Dunno if this is the right forum for this, but hey, they use W-CDMA don't they? ;)

I'd just like to describe my experience with Woosh Wireless over the past couple of months.

Moving from Freemans Bay to Balmoral, I found myself in the coverage area for the Woosh wireless service, rather than chucking more money at Telecom I thought I'd give Woosh a go for my broadband needs - what a huge mistake.

I'm on Everyday home plan ($54.95 a month). Had read all the bad press about high latency that didn't bother me, I only wanted it for browsing, email and the odd download, not hardcore online gaming.

I was told I'd need a booster aerial in my area, no big deal I thought. The kit (modem and booster aerial) arrived a few days after signing up and the trouble begins. Basically the W-CDMA 'modem' they use is old and flaky. It feels cheap. IP Wireless don't even list them on their website any more. The power on/off button is highly insensitive, and real knack is required to switch it on and off. Not a biggie but quite annoying. Have also noticed if its left powered on too long it gets hot and switches itself off.

The software supplied is also poorly designed and doesn't seem to integrate with Win XP too well. Another thing, the supplied software has an autoupdate feature that sends an ftp request to a Woosh server to download update - does this work? Hell no, all thats returned is an ftp error message 'Sorry. Cannot change to directory blahblah on ftp.woosh.co.nz' That gives you some idea of the competence of this company.

Trying to actually connect to the network proves another challenge. Hit connect and 9 times out of 10 you'll get a "Network Unavailable" or "Sorry, the remote computer did not respond error message". This requires you to either just sit there and hit connect a few times in quick succession to get a connection, or power the modem on and off then retry. Annoying. Oh and when you connect, the software doesn't show the signal strength and more?

If you do manage to get a connection you'll find the network speed varies greatly over the course of a day. Early morning and late afternoon seem to be the slowest times, where everything slows down to sub-56k modem speeds. You'll never really get close to 256k unless you are lucky and the stars are aligned correctly. You'll be disconnected at random times. You'll watch the Woosh DNS servers cr@p their pants regularly. You'll cry when you download speed drops to 0.2k.

Their 'support' is next to useless. Yes, all the pretty lights on my modem are all on. It says I have four bars of coverage. I think in the ten or so email and telephone contacts I've had with Woosh, I have managed to speak to one vaguely technically literate person.

I've had two different modems, tried them on four different PC's at three different locations around their supposed coverage area. All with the same results. Is this some sort of beta service? If so can I pay beta prices?

Needless to say I'm going back to Telecom DSL. Think carefully before signing up. Anyone else had any good/bad experiences with Woosh?