[plug] ISP's??

[Paul Wilson]

>On Tue, 23 Mar 1999, Trevor Phillips wrote:
>> I'd be after a good stable ISP on WAIX, with no traffic charges, and no
>> time-limit (ie; be online all the time if I want).
>
>I think you're going to have a hard time finding an ISP that doesn't have
>traffic charges OR a traffic limit, and no time limits, and that can be
>classed as "good stable" as well.  Finding one that's on the WAIX as well
>is likely to be even harder.
>
>Only the new "upstart" ISPs are likely to be "$25 per month unlimited
>time, bandwidth" and they're likely to have just a 64k link into bigpond
>or something (because with bigpond a flat fee gets you as much as you can
>pull through your 64k) and not enough modems to suit their customer base.
>
>It is just not possible to run an ISP without either setting limits, or
>charging per MB/per hour/both.
>I think the best thing is to work out exactly how much traffic you use in
>a month and ringing around ISPs finding out how much you would get charged
>for it.


Very sensible approach. OTOH, some of the 'upstarts' won't know how to
answer the question (which actually might work to your advantage :-)  ).  My
experience of ISPs here is that they will offer 'unlimited time', but will
have a catch or two in the small print somewhere. Usually, it's things like
:

* if you've been on for more than two hours and customers are getting
engaged signals, you've got a good chance of being chucked off.
* You have some form of traffic capping (which may not actually be
implemented). iinet are like this - nominally, they restrict you to 200 Mb a
month, but that cap isn't implemented (or wasn't early December last year
when I last looked).
* You may have a limited, but fairly large, number of hours available per
month (iinet again claim 200 hrs per month, but that isn't usually
implemented either).

Basically, ask lots of questions and don't get put off by people who can't
or won't answer. Push them, if they want your business they'll answer
eventually.

Paul