This may come as a surprise, but living in Australia can have it downsides 
Right now I can only think of one, and that’s (part of) the reason for this post.
We may have constant sunshine, lovely beaches and a lifestyle to die for, but our broadband just sucks. That’s a fairly sweeping statement, so let me clarify a little more.
Broadband plans in this country are extremely poor value. The service that you receive for the amount you pay is substandard. It’s that simple. Those of you in places like the UK, USA and Hong Kong may find it obscure to consider that a country exists where you can’t get an unlimited data connection for DSL. You may also find it difficult to believe that some connection speeds are cut to that of a dial-up connection if you download too much. But that’s exactly what happens here.
These days in Australia most ISPs provide a limited download quota per month for a set fee. What happens when you download too much will vary from provider to provider. Many of the providers simply cut your download speed so that it feels like you’re back on a dialup modem. Others simply charge per MB or GB that you go over (and they’re not cheap either!). What’s “nice” about the latter option is that many of these ISPs don’t actually let you know that you’ve gone over quota. So instead of being warned, you just cop a huge bill at the end of the month. Yes, I believe it’s your job to monitor your bandwidth usage, but that’s still pretty shoddy.
Every 6 months or so I have another look around to see if I can find another provider that will offer me more than what I currently have. Right now I have a connection through Internode. They provide me with an ADSL connection at 1.5mbps/256kbps with 10GB download per month. If I go over that my speed is “shaped” to 64kbps/64kbps. All of this is delivered down my copper wire for the princly sum of AUD $54.95 per month. No, that doesn’t include the cost of having a phone line in the first place.
In day to day life for me this is actually adequate. I don’t download too much stuff, and most of my browsing (and the wife’s) is fairly light on the bandwidth. But every now and then I feel the pinch and the frustration that comes with my plan…
- Windows Updates. I’m sure that every user of Windows is aware of the joys of constant updates from Microsoft. Some of them are small, some of them are absolutley massive. Multiply these updates by the number of computers in your home, and you’ve got quite a hit on the quota.
- Linux Updates. I just happend to dual-boot Windows XP x64 with Linux Mint, and so I have the added benefit of constant updates through that as well. Thankfully I can pick and choose what I want updated, and most of the time the updates are reasonably small (and they don’t force me to reboot my machine).
- Steam. I have a Steam account which I use to buy pretty much all the games that I play (which aren’t many). Most games these days are also bloody massive. Get yourself a copy of Bioshock and Half-Life 2, and you’ve nearly blown your monthly quota away. Add to that the updates to the Steam platform, and some of the media/demos you can get for free, and your quota begins to look pitiful.
- Development. Yes, I’m a Geek. I write code. I need tools. I need to keep up to speed. I have a subscription to things like MSDN so I can get access to this stuff. Everything that I need has to be downloaded and hence is yet another huge hit on the download quota.
There’s obviously some motivation for this post, and strangley enough it’s due to the bandwidth issue and MSDN.
Those of you who are reading this are probably geeks too. So you’ll know that recently Microsoft decided to release Visual Studio 2008 which comes with all the creamy goodness of .NET 3.5 and C# 3.0. Not only was I interested in getting this because I wanted to play with it, but I needed it for work. So a download was required (all 3.31GB of it).
Initially I thought I’d download the disc image while I was at work. I started the download off yesterday morning when I got into the office only to find … work suffers from download quotas issues just like the rest of us! It appeared that our bandwidth quota had been blown, and the download speed was being shaped (ie. I was getting a massive 1.2Kb/s off microsoft.com, not good for a 3.31GB download).
Fair enough, I know what that’s all about. So I decided to wait til I get home and fire the download off on my home machine over night. When I got home I jumped on MSDN, fired up the download and away it went at 160Kb/s! SWEET! Shame we’re stuck using the stupid MSDN downloader application, but hey, it appears to support resuming of downloads so if anything goes wrong I can simply kick it off again and it’ll resume from where it left off.
I think you can see where this is going. Before I say any more I’d like to ask a key question: Why is it that all downloads die at 99%?
I got up this morning and quickly checked to see if the download had finished. To my dismay, it had reached 99% and then thrown up an error message. I don’t have the exact wording handy, but it essentially said:
The download died for some unknown reason. Give it another go.
So I hit the resume button with a huge grin, thinking that it was just going to carry on nicely, only to find that MS had slapped me in the face…
The file no longer exists on the server. I can’t resume. Press X to delete everything you’ve downloaded so far, Press Y otherwise.
I pounced on Y and was grateful to find that the majority of the download was still on disk. I thought I’d go back to MSDN downloads to kick the download off again from the start, and try some geek trickery to get it to think that the imgae I’d already downloaded was the one I had just started. When I return to MSDN, I find that the link for Visual Studio 2008 Professional constantly redirects back to another page. I wasn’t able to get to the same download page to start the download off again and grab that last 1%. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse…
… the downloader closed. Without me asking it to. And with it, it took all 99% of that 3.31GB that I had downloaded.
I won’t tell you exactly what I said, but I can tell you it wasn’t pretty. Various expletives flew around the room, generally in the direction of MS and their stupid downloader. Then I realised that I’d blown well over 3GB of my 10GB download per month and achieved absolutely nothing. It was at this poin I hurled abuse at Internode for having such a shitty selection of plans.
After calming down I realised that it wasn’t so bad. It could be worse.
… I could be living in the UK! 
November 21, 2007
Here’s a small update. I came to work, tried the same download link and for some reason it’s behaving itself.
I’m also getting 1.2Mb/s download. Murphy’s law
November 21, 2007
We’re with IINet (in sydney) - i think our download limit is 4gig (2gig + 2gig extra cause we also have home phone) - costs something like 50 bucks for the net. Internode sounds at least more reasonable than that.
*But* both of us should feel lucky - we aren’t using Optus (40 for 2 gig on 24mth contract) or Telstra (adsl 2 60 for 600mb or 90 for 12gig??!?! wtf? and on contract).
November 21, 2007
That’s one hell of a story…and a crappier situation.
And just to think that every IM i share with you OJ just slowly eats away at the limit.
November 21, 2007
Try TPG. ADSL 2+ 18G Peak, 7G Off Peak for $49.95 (shaped after that). I’ve had no issues with them. But you’re right, it does suck that we are capped like we are.
November 21, 2007
Good post OJ - I often hear the same types of stories coming from my sister in South Africa. Although they did get 1.2Mb HSDPA there before we got it here in the UK! You think you’ve got it bad - you should hear about the abysmal speeds (at exhorbitant prices) they get there - but the funny thing is - they all put up with it because it’s “perfectly normal”.
My sister is the only one who complains - for one reason and one reason only - She’s been to my pad in the UK and tasted the sweet, sweet nectar of high speed broadband!
I can’t help but think of 2 things from this:
You are in the minority of people who think that it’s not perfectly normal (and acceptable) to have your (limited) options laid out before you. Most people just don’t know any better…
I’d be worried about living for a year in places like Taiwan where you get 100Mb (almost by default) pumped into your living room and Gb networks are a “must have” at home. Think about coming back to the UK after tasting THAT sweet, sweet nectar!!
November 21, 2007
…although I do have tears in my eyes after reading your post. Would you like me to post you a DVD I burned with VS2008 on it? *sniff*
(I know it’s not a dick swinging contest - but my eyes nearly popped out when I saw I was getting VS2008 at a whopping 3.5Mb per second! I’d take rain over shine any day for that mate :-P )
November 21, 2007
@Dan: Thanks for whining about Optus and Telstra, it saved me from having to do it. Those bastards are actually a huge part of the reason things are so crap here.
@Bryce: Yeah thankfully IM isn’t so bad
Just don’t repeat yourself too much 
@Fabian: The biggest problem with ADSL2+ (particulalryl in QLD) is that hardy any telephone exchanges are equipped to support it. Up here on the north side there are hardly any places that can get ADSL2+. I’d love to, coz it’s not only faster, it’s cheaper and you get more download bandwidth. I’m just going to have to suck it down and live with what I can get. The caps are just fucked up imho
@Rob: Love the comments mate. It is true that it’s down to what you’re used to, or what you consider the norm. Yes the time that I spent in the Uk was definitely the factor that’s driving my whinging. I think that most people in Aus haven’t really felt what it’s like, but the bandwidth issue goes hand in hand with the speed issue. If the net operated faster, people would feel the pinch of less bandwidth than they do now. Having said that, there’s a surprising number of mugs who go with Optus and Telstra and suffer the fees/shaping when they blow their limits (which are just appallingly small). Thanks for the offer of the DVD, but I opted for IP over Carrier Pigeon (RFC1149) which has tripled my download speed
I managed to get the DVD at work, so it’s all good. You can keep your grey skies. I can download while I’m at the beach and come back to my DVD images and shaped internet speeds!
November 21, 2007
There are a few other things I should probably mention about the plan that I’m on that makes it much better value than that which you get with a lot of other places (including IINet and TPG):
So while it’s not great, it could actually be worse
November 22, 2007
I can’t think of anything worse (related to this) than actually having a quota! Screw that idea in its infinite stupidity!
The only reason quotas work is because they’re accepted (by the public). Same reason bank charges still exist in South Africa for everything from a withdrawal to a deposit or internet payment! It’s because people put up with it and don’t vote with their wallets. If banks tried that here in the UK (and they have), they find mass migration happening a few days later. Virgin Money has just launched in SA with zero interest for 6 months (etc etc) which has been happening in the UK (and better deals) for years, but the point is they’re the kid on the block and are making huge waves because people are moving in their droves! Until now, they’d never thought of zero interest for 6 months - Oh my God I hear you say - well, it’s true, that’s how blinkered the view can be.
Point is - until you either find a big player (like Virgin) who runs with no quota and all the other good stuff you want, OR enough people make waves themselves - you’ll never see the end of caps and the like.