Looking for New ISP - Wellington

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Looking for New ISP - Wellington - Aro Valley

Beatpap

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

#34700 28-May-2009 16:34

New to the forum. Have been checking out various posts on ISP options. Have just left rental which had rock solid Telstraclear with 10gb data cap and averaged about 2 -3mb/s. Used it primarily for uploading images to websites,Flickr, general stuff and Skype calls to Europe.

Previous tenants had Telecom. Buildling built in '40s but our flat at top added in 2001 so hoping it has new phone line.

I have contaced Telecom and Orcon for details of their plans. Limited to adsl. Pretty disappointed that they all say, speeds depend on quality of your line which at this stage I have no information on. Not keen on having a 12 month contract.

Any suggestions opinions would be welcome.

sbiddle

30853 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#218861 28-May-2009 17:38

How come you can't get TCL there?

itxtme

2102 posts

Uber Geek

#218930 28-May-2009 19:42

Orcon have no contracts. Just require a months notice if cancelling.. You can get there speeds set to FLS/FLS for an extra $10 a month

cyril7

9058 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Subscriber

#219152 29-May-2009 09:11

Aro Valley is fed off Courtney pl exchange, this just under 3km of cable to to very top of Aro St, which should allow 6-7Mb/s DL and near on 1Mb/s upload assuming there are no major cabling issues. Aro Valley is due for cabnetisation at the end of this year (Dec09/Jan10) which should see speeds through to 18-20Mb/s possible.

Cyril

Beatpap

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

#219185 29-May-2009 10:15

Sbiddle

Can get TCL but only home PDQ broadband rather than cable.

cyril7

Thanks. Guess it comes down to quality of line we have.

Any opinions on providers Telecom V Orcon V other.

cyril7

9058 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Subscriber

#219200 29-May-2009 10:48

Hi Mark, personally I would go with Xtra, they have picked their game up considerably over the last few months and from my observation probably have the best international speed performace of all.

Orcon have lots of unhappy customers on Courtney Exchange you will find them in the Orcon sub forum. Further, once aro is Cabnetised unless Orcon have a subLLU agreement in place your service will remain with Courtney Exch which will be compromised.

Cheers
Cyril

Ragnor

8219 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#219315 29-May-2009 14:35

Top 4 in my opinion: Telecom, Telstra, Snap or Maxnet

Solid with few very few problems over the last year or more.

I believe Orcon is still having some problems with peak time congestion/speed, of course they are the only ISP that doesn't lock you in to a 12 month contract.

Personally I'd probably find it less irritating to have to pay a $99 disconnection fee if I wanted to break my contract earlier than 12 months vs having bad performing peak time speed most week days.

itxtme

2102 posts

Uber Geek

#219617 29-May-2009 23:38

Im on Orcon now, been a week and the speeds are sufficent, not great internationally but fine for my needs. I know I wont be here for a year hence why I went with them.. Suggest a contract based provider if you think you will make 12 months

Samsung

Shop now on Samsung phones, tablets, TVs and more (affiliate link).

Beatpap

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

#219791 30-May-2009 13:26

So contacted Telecom. Asked about Total Home package - $99 per month. So you have to go with 12 month contract and there's a $199 disconnection fee if you chose to cancel before end of period. Of course if you move address no penalty if you stay with them ( How kind of them !)

There is a $53.85 connection fee for the telephone. I asked about this as line already present. What's it for ? Seemingly will only take 2 hours to have phone working, so hardly involves a technician coming to the flat.
$53.85 to flick a switch !

On the broadband front they can't guarantee what speeds I may get. Didn't even talk about ball park figures. I queried this further and got salesperson to contact Technical team. She came back and said that technician said ADSL2 is available at this address. I did a line check on Telecoms website and it comes back with

"This address is scheduled to be connected to a roadside cabinet with ADSL2+ technology in approximately Jan 2010."

Who do you believe ? Porky pies ? Anyone heard of Adsl 2 being available in Aro Valley ?

As a consumer I like to know what I'm getting. I like to be able to choose the best provider of any service depending on where I live. If we go with Telecom, we don't know what service we will have until we are locked in a 12 month contract, which we will be penalised for leaving. This just seems crazy. I'm not happy.

Ragnor

8219 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#219856 30-May-2009 15:49

If your line has to go 3-4 km to terminate at the exchange it doens't matter whether the exchange is ADSL2+ enabled or ADSL1 you wiill get around the same speed at that distance.

You will get the around the same speed sync speed no matter what ISP you go with

Refer to this graph

People have already said your exchange is ADSL2+ enabled but as you can see at your distance from the exchange it doesn't matter.

Cabinets are being installed all over the country currently to shorten the distance your line has to go to terminate to around 1-2km.

Futhermore sync speed to the exchange/cabinet is affected by many factors:

- Line quality in your house
- Number of phone jacks in your house
- Quality of DSL filters used in your house
- Quality of your modem
- Quality of the copper phone line to the exchange/cabinet

Good sync speed does not always equal good download speed because:

- Congestion at the exchange
- Backhaul from the exchange to the ISP
- ISP's network handover
- ISP's local/international bandwidth
- Route to the server you're communcating with
- etc

So in summary...

You will get whatever sync speed you get depending on your distance to the exchange/cabinet and internal and external line quality. You can't do much about that and your ISP can't give you a firm estimate of what that will be - you'll get what you get.

However, the ISP's management and provisioning for their network does control how close to your sync speed you are able to download at so it pays to pick a good ISP.

cyril7

9058 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Subscriber

#219943 30-May-2009 20:52

On the broadband front they can't guarantee what speeds I may get. Didn't even talk about ball park figures. I queried this further and got salesperson to contact Technical team. She came back and said that technician said ADSL2 is available at this address. I did a line check on Telecoms website and it comes back with

"This address is scheduled to be connected to a roadside cabinet with ADSL2+ technology in approximately Jan 2010."

Who do you believe ? Porky pies ? Anyone heard of Adsl 2 being available in Aro Valley ?

No porkies, Courtney place is already upgraded to ADSL2+ (ADSL1 gear got ripped out a year or two ago) so when you connect your modem will connect on ADSL2+ albeit with a 3-4km line therefore only at speeds not dissimilar to ADSL1, but thats how ADSL works. Once cabnetised you will still be conneting to a ADLS2+ DSLAM port but with a significantly shorter line length, therefore will be able to achieve higher speeds.

Cyril

Beatpap

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

#222126 6-Jun-2009 00:30

Thanks for all the advice. Did help me get up to speed. Ended up choosing Telecom. After a couple of calls they finally managed to locate our address due to confusing street numbers. Previous tenant hadn't disconnected phone. Lucky for them we didn't find out so haven't left them with a hefty bill.

Contacted them on Monday 1st of June. Phone reconnected next day, although delayed by a couple of hours due it would appear to credit approval not passing on details to technical team. Not fully explained. I had to ring them to follow up and ask why it wasn't connected. Within half hour of my call it was working.

We received modem in post on Friday. No details on box to say it is MAC compatible, but PDF on CD to explain setting up. Had it working in 10 minutes. Very straight forward. Early days yet but initall speeds looking good. All we need now is a desk for the computer :)