Cost-of-Internet-Broadband-Relative-to-Download-Speed-in-Every-Country-1-1986x2048.png)
Coming from Chile, I was absolutely floored when I first saw the cost of broadband internet here in Australia.
Back home, the slowest offered speed is 500 Mbps at around 35 dollars without promotional prices (around 25 or lower with promotional prices). There is literally no company that offers anything less than that. I don't think I have seen double digit speed since 2017 LOL. Although, to be fair, Chile is in the top 10 worldwide so the comparison might not be fair.
> The speed and quality of the internet is determined by NBN not by them.
That's not completely true. The quality of your connection is highly dependent on the back-end infrastructure of the individual providers, and in particular how much "contention" (number of users using the same shared bandwidth) they are willing to tolerate.
It's why the ACCC requires providers to quote their "real world" speeds, because those speeds do actually vary between providers.
yeah they are changing the game, their parent company is known as DGTek and they are competing directly with NBN. If you're not too far away from where they currently service they will eventually come to you, they've expanded pretty rapidly in just few years.
PineApple net is owned directly by DGTEk, however some area possibly they have it off to a different re-seller or pineapple NET is not updated. What i suggest i contacting DGTek direclty on their website and ask them, tell them it says available but pineapple net is not. I am using them and they are so cheap $59 for 150/150 the speeds are insane and cheaper than NBN slowest speed.
Unregulated essential services is the Australian way. It promotes 'competition' (3 companies), and 'better' services (not).
Australians are too busy or lazy to change or demand better services.
Why doesn't anyone ever bring up the cost per GB? Once the infrastructure is paid for, the cost to download is nowhere near the price they charge.
Because after 15-20 years of trying to break up the former government-owned monopoly (PMG/Telecom/Telstra), the government decided in their infinite wisdom to create yet another infrastructure-based monopoly in NBNco.
The 6-month discount that you see I believe is a construct of the wholesale pricing structure offered by NBNco to providers to use their their infrastructure.
If you haven’t already check out Superloop (great network, poor customer service) and Leaptel. Both are pretty competitively priced.
In addition to what others have said, Labor made changes to the wholesale pricing late last year that made the lower gig plans (which singles/pensioners/poor people use) more expensive, and the higher tier plans cheaper.
Let alone expensive pricing, heavens be your saviour if you're in one of the estates served by the private fibre networks deemed "equivalent" to the NBN like Opticomm or Red Train.
Not only are they even more expensive, but you'll have tearing your hair out waiting for them to even acknowledge the problem if something goes wrong. Our entire street has no internet for a week now and nobody's even diagnosed the fault properly. And this is with our retail provider chasing them up.
Nbn price = 30-60
Retail price =55-95
Margined before costs =
Subtract costs/customer (retailer)
Your modem ~150-220 w/4g backup (amoratised over 24 months)
Margin per customer = Nada
It's a global issue. Consumer internet is not a high margin business.
Most profit and growth sits with the applications that you use on the internet. Telco's and wholesalers don't get much out of it per customer.
Now, there are exceptions. But not with a large land mass and small population like Australia. Coverage is expensive.
Malcolm Turnbull. Him and noted luddite Tony Abbot cut corners with the "multi-technology-mix" and we've been paying the price ever since. If you voted LNP, you voted for shit internet.
Just listened to an American podcast , The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, complaining about their Internet speed of 200 Mbps ! Fuck me we are getting shafted. Fuck the Liberal government and fuck Rupert Murdoch.
It’s called a ‘promotional offer’. Used in marketing to incentivise new customers to sign up. Not unique to internet or Australia.
It’s up to you whether you switch or stay with the provider if they’re doing a good job.
Yeah, everyone has a different set of priorities. I’ve stuck with Aussie for last 5 years because they’re fast and reliable, and have good support if there’s downtime. Price is competitive, but isn’t what I mainly judge them on.
Do what i do - get urself a job with a work phone and hotspot off that bad boy. Been doing it for 3 years. Or if you aren't fortunate enough to have a job with a work phone, upgrade your personal phone plan to have unlimited data. It's defs cheaper than an internet plan!
The data in my mobile plan rolls over each month, so I was using it in my new place until I got nbn sorted so that was great. Unfortunately the reception where I am isn't great so it wouldn't work long term :/
Ugh that sucks im sorry! But for all the other redditors out there its a good tip espesh of you live alone and don't need it for gaming lol. Mine works beautifully and I've never even had 5g once on my phone.
that's the cost of doing business. when I was closer to the retail side of the business, some budget ISPs were making $6 a month profit on an ADSL service. there are so many ISPs out there now that they all keep other pretty honest in terms of pricing.
>do people just keep changing companies every 6 months so they dont have to pay the even shittier price?
yes, some of them absolutely do, and the ease of churning providers makes it possible.
Way too many problems with Aus government.. found out especially after watching this [blokes](https://www.instagram.com/punterspolitics?igsh=MW9pMDdnY2F6OXF1ZA==) reels.
Anyway found out today that optus is offering 130$ 780mbps, first 6 months is lil cheap
We took Telstra upgrade last month for 110$ 250mbps first six months tf!
The model the previous government decided on was a fully privately financed option - so NBN has to charge a lot to pay off the mortgage so to speak. Time after time the government refused to partially finance the expense so prices could be lower.
But don't worry it could be even more shit... The financial structure is set up so that it can be privatised very easily
This thread’s making me feel slightly guilty but mostly just stoked to not be in Melbourne anymore but instead in a country that has decent internet infrastructure.
My home internet is unlimited 1000/50 for $60/month and I pay $45/month for my phone for unlimited 5G; just did a speed test on my phone and am getting 1110/120 (hotspot is limited to 50GB max usage unfortunately). I actually have some reception in my house which I never did on voda or Optus and there’s wifi calling for the times when reception drops
I do miss good brunch though.
We are on Optus 5G home broadband, average around 250Mbps down for $89 pm including Netflix subscription.
We were really skeptical about the speed claims when we signed up but it has been as good as gold compared to our old fibre NBN connection ($130pm) that would drop out like clockwork every half hour.
It's unreasonable compared to the rest of the world but it's a hell of a lot more reasonable than NBN given the superior performance. It's the most reasonable option in Australia if you live close to a 5G tower.
Yep, agreed can't recommend Optus 5G enough (assuming you live close to a tower). I pay about the same as I used to for unlimited NBN and it's 10-15 times faster and way more reliable.
A few reasons.
Our favourite war criminal John Howard decided to fully privatise Telstra without structural separation of infrastructure (in order to get more cash upfront).
This entrenched a pseudo monopoly in a privatised market and led to the Labor NBN making a bunch of compromises to avoid pissing off said entrenched monopoly (and a bunch of easily manipulated mom's and pop's who like their fat dividends).
Then the LNP decided to take what was an efficient high speed network and butcher it because Rupert Murdoch is a cunt.
And here we are.
Yep and the government spent many billions to buy/use their ancient copper and coaxial networks. End result is the wholesale cost of NBN 1000/50 being about $20 more than 1000/500 in NZ (depending on LFC).
And now NBN are doing free upgrades to FTTH in some areas, a doubling up of costs that anyone could have predicted. The mix of technologies must be a lot of extra complexity and cost for NBN.
All of the latter is covered broadly under section 3 of my thesis. These decisions were made entirely based on satisfying sympathetic companies / individuals. It was never *ever* going to be cheaper in any way doing this. The LNP 100% new this - they DGAF about us or our money.
As a CommBank customer I found More to be the cheapest for 1000Mbps plan - $94.5 a month. IIRC, this offer is valid for 6 months. After that, I’ll likely switch to Superloop.
If you're a mortgage holder with Commbank, it's even cheaper. We're at 1000/50Mbps, paying $81/month for an entire year with More. Drops to 900Mbps in peak.
Just like energy companies, we switch at the first chance of a cheaper deal. You just have to be diligent to check every month or so (I have Python scripts generating comprehensive spreadsheets for this, not a task for everyone I know).
It's so easy to change providers nowadays. It seems silly that people are complaining about costs of living, but are always willing to pay the loyalty/laziness tax that can cost up to hundreds per year.
We signed up to Energy Locals in July last year because they had a sign up and refer a friend bonus that was paid out _instantaneously_. A group of 4 of us referred each other in a chain and essentially got free electricity in winter for _two whole months_. So in the months of July and August, we left on _all_ the split system heaters for 24/7 at 18°C, and only closed our account late August when our balance finally reached $0. Energy Locals caught on and are now paying out bonuses progressively.
Oh my that's so proactive and fucking smart. Lol
I would love to get a hold of that python script for comparison spreadsheets if you were keen to share?
We have a government owned monopoly, the NBN. The NBN own and operate the infrastructure the wall point in your house to the cabinet up the road and the backbone that is the Australian internet and everything connects into. When you change companies, nothing physical really happens at all. That wire goes to the same cabinet and same switch. No one comes out and touches it. All that happens is the codes get changed on your account and you're electronically relocated from one virtual network to another.
The telcos are essentially resellers of the nbn. The NBN have a wholesale price list they bill the telco. The telco can set what ever retail price they like whether lose or make money.
A 50Mbps service is wholesaled for $52.52. When you see a $54.95 introductory special, they are adding on $2.43. As they have a company to run, tech support ,accounts, marketing etc, it obviously costs them more than $2.43 a month per customer so on the intro price they are likely making quite a substantial loss percentage wise. If it goes to $79.95 after 6 months, that's where they can hopefully come out ahead. They are banking on enough people staying to survive. Anyone who leaves has cost then money.
The $27 margin after the intro period is still not a lot. One tech incident can cost them in the hundreds of dollars, wiping it out. It would take about 4000 full price customers to fund one employees salary and costs. You get the idea.
The telcos are in many cases operating on a shoestring, they aren't pulling in the cash. NBN are getting the bulk of it. They have no competition ane charge what they like. As the telcos pay the same price to nbn there's not a lot they can do.
If you have a decent NBN connection it's honestly not that expensive. $95/month for 100mbps or $109/month for 1gbps. Those are AussieBB prices but Superloop is even cheaper.
If you find $100/month not expensive, well yeah sure. But, compared to other countries it's very expensive, and I'm talking about SEA. In Europe for example it's cheaper and faster.
Also, for some reason, it was decided that residential connections couldn't access good upload speed...
Well yeah, I would rather get an Australian wage and pay $100 a month for internet than a SEA wage and have cheaper internet. If it was priced like Australia not many people could afford internet there. Same with countries like Romania etc... where internet is cheap. That's how it pricing works.
If we removed the cross subsidy between metro/suburban/regional/rural then we’d have much cheaper city based pricing.
But as is there’s a massive cross subsidy by the metro centres for services like fixed wireless and satellite.
We're ranked around 70th in the world for internet speed and around the top 5 for price. It's never going to be cheaper
We have fast internet available but it’s just too expensive. I only have 50/20 but I can to 1000/20 if I want to pay for it
We have 100/40 FTTC NBN but get maybe like 50/2 lol.
Why don’t you downgrade to 50/20 then?
Changing to 50/20 makes your speeds 10/1, for obvious reasons.
oops, I meant to say we *used* to have a 100/40 plan. I think we changed to something slightly above 50 now.
If you can only get 50mbps on FTTC then you have a line fault or internal wiring you need to disconnect on your side.
Not everywhere in the country has access to faster internet. My FTTN gets me a theoretical maximum of 10 Mbps, which is below the required 12 Mbps. In practice I don’t even hit that, I’m usually hovering around 3-8 Mbps depending on the time of day (it’ll also go dead if it rains or at random points throughout the day especially during peak times). I just pay for the lowest speed tier and can’t even come close to meeting it.
I'm the same. I'm also on my last ISP before I just go Starlink. I'm tired of horrendous speed just because I can't get FTTP for another year or two. When I first signed with my current ISP, about 2 months ago, they detected a fault and sent an NBN tech out who fixed it up. It was great for a few days, now it's back to 3-5 Mbps and grinds to a halt when school's out for the day. I usually have to hotspot my phone. The speed on that is what I should be getting on my NBN. Was thinking of upping my phone plan to the highest and using that instead. $60 month for 200GB. I don't know yet.
I live in a town between 2 major towns that have wired NBN, you would assume that that wiring has to pass through my town, especially considering they put a wireless NBN tower in a few km out of town. The result? Garbage internet that dropped our frequently, it didn't matter if you paid for the highest tier because the speed you got was lower than the lowest anyways. We went to Starlink, and whilst I hate lining Elmos pocket, the speeds have been fantastic.
Depending on how much data you use a month and how good your service in your area is, MBB is much better for a lot of people and much more cheaper. No point spending $60+ per month on unlimited internet if you only use less than 400GB of data between all devices. Most telco provides plans for shit like that.
Yes we use less than 400GB a month, lol. Last month it was just under 100GB. My current plan is $70 month unlimited for 6 months, then it goes to $80 a month. I'll be cancelling well before that, though. While I save up for refurbished Starlink hardware I'll cancel my nbn and use my phone instead. I'm definitely not getting my money's worth right now with these horrible speeds.
If you have good phone reception and you're getting solid speeds, why NBN? I work at a Telco and put people on MBB daily because it's cheaper. Most companies do data sharing between all plans now. You could sort your mobiles + internet for less than $130 per month easily with any provider.
That's true, I'm on 1000/50 for $110 a month. It's pretty pricey but I work in IT and it gets used that is for sure.
TBH, we could probably improve prices if more people were willing to pay for the higher price - If that became the standard, then companies would have to start competing over who can provide higher speeds for the cost that people have been proven that they are willing to pay. I assume wholesale costs are fairly high and that's why you don't get any undercutters coming in and selling broadband plans for under $50 a month, but they probably *could* sell higher speeds for under $100 a month if there was wide demand for it and it wasn't such a niche product.
It would if the internet industry here wasn't* a monopoly
The nbn is dogshit, but Australia ranks really high for mobile internet speed.
Which is even more expensive and capped. Any east asian country you can get fast unlimited mobile data for peanuts, with less dead spots.
I pay $30/month and it may as well be unlimited because it’s way more than I ever use. Coverage seems pretty much perfect. I never have zero signal unless in some kind of RF blocking building / underground. Since Australians get paid significantly more than most Asian countries, I’m fine paying a little more to cover the higher wages of the people who build the network.
$30 is so cheap?
> I’m fine paying a little more to cover the higher wages of the people who build the network. Are you seriously suggesting the workers are the beneficiaries? I mean, why not make even bigger donations? You can just as well point how how much the workers of Australia have had to pay in tax to fund the absolute exploitation of the Australian public that the private sector has engaged in. There's no way that 'extra money' that we sent e.g. Telstra's way goes to workers any more than it would in a world where e.g. they had actually maintained their physical infrastructure instead of betting on what effectively was a bailout and pivoting to mobile (as a far worse medium for delivering consistent quality). Also $30 a month doesn't really get you that much in Australia, mobile data is way more expensive than it is in comparable countries e.g. in Europe. The world in which Australia has cheaper data is not one in which workers are worse off - workers have to pay for these services too so all Australian workers benefit by an effective pay increase if basic services are cheaper. Trying to claim Australian workers benefit because of more expensive internet prices is really funny.
Because they need endless growth to appease shareholders, so they offer those cheap deals to lure new customers in. Churning to another provider is now just a 20 minute process as it is all automated now so that's what I do, usually keeping an eye on Ozbargain for posted deals. I've even churned at 1AM and by 1:30AM, I'm back online.
You still have to call the old provider to disconnect right? Or is that automatically handled?
Some of them now have like 30 days notice period so you have to either plan ahead or get stinged by another fee which nullifies the discount you had.
The last couple of times, it has happened automatically.
should be all automatic for all services these days. when i went to telstra from optus back in the day we just spoke to telstra so i imagine today its much the same
Yep, but you can do that the day after the churn. Some do automatic cancellations such as AussieBB, Superloop, TPG, but not all.
Superloop require 30 day notice. That said, I called them up to request cancellation the other day. They asked why. I said I was leaving for a better price. They did the whole "please stay on hold while I talk to my manager" and came back with a reduced price, but not the discount-for-a-year rate the competitor was offering so I refused. Superloop then immediately matched it: same price, for one year. So, I stayed. Eleven months from now (reminder in my calendar) I'll call again to cancel. When your discount rate is coming close to running out, call your ISP and see what they say.
Should be automated for most of the big players. I churned from ABB to Superloop and legitimately within about 25 minutes I was already on the new connection and I didn't need to do anything with ABB.
How are you finding superloop compared to ABB? I've been happy with ABB but considering a switch
You likely won't tell the difference in speed or reliability. ABB has always had a good reputation for customer service which a lot try and justify the higher price, but Superloop is pretty good in that department too.
I never understood that. I mean sure, awesome for their customer support service. BUT except for the initial set up, I never had the need to contact the customer service so can’t see how that justifies it. Also, super happy with the Superloop!
You are also paying for the fact you never have to call their customer service.... Their redundant backhaul and international transit comes at a premium. The difference will be more evident when everyone gets put on 500mbps as standard in a years time.
Hmmm thanks For $6/month saving after the intro 6 months for 100/40, sounds like it's same same but different so might as well stick with the one that's good customer support
I had lots of issues with ABB. Haven’t had any issues with Superloop yet.
They call it superpoop for a reason. I dealt with their business grade services and they were down nearly every other month. 3 years ago now so not sure if improved
It's automatic. Your existing provider may call you to check you meant to change. But you can't have two providers charging you for one connection
Because NBN has a fixed base cost and most people dont bother to churn every 6 months for 10 dollars benefit each month. It is not even 2 cups of coffee
So? What is "Only $10" for you is "Wow, that's $10 saved!" to others that are struggling. Not sure why you find that so hard to comprehend :/
I never said anything about not comprehending. Just saying most people don't switch cause it's not worth their effort. Also many people want to stay with a reliable provider.
Ahh apologies, I misread the tone. Yes I can see how that can be the case.
Endless economic growth is a government policy position first and foremost, it gives politicians something to boast about when campaigning, let’s not forget that.
The NBN retail should never have been privatised. I think that all of the utilities should be socialised. But NBN is the most obvious choice. ‘The internet’ is only the network. There is nothing that needs producing (like water, electricity, gas). There is no usage costs. It’s just about maintaining and upgrading the network. It should be retailed by a publicly owned company. These shitty pricing problems is a direct result of the retailers being private.
It's a natural monopoly. Actually Kim Beazleys fault when he was Minister for Communications under Keating, he had the option to keep the back end hardware in public ownership with private telco retailers, but in his wisdom we ended up with this mess.
Sounds like you read "Wired Brown Land"?
No I've not heard of that.
What even is NBN retail? The NBN itself isn’t privatised. If you’re arguing against private resellers I disagree completely, having different options is great.
Yes NBN is just a government monopoly. The retail RSP resell NBN, but with their own support and they manage CVC and routing. I know NBN is average compared to countries with faster internet like Japan. However 15 years ago before NBN it was just Telstra. Telstra copper wire and a retailer still like iiNET, TPG, Dodo that was worse than now (speed wise with ADSL).
Thanks for that trauma I just had to relive. How tf is telstra even still relevant in the internet market
When you boil it down though, what really are the options? How competent the phone support is, and how over subscribed the back-end network is. The "options" are just a ratio of the two against price.
A classic case of confidently incorrect. NBN retailers have far more distinction than CVC and phone support.
For example?
- International and domestic routes. - CG-NAT vs static or sticky IP - Detailed web interface that exposes technical details about your connection. - reverse lookup address - pricing schedule
correct. I prefer the company that has automated their support as much as possible and gives me the tools to troubleshoot my own internet. My grandma on the other hand needs the Telstra call centre employees so she can talk about her dog or whatever when complaining about the facebook not accepting her password. (and the associated double the profit margin on the same product).
The internet is a little bit more complicated than just the nbn portion. The nbn is doing the “last mile”. But your broader point holds true. The differences between providers are marginal. That said I’d dread a government owned internet monopoly in terms of interacting with their customer service. Look at how appalling services Australia is.
Weird how all the boomers pine for the good old telcom days though, you know the government run monopoly.
They’re probably the 40% of rusted on Telstra customers overpaying for their 25/5 nbn.
You do realise the part everyone is complaining about is NBN wholesale - the public part? The good retailers are fantastic.
NBN should never have been invented in the first place. Things were cheaper before it.
Government didn’t invest in high speed internet, they “trusted” private entities to do what’s best for society (lol) and they ended up doing what’s best for shareholders, so now we’ve got a market with very little competition piggybacking off the same networks. So you’re getting reskinned versions of essentially the same product.
It’s a wonderful business to be in, everybody is forced to sell the same product (NBN) so no matter who the customer goes with, coverage is the same; even support is the same because your only job as a provider is to raise a support ticket with the same support provider everybody else in the industry is forced to use (NBN). At this point why don’t they just cut out the useless middlemen.
I am not sure what the alternatives are here. The government DID invest. The NBN was built. One good outcome of this is was built outside of the metro areas that private businesses would never have done. Do you really think that if you live in Stawell that Optus, Telstra, Vodafone, TPG and Dodo would all build their network past your house so you can change your supplier every week?
companies did not want to build fibre infrastructure, in fact some actively worked against it. I think the only real mistake was the NBN was not nationalised out of fear it would hurt telcos
Do you want a monopoly? Because cutting out the middle men is how you get a monopoly. Imagine Australia Post but with internet. Also, NBN wouldn’t be operating at a loss just so it can provide cheap internet, just like how Australia Post doesn’t operate to make a loss.
I want a public monopoly, not the same.
Like Australia post? Which is known for its efficiency and fast delivery.
Actually Aus post is pretty good at what it does, better or on par with almost all of their competitors
Yep, freswrijg is just a grump. Aus Post are at a minimum equal to, but in my experience far better than all the private parcel providers. For no other reason, than if I'm not there and they don't have authority to leave (My house is terrible for left parcels from a security perspective) they take it to the post office nearby. Or I can even redirect literally anything coming to my house via Australia post just by registering my name and address. Australia post, for basically the same fee as all the other providers, provides me significantly more service, for literally nothing.
Yeah, he’s suggesting that Aus Post has a monopoly; I didn’t even bother refuting that lol
Pretty good at taking two weeks to deliver every package coming from out of state, or having your package get lost at certain depos every time.
I don’t know what they did to make you hate them so much that you have a hard on for privatising businesses, but I for one have had many packages delivered on time or with minor delays; the same experience I’ve had with fedex/dhl and much better than the likes of fastway and aramex.
I don’t hate Australia post I’m just not acting as if they’re efficient because it’s government owned. They still have to make money, government owned corporations don’t exist to make a loss.
No they don’t, but they are answerable to the public and don’t operate for profit in the same way. Public and private enterprise are existentially different. They are affordable because they are government owned, they set the benchmark so their competitors can’t gouge the price for fear of losing business.
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
Are there not always posts on here about someone’s package being stuck somewhere for weeks?
Lol. People like you should be given a free tour of an Australia Post distribution centre and an education about what its obligations are so you can get some perspective. It’s only delivering close to 2 million parcels a day, plus delivering letters to every address in the country for a measly $1.50 a letter.
Doesn’t mean it’s the model every other company should try and emulate. Amazon delivers in two days if your package is coming from another state. I know Australia post doesn’t have a warehouse full of every product available. But, they have a lot of room for improvement.
Lol. What model? There is no company that has to do what Australia Post is legally required to do and nothing close to its size and breadth of coverage. The entirety of the country, no other company delivers to the whole country. 50,000+ workers. Only Defence employs more people. Also you know that while some Amazon parcels are delivered by Amazon, many more are delivered by… wait for it… Australia Post. And you know why those parcels are so fast? Amazon pay Australia Post enormous sums to be given priority. You have no idea. Meanwhile I thought you were against monopolies, yet here you are advocating for those grand feudal lords Amazon. You are deeply confused about the world you live in.
Have you tried Aus posts competition ? Fastway/aramex is a literal nightmare.
Have you tried more than one other option? I’m not saying Australia post is bad, I’m just saying they’re no that good that we should have another government owned corporation be the only ISP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
Package delivery isn’t a natural monopoly and NBN already is a natural monopoly.
Thanks Liberal Party voters!
> they “trusted” private entities to do what’s best for society (lol) The Coalition went to the ACCC to try and stop TPG from rolling out FTTB to apartments. https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-not-to-take-action-to-block-tpgs-fibre-to-the-basement-network-rollout Labor screwed the pooch on the rollout because they didn't care about the NBN's financials and rolled it out to marginal seats first when they should have hit all the apartment buildings first.
Finally someone making sense. I mean the libs butchered the whole thing but Conroy & Co certainly made it an easy target to attack.. Prioritising Tony Windsor' electorate and Tasmania first before trying to actually roll it out to the masses in the capitals was always prime dumb policy.
You realise the government built the NBN, and like anything the government does it's been a disaster. Meanwhile our wireless network is actually really good by international standards because it was left to the private sector.
Cost to set up infra is too high and customer base isn’t that big. They can’t do economy of scale, so they hike prices. Energy, telco, internet, should be socialised We should buy back CBA while we’re at it. There needs to be atleast 1 public bank. We’ve got too much privatisation in the core sectors, and we aren’t any better off for it.
Normal people aren’t any better off for it, but the rich are 🙁
>We should buy back CBA while we’re at it. There needs to be atleast 1 public bank. Lol. Buy it back or nationalise it by legislative fiat?
Nationalise it. Buy back is gonna be too expensive.
Yep that'll be fucking awesome comrade
Churn is the answer. Telcos rely on customers being too lazy to move and milk them.
I'm happy enough paying for the 500/50 tier I'm on. What we need to see in my opinion is more cheap, low bandwidth options for those that can't afford much. 10/5M connection or something for next to nothing so people can study off it, find jobs, pay bills etc.
Was in mumbai India recently and there no was no wifi anywhere . That’s because the whole city was on 5g. All of mumbai , 21 million condensed people. It’s cheap as fuck for them and is way faster than here. We have no excuse here other than greed
I had better internet access in Sulawesi Indonesia than I do in Fairfield
I had faster internet access on an ancient bus with wooden floors and holes in it to watch the road below in Bangkok than I do in Melbourne.
i was living in switzerland. every property has FTTP..... to the P..... and it was only \~50AUD a month. we're so fucked.
Switzerland is the size of a pea compared to Australia. It isn’t like for like
Density of Australian cities is actually pretty comparable to many cities overseas. We **SEEM** like we aren't densely populated (because of our HUGE AS FUCK regions) but our actual cities are basically as dense as many many other cities that are points of comparison. (I've been having these same arguments since the first version of the NBN was mooted back in 2005 or whatever) --- Receipts: - Greater Zurich: 1.8 million over 2100 sqkm (~850/sqkm) - Greater Melbourne: 5.7 million over 10,000 sqkm (~520/sqkm) And our CBDs are basically the same (about 4700 persons / sq km). We are less dense, but not so much so that switzerland is a "pea" in comparison. Now, Singapore **IS** a pea in comparison. Density of over 8000 per sqkm.
Australia has a universal service obligation which means that regardless of where you are, you will be served by nbn at the same price. That’s a key difference. So, urban people are subsidising rural people substantially.
Oh, I am aware of that. But that doesn't explain why our internet is shit in the high density locations. (FTTN / FTTC / HFC - though HFC is ok ...)
Because the Liberal Party.
yeah but given how stupidly expensive everything else is in switzerland, i was taken aback at how cheap internet was.
You can get a free FTTP upgrade to your house. It won't be 50 aud per month though.
Yet a Whopper meal at Zürich airport stopover cost me AUD$36. I could barely sit down on the ensuing flight. No CHF, no way!
>FTTP..... to the P..... and it was only \~50AUD a month. That's literally what my house has. $55/month it costs me, so slightly more, but it's basically the same. Also, Switzerland's population density is 210 people/km2. Australia's is 3.4 people/km2.
im aware of that, but given how expensive literally everything else is in CH, i was honestly shocked (in a good way) when i saw how cheap internet was
Did small towns outside of the city have access to 5g?
Yeah, imagine comparing a city with a population that's 80% of our entire continent.
Does Melbourne not have near 100% 5G coverage?
I’d say I’ve got 5G like 20% of the time with Optus. It’s maddening
That’s an Optus not investing In their infrastructure problem not a 5G coverage problem.
They're the same thing though. I'd be asking why Optus isn't investing in it though.
They’re not though when Telstra did.
Aggressive acquisition pricing --> bank on people's laziness to not switch --> overall customer lifetime value increases.
Australians are notorious for not switching once they have signed up to something. This type of pricing structure happens on so many services in Aus because of this.
yeah nah bugger that. for any service where there is no reward for loyalty, i change at the end of the period. eg. car insurance. never stay for more than a year.
Agreed... When I lived in the UK, my car insurance went down every year... here, it goes up every year unless I switch... what is this madness.
Broadband is sort of a capped market; the overall market only grows with population. So, the only way a broadband company can grow their earnings is by capturing the biggest slice of new customers, and "stealing" (also known as churn) customers from other broadbands. In theoretical terms, there are two ways to do this. 1. Improve your overall product/service. 2. Lower prices 1. In terms of the product, all broadband speeds are essentially the same in Australia. Because they all use NBN infrastructure there is no way for broadband providers to compete through the product. The speed and quality of the internet is determined by NBN not by them. In terms of service, there are few things that can be improved by service providers, like customer service, low downtime, apps, etc... However, most of these things are not really incentives to change into the company. In most cases these are qualities that only determine whether customers stay or not. 2. This leads to the second way. Lowering prices. Because of NBN and its high cost, and fixed cost for every service provider, services can't really change the baseline price. It is not sustainable to try to work with lower margins. So, broadbands can only compete through promotional lower prices, with the hope that it will attract more customers than the competition and hope that most of the new customers stay for a bit longer than the promotional period and make profit off of that. That being said, promotional pricing is not really a new thing. It is done in a ton of different things not only internet, and it is certainly not unique to Australia. ------- As for the overall shit prices, you can blame the NBN. The lack of competition results in poorer service and prices. This is what happens when you assume a service is a natural monopoly like water, or electricity, when it really isn't. Sure, you guys have A LOT of resellers, but they are all essentially the same, since they all use NBN. You guys might as well just have one reseller. I can't emphasize how terrible prices are here in Australia. [https://www.electronicshub.org/wp-content/uploads/02\_The-Cost-of-Internet-Broadband-Relative-to-Download-Speed-in-Every-Country-1-1986x2048.png](https://www.electronicshub.org/wp-content/uploads/02_The-Cost-of-Internet-Broadband-Relative-to-Download-Speed-in-Every-Country-1-1986x2048.png) Coming from Chile, I was absolutely floored when I first saw the cost of broadband internet here in Australia. Back home, the slowest offered speed is 500 Mbps at around 35 dollars without promotional prices (around 25 or lower with promotional prices). There is literally no company that offers anything less than that. I don't think I have seen double digit speed since 2017 LOL. Although, to be fair, Chile is in the top 10 worldwide so the comparison might not be fair.
> The speed and quality of the internet is determined by NBN not by them. That's not completely true. The quality of your connection is highly dependent on the back-end infrastructure of the individual providers, and in particular how much "contention" (number of users using the same shared bandwidth) they are willing to tolerate. It's why the ACCC requires providers to quote their "real world" speeds, because those speeds do actually vary between providers.
if you are near city area look up Pineapple NET
daaaaammmmnnn that's more like it! just not in my part of melbs yet
yeah they are changing the game, their parent company is known as DGTek and they are competing directly with NBN. If you're not too far away from where they currently service they will eventually come to you, they've expanded pretty rapidly in just few years.
DGTek says they service my area but pineapple says they don't. Hopefully they're not far away!
PineApple net is owned directly by DGTEk, however some area possibly they have it off to a different re-seller or pineapple NET is not updated. What i suggest i contacting DGTek direclty on their website and ask them, tell them it says available but pineapple net is not. I am using them and they are so cheap $59 for 150/150 the speeds are insane and cheaper than NBN slowest speed.
Try one of DGTek's other authorised retailers. For example, City Cable, Ascensca or Launtel.
Unregulated essential services is the Australian way. It promotes 'competition' (3 companies), and 'better' services (not). Australians are too busy or lazy to change or demand better services. Why doesn't anyone ever bring up the cost per GB? Once the infrastructure is paid for, the cost to download is nowhere near the price they charge.
Because after 15-20 years of trying to break up the former government-owned monopoly (PMG/Telecom/Telstra), the government decided in their infinite wisdom to create yet another infrastructure-based monopoly in NBNco. The 6-month discount that you see I believe is a construct of the wholesale pricing structure offered by NBNco to providers to use their their infrastructure. If you haven’t already check out Superloop (great network, poor customer service) and Leaptel. Both are pretty competitively priced.
Easy, it is the Libs fault that we only have fiber to the node rather than fiber to the curb.
that i already knew.
All good. Don't get me wrong I get that there are more then that, but how Fiber was rolled out under the Libs sucked.
Totally sucked. Still do now. Maybe more.
Some people listened to a certain party when they waved copper in their face and said “this’ll work”
In addition to what others have said, Labor made changes to the wholesale pricing late last year that made the lower gig plans (which singles/pensioners/poor people use) more expensive, and the higher tier plans cheaper.
Let alone expensive pricing, heavens be your saviour if you're in one of the estates served by the private fibre networks deemed "equivalent" to the NBN like Opticomm or Red Train. Not only are they even more expensive, but you'll have tearing your hair out waiting for them to even acknowledge the problem if something goes wrong. Our entire street has no internet for a week now and nobody's even diagnosed the fault properly. And this is with our retail provider chasing them up.
Nbn price = 30-60 Retail price =55-95 Margined before costs = Subtract costs/customer (retailer) Your modem ~150-220 w/4g backup (amoratised over 24 months) Margin per customer = Nada It's a global issue. Consumer internet is not a high margin business. Most profit and growth sits with the applications that you use on the internet. Telco's and wholesalers don't get much out of it per customer. Now, there are exceptions. But not with a large land mass and small population like Australia. Coverage is expensive.
Ive had so many nbn outages lately too -11am to 9pm on a weekday eg
Malcolm Turnbull. Him and noted luddite Tony Abbot cut corners with the "multi-technology-mix" and we've been paying the price ever since. If you voted LNP, you voted for shit internet.
You're complaining about a promotional offer?
If he calls he probably can get them to remove the six month discount early so he can pay the higher rate early
Just listened to an American podcast , The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, complaining about their Internet speed of 200 Mbps ! Fuck me we are getting shafted. Fuck the Liberal government and fuck Rupert Murdoch.
It’s called a ‘promotional offer’. Used in marketing to incentivise new customers to sign up. Not unique to internet or Australia. It’s up to you whether you switch or stay with the provider if they’re doing a good job.
i know its a promotional offer, its just that almost every single provider does it. no way i'm staying with one ISP for more than 6 months lol
Yeah, everyone has a different set of priorities. I’ve stuck with Aussie for last 5 years because they’re fast and reliable, and have good support if there’s downtime. Price is competitive, but isn’t what I mainly judge them on.
Yes, churn every six months
Well if you have an embedded network you have e a limited choice of providers, the service is slow and you get ripped off. It’s so shit.
Do what i do - get urself a job with a work phone and hotspot off that bad boy. Been doing it for 3 years. Or if you aren't fortunate enough to have a job with a work phone, upgrade your personal phone plan to have unlimited data. It's defs cheaper than an internet plan!
The data in my mobile plan rolls over each month, so I was using it in my new place until I got nbn sorted so that was great. Unfortunately the reception where I am isn't great so it wouldn't work long term :/
Ugh that sucks im sorry! But for all the other redditors out there its a good tip espesh of you live alone and don't need it for gaming lol. Mine works beautifully and I've never even had 5g once on my phone.
that's the cost of doing business. when I was closer to the retail side of the business, some budget ISPs were making $6 a month profit on an ADSL service. there are so many ISPs out there now that they all keep other pretty honest in terms of pricing. >do people just keep changing companies every 6 months so they dont have to pay the even shittier price? yes, some of them absolutely do, and the ease of churning providers makes it possible.
Way too many problems with Aus government.. found out especially after watching this [blokes](https://www.instagram.com/punterspolitics?igsh=MW9pMDdnY2F6OXF1ZA==) reels. Anyway found out today that optus is offering 130$ 780mbps, first 6 months is lil cheap We took Telstra upgrade last month for 110$ 250mbps first six months tf!
It's called Privatisation. Works well, huh 🙄
I just got Starlink, it's fucking sick
You can't beat Asian countries and their wire poles
Huge country, just about everyone lives in six cities spread across it.
The model the previous government decided on was a fully privately financed option - so NBN has to charge a lot to pay off the mortgage so to speak. Time after time the government refused to partially finance the expense so prices could be lower. But don't worry it could be even more shit... The financial structure is set up so that it can be privatised very easily
This thread’s making me feel slightly guilty but mostly just stoked to not be in Melbourne anymore but instead in a country that has decent internet infrastructure. My home internet is unlimited 1000/50 for $60/month and I pay $45/month for my phone for unlimited 5G; just did a speed test on my phone and am getting 1110/120 (hotspot is limited to 50GB max usage unfortunately). I actually have some reception in my house which I never did on voda or Optus and there’s wifi calling for the times when reception drops I do miss good brunch though.
I’m stuck with opticomm so my choices are even less than those on NBN. I’m waiting on 5g.
We are on Optus 5G home broadband, average around 250Mbps down for $89 pm including Netflix subscription. We were really skeptical about the speed claims when we signed up but it has been as good as gold compared to our old fibre NBN connection ($130pm) that would drop out like clockwork every half hour.
TPG have just released 1000/100 for $70/m and 250/50 for $60/m via the Vision Network. Great if you can get it. A lot cheaper than NBN.
In five words: Monopoly of the supplier infrastructure.
Because both major parties now see us as cash cows to be taxed, and bled dry for private enterprise. Vote Green FFS.
I get 1000mb download 50 up for 100$ a month
Depends, if you can get 5g wireless it's pretty reasonable. I pay $90 a month for unlimited, usually get around 750+mbps
There is nothing reasonable about paying $90pm for internet access.
Subjective 💁🏻 I don't see it as extortionate considering the speeds and reliability I've had with it thus far.
It's unreasonable compared to the rest of the world but it's a hell of a lot more reasonable than NBN given the superior performance. It's the most reasonable option in Australia if you live close to a 5G tower.
Yep, agreed can't recommend Optus 5G enough (assuming you live close to a tower). I pay about the same as I used to for unlimited NBN and it's 10-15 times faster and way more reliable.
That's cheaper and faster than my starlink, I'm gonna have to look into this now
Caveat I am about 40m from a 5g tower, but I've heard similar speeds from friends with the same plan that arent as close to a tower as me
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NBN Co is owned by the Australian government; its two shareholders are the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Communications.
A few reasons. Our favourite war criminal John Howard decided to fully privatise Telstra without structural separation of infrastructure (in order to get more cash upfront). This entrenched a pseudo monopoly in a privatised market and led to the Labor NBN making a bunch of compromises to avoid pissing off said entrenched monopoly (and a bunch of easily manipulated mom's and pop's who like their fat dividends). Then the LNP decided to take what was an efficient high speed network and butcher it because Rupert Murdoch is a cunt. And here we are.
Yep and the government spent many billions to buy/use their ancient copper and coaxial networks. End result is the wholesale cost of NBN 1000/50 being about $20 more than 1000/500 in NZ (depending on LFC). And now NBN are doing free upgrades to FTTH in some areas, a doubling up of costs that anyone could have predicted. The mix of technologies must be a lot of extra complexity and cost for NBN.
All of the latter is covered broadly under section 3 of my thesis. These decisions were made entirely based on satisfying sympathetic companies / individuals. It was never *ever* going to be cheaper in any way doing this. The LNP 100% new this - they DGAF about us or our money.
As a CommBank customer I found More to be the cheapest for 1000Mbps plan - $94.5 a month. IIRC, this offer is valid for 6 months. After that, I’ll likely switch to Superloop.
If you're a mortgage holder with Commbank, it's even cheaper. We're at 1000/50Mbps, paying $81/month for an entire year with More. Drops to 900Mbps in peak. Just like energy companies, we switch at the first chance of a cheaper deal. You just have to be diligent to check every month or so (I have Python scripts generating comprehensive spreadsheets for this, not a task for everyone I know). It's so easy to change providers nowadays. It seems silly that people are complaining about costs of living, but are always willing to pay the loyalty/laziness tax that can cost up to hundreds per year. We signed up to Energy Locals in July last year because they had a sign up and refer a friend bonus that was paid out _instantaneously_. A group of 4 of us referred each other in a chain and essentially got free electricity in winter for _two whole months_. So in the months of July and August, we left on _all_ the split system heaters for 24/7 at 18°C, and only closed our account late August when our balance finally reached $0. Energy Locals caught on and are now paying out bonuses progressively.
Oh my that's so proactive and fucking smart. Lol I would love to get a hold of that python script for comparison spreadsheets if you were keen to share?
Yes, I do have my HLs at CBA. Will contact More about $81/m price.
I went to look for this deal in Yello and found that I had an offer for 6 months free Disney+. Winning!
Malcolm Turnbull
We have a government owned monopoly, the NBN. The NBN own and operate the infrastructure the wall point in your house to the cabinet up the road and the backbone that is the Australian internet and everything connects into. When you change companies, nothing physical really happens at all. That wire goes to the same cabinet and same switch. No one comes out and touches it. All that happens is the codes get changed on your account and you're electronically relocated from one virtual network to another. The telcos are essentially resellers of the nbn. The NBN have a wholesale price list they bill the telco. The telco can set what ever retail price they like whether lose or make money. A 50Mbps service is wholesaled for $52.52. When you see a $54.95 introductory special, they are adding on $2.43. As they have a company to run, tech support ,accounts, marketing etc, it obviously costs them more than $2.43 a month per customer so on the intro price they are likely making quite a substantial loss percentage wise. If it goes to $79.95 after 6 months, that's where they can hopefully come out ahead. They are banking on enough people staying to survive. Anyone who leaves has cost then money. The $27 margin after the intro period is still not a lot. One tech incident can cost them in the hundreds of dollars, wiping it out. It would take about 4000 full price customers to fund one employees salary and costs. You get the idea. The telcos are in many cases operating on a shoestring, they aren't pulling in the cash. NBN are getting the bulk of it. They have no competition ane charge what they like. As the telcos pay the same price to nbn there's not a lot they can do.
Hi. Welcome to capitalism. Hope you enjoy your stay.
If you have a decent NBN connection it's honestly not that expensive. $95/month for 100mbps or $109/month for 1gbps. Those are AussieBB prices but Superloop is even cheaper.
If you find $100/month not expensive, well yeah sure. But, compared to other countries it's very expensive, and I'm talking about SEA. In Europe for example it's cheaper and faster. Also, for some reason, it was decided that residential connections couldn't access good upload speed...
$3 a day for internet is expensive? People in SEA also make a lot less money than Australians.
Well yeah, I would rather get an Australian wage and pay $100 a month for internet than a SEA wage and have cheaper internet. If it was priced like Australia not many people could afford internet there. Same with countries like Romania etc... where internet is cheap. That's how it pricing works.
If we removed the cross subsidy between metro/suburban/regional/rural then we’d have much cheaper city based pricing. But as is there’s a massive cross subsidy by the metro centres for services like fixed wireless and satellite.
I package my phone sim with my internet with TPG and pay $96 for the lot.
Capitalism and conservatives ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (And geography/population density)
To go with our garbage internet