So, Telstra...datacaps?

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Obraik

53 posts

Master Geek

Topic # 101785 8-May-2012 23:47
Anyone know if Telstra is doing anything to compete with all this plan doubling/terabyting that the other ISPs are doing for their DSL customers? I feel like I'm missing out while my friends on other ISPs are all bragging about their big new datacaps that are often cheaper than my 100gb Telstra plan. It's nice that they gave their cable customers a nice upgrade (speed wise, anyway) but that doesn't really help me... I've been with Telstra 6 years now and haven't had much to complain about and would rather not switch, but in a flat with four people that each have their own significant data usage it's hard not to ignore the more economical options available from the other big ISPs...

phantomdb

103 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 622180 9-May-2012 12:56
Here here, i have been with telstra cable since the 128k plan, and i cant see why that cant give me 60gb or data insted of 40 for the same price, it would be more of a win for telstra how i see t not having to subsidise cost, IE still paying for the copper line to feed the dsl, cable modem rental was only ever $10 when it was itimisd on the bill years ago, compared to line rental of copper pair.

phantomdb

103 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 622248 9-May-2012 14:22
lets be honest here 15down 4 up is great but 100 down possibly okay if content was available LOCALLY to take advantage of that speed, i would be happy to see cable match dsl datacaps

DjShadow

1584 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Reply # 622269 9-May-2012 15:05
I suspect they will be wanting to get their bandwidth issues sorted first before boosting data caps

Obraik

53 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 622318 9-May-2012 16:18
phantomdb: lets be honest here 15down 4 up is great but 100 down possibly okay if content was available LOCALLY to take advantage of that speed, i would be happy to see cable match dsl datacaps The cable caps cost a little more, but 100gb on DSL is only $15 cheaper ($10 if you're outside of the three big cities) than 100gb on Cable. If you want a phone line. If you just want broadband (like myself, since no one in my house uses the landline), cable is cheaper for the same caps.

Screeb

600 posts

Ultimate Geek

Reply # 622492 9-May-2012 20:23
Because it's more relevant in this thread, I might as well crosspost what I posted in the 100Mbit thread in April: It's really mind blowing that the overage prices (2GB for $2.95) still haven't changed after all these years. They're exactly the same as they were in April 2006 (that's 6 years ago): http://web.archive.org/web/20060405032818/http://www.telstraclear.co.nz/products-res/internet/highspeed/ Think about that. The cost of additional data (that TelstraClear uses as a selling point to this day ("We won't slow you down when you reach the end of your data usage")) has not changed in 6 years. TelstraClear didn't even exist in its current form (it was TelstraSaturn) just over 4 years before that.

DonGould

don@i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz
3145 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

Reply # 622544 9-May-2012 21:40
Screeb: Because it's more relevant in this thread, I might as well crosspost what I posted in the 100Mbit thread in April: It's really mind blowing that the overage prices (2GB for $2.95) still haven't changed after all these years. They're exactly the same as they were in April 2006 (that's 6 years ago): http://web.archive.org/web/20060405032818/http://www.telstraclear.co.nz/products-res/internet/highspeed/ Think about that. The cost of additional data (that TelstraClear uses as a selling point to this day ("We won't slow you down when you reach the end of your data usage")) has not changed in 6 years. TelstraClear didn't even exist in its current form (it was TelstraSaturn) just over 4 years before that. Ok this bugged me a bit the first time I read it, but this time I'll bite... Data plans are about capacity planning. What Telstra is doing is asking us to tell them what we plan to do for the next month. Accordingly they take that information and figure out how much capacity they have to buy from their up streams. When you go over your cap in a month you throw out the planning process. I would agree that it makes bugger all difference when it's just you that goes over plan. However it seems to me, and perhaps I just read it wrong, but it seems that Telstra's attitude is that they don't want everyone to just go over plan and have kept the price as it is to send you a message that you need to actually do some thinking and planning. To me, this is no different to buying dishwashing detergent from the supper market v's the local petrol station. I buy it at the petrol station at 11pm at night if I run out, but I expect to pay dearly for it, and do. But what really gets me, is that you can ring Telstra once a month and change plans if you want to. When you do, you get a whole extra data block until the end of your billing cycle. So, say your billing is 1 to 31 of the month. You get to the 20th, realise you've used 90% of your data and can see you're going to go over, you're on a 20Gb plan, you just ring up, change to the 40Gb plan and you'll get 40Gb to use between the 21st and 31st and then be on 40gb for the next month, at which point you can change back to 20Gb if your usage habit changes back, eg school hols. It's about swings and round abouts. With all due respect, I really think this is about how Allan and his team choose to run their business. Eyz joined the fray this week with 34c GB's. Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!! Check out mine - i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz

Obraik

53 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 622558 9-May-2012 21:56
DonGould: Screeb: Because it's more relevant in this thread, I might as well crosspost what I posted in the 100Mbit thread in April: It's really mind blowing that the overage prices (2GB for $2.95) still haven't changed after all these years. They're exactly the same as they were in April 2006 (that's 6 years ago): http://web.archive.org/web/20060405032818/http://www.telstraclear.co.nz/products-res/internet/highspeed/ Think about that. The cost of additional data (that TelstraClear uses as a selling point to this day ("We won't slow you down when you reach the end of your data usage")) has not changed in 6 years. TelstraClear didn't even exist in its current form (it was TelstraSaturn) just over 4 years before that. Ok this bugged me a bit the first time I read it, but this time I'll bite... Data plans are about capacity planning. What Telstra is doing is asking us to tell them what we plan to do for the next month. Accordingly they take that information and figure out how much capacity they have to buy from their up streams. When you go over your cap in a month you throw out the planning process. I would agree that it makes bugger all difference when it's just you that goes over plan. However it seems to me, and perhaps I just read it wrong, but it seems that Telstra's attitude is that they don't want everyone to just go over plan and have kept the price as it is to send you a message that you need to actually do some thinking and planning. To me, this is no different to buying dishwashing detergent from the supper market v's the local petrol station. I buy it at the petrol station at 11pm at night if I run out, but I expect to pay dearly for it, and do. But what really gets me, is that you can ring Telstra once a month and change plans if you want to. When you do, you get a whole extra data block until the end of your billing cycle. So, say your billing is 1 to 31 of the month. You get to the 20th, realise you've used 90% of your data and can see you're going to go over, you're on a 20Gb plan, you just ring up, change to the 40Gb plan and you'll get 40Gb to use between the 21st and 31st and then be on 40gb for the next month, at which point you can change back to 20Gb if your usage habit changes back, eg school hols. It's about swings and round abouts. With all due respect, I really think this is about how Allan and his team choose to run their business. Eyz joined the fray this week with 34c GB's. I like the idea of paying per gb after I go over rather than having a speed limit enforced - that's one of the reasons I went with Telstra to begin with. However, I think they need to review the base caps like the other ISPs have to keep up or the temptation of the plans from the other ISPs may start to be too much...

DonGould

don@i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz
3145 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

Reply # 622593 9-May-2012 22:48
Obraik: However, I think they need to review the base caps like the other ISPs have to keep up or the temptation of the plans from the other ISPs may start to be too much... I think the next 6 months is going to be really interesting. I still can't make up my mind if that whole thing with Stephen Fry was really him just having a whinge about our crap services or a planned stunt to get some energy in to pushing the whole data space along, but either way it did seem to coinside with SCX finishing their upgrade and Chorus finishing up its upgrade. The NGN cabinets now all have 2 * 10GbE fibres to them for an average of 200 customers. That means there's a truck load of capacity now in the network to push data to the DSLAMs. The SCX just had a massive upgrade and now SCX is out there pushing to get providers to buy that capacity. So the playing field in that regard is sorted out, now the game actually has to happen, and it is a game of cat and mouse. Small ISPs will invest because they can get a jump on the big guys and then hope to attract some customers. The small guys should get good deals because the wholesalers want to use them as a pawn to leverage deals out of the big guys.... this is why we're seeing some hot stuff from some of those small guys recently in my view (only observation and no proof to back up that claim so don't hate on me ;) ) Telstra is kinda interesting though... its got 70k users on HFC which it has to think about. It doesn't want to get those guys to out of step or they'll jump off net and go with a Chorus partner. However, DOCSIS 2 only runs 2 channels and has limited capacity and in Wellington, iirc, there's 2000 users per node. So before they can offer more data to those guys they need to get the heavy lifters on to DOCSIS 3, which uses 8 channels iirc (DV don't bash me, just correct me nicely plz ) My guess is that once the dust settles on the 100mbit plans and people are powered up with the D3 modems then that will reduce D2 load and then give them the ability to push more data into the network for everyone, until then they'll just accept loosing a few customers to Chorus... I agree, that 1Tb plan for $200 notes from Orcon does look attractive when comparing 100Gb for $115. But you have to weigh up what latency and speed are worth to you. In my case I'm liking lower latency and the ability to push out at 10mbit is very very useful when you're wanting to just push your photos away and don't want to be sitting uploading off your laptop for a hour to get a 1GB on your back up server. Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!! Check out mine - i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz

Obraik

53 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 622602 9-May-2012 23:09
DonGould: Obraik: However, I think they need to review the base caps like the other ISPs have to keep up or the temptation of the plans from the other ISPs may start to be too much... I think the next 6 months is going to be really interesting. I still can't make up my mind if that whole thing with Stephen Fry was really him just having a whinge about our crap services or a planned stunt to get some energy in to pushing the whole data space along, but either way it did seem to coinside with SCX finishing their upgrade and Chorus finishing up its upgrade. The NGN cabinets now all have 2 * 10GbE fibres to them for an average of 200 customers. That means there's a truck load of capacity now in the network to push data to the DSLAMs. The SCX just had a massive upgrade and now SCX is out there pushing to get providers to buy that capacity. So the playing field in that regard is sorted out, now the game actually has to happen, and it is a game of cat and mouse. Small ISPs will invest because they can get a jump on the big guys and then hope to attract some customers. The small guys should get good deals because the wholesalers want to use them as a pawn to leverage deals out of the big guys.... this is why we're seeing some hot stuff from some of those small guys recently in my view (only observation and no proof to back up that claim so don't hate on me ;) ) Telstra is kinda interesting though... its got 70k users on HFC which it has to think about. It doesn't want to get those guys to out of step or they'll jump off net and go with a Chorus partner. However, DOCSIS 2 only runs 2 channels and has limited capacity and in Wellington, iirc, there's 2000 users per node. So before they can offer more data to those guys they need to get the heavy lifters on to DOCSIS 3, which uses 8 channels iirc (DV don't bash me, just correct me nicely plz ) My guess is that once the dust settles on the 100mbit plans and people are powered up with the D3 modems then that will reduce D2 load and then give them the ability to push more data into the network for everyone, until then they'll just accept loosing a few customers to Chorus... I agree, that 1Tb plan for $200 notes from Orcon does look attractive when comparing 100Gb for $115. But you have to weigh up what latency and speed are worth to you. In my case I'm liking lower latency and the ability to push out at 10mbit is very very useful when you're wanting to just push your photos away and don't want to be sitting uploading off your laptop for a hour to get a 1GB on your back up server. I'm a block out here in Christchurch from getting cable so I'm on ADSL2 speeds (20mbps...but 760kbps up :( ) . I don't plan on switching yet, but if things don't change over the next few months it will be hard for me to justify not switching. Especially as fibre becomes available on my street. The good international latencies for gaming is what brought me to Telstra so they do have that going for them...however the online game that I played at that time no longer exists so it's not so important at the moment.

Screeb

600 posts

Ultimate Geek

Reply # 624208 13-May-2012 01:26
DonGould: However, DOCSIS 2 only runs 2 channels and has limited capacity and in Wellington, iirc, there's 2000 users per node. According to this ancient thread (which I posted in way back when), there were 2000 users per node, but now it should be around 500 max: TCL HFC network in Wellington has node sizes of up to 2000 homes/node. This is huge by international standards and quite an issue. TCL have planned and recently committed to a project to reduce node size (node segmentation). Each node will effectively get split into either two or four nodes depending on current size. The issues noted in that thread were resolved eventually, so I'm guessing it did happen. As a side-note, that thread also says that DOCSIS 3.0 is coming "soon-ish". Given the vast majority of TCL cable customers are still on 2, that's a hell of a long "soon" (4 years and counting). Either way, I very much doubt that 500 users per node with DOCSIS 2 is the reason larger caps aren't offered. Other cable ISPs around the world seem to have managed for the last decade. Even their ADSL plans aren't competitive cap-wise.

sbiddle

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Biddle Corp

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Reply # 624244 13-May-2012 09:41
The changes discussed in 2008 happened a long time ago. This resolved the ARP issus on the HFC network. Node sizes have also been reduced even further since then. *Need help configuring your Linksys ATA or IP Phones for New Zealand? Check my blog post