[plug] Re: Bandwidth prices [was School Web Page]

[Brian Tombleson]

<snip>
> gamers. 3gigs probably won't cut it. Which means (with WestNet) taking
> the 6gig 512k plan at some $139/month. Last time I looked at WestNet's
> plans we could've got 8 gig 512k for less... hence my extreme
> irritation. iiNet had decent plans for a little while too (ie unmetered
> off-peak etc) but have since gone to Bliink (Biin iiT) plans. Yay, 3
> gigs per month, a dynamic IP, a bunch of blocked ports and throttling to
> 56k? Woohoo. The others are all worse. WestNet doesn't offer the option
> of throttling to 56k after going over limit (one of the few things about
<snip>

Actually, iiNet's pricing structure is about what it is in the rest of the
sane world (not counting half the US which really is boom-or-bust these
days, and of course, I'm generously including us in the 'sane' world).  Most
(all?) or Europe and the developed Asian nations (Sing, HK, KL) are about
the same as iiNet.  Westnet's prices were slightly "too good" and it
probably wouldn't have been a sustainable business model.

Given Austalia's larger than normal infrastructure-to-user ratio, current
prices are pretty good.

.. And given a choice of pay-by-usage (now) or pay-by-content (ie. getting
ads pushed to you every second of the day), I'm happy with where we are.

The only thing I would like to see is a lessening of the difference between
business and home.  Unpriveledged ports should be blocked for the user's own
safety on home accounts (because they stick it into MS boxes - that aint
safe).  But 'home' account use is higher than necessary because of the
significant price difference (over 50% generally).

Ironically, throttling is more attractive to business than home - since you
don't want your business mail/web going off the air if you're bill's
suddenly too big or even for costs to blow-out.  I would hope they'll soon
offer it as a configurable option for all accounts.

If I were Telstra, I'd probably have looked at enabling *every* exchange
point with ADSL with remote configuration so every phone line user could
subscribe/unsunscribe themselves quickly and easily with a call to the
idio^H^H^H^H customer service.  This waiting for 10 days for a tech to visit
an exchange to do a 5 second job sucks .. almost as much as waiting an
additional 5 months for more ports to become available on ADSL exchanges
already full.  But maybe that wasn't feasible.

.. and everyone should get a fixed IP.  Block ports to your heart's content
but the dynamic IP system is just damn annoying.

Anyway, it's 2am so why should you expect anything other than a rambling,
half-baked oppinion? :-)

- Brian.