Heya.  

I'm looking for some advice re my uncle and aunty who are finally moving out of their earthquaked home, after a very long court battle with their insurer after the 2011 earthquake.  They are moving out of the city to Clarkville (near Kaiapoi) to a small lifestyle block. 

In terms of internet connection, my uncle likes the idea of saving money and so I immediately thought of Skinny's 4G broadband being the best option. 120GB wouldn't be an issue for them.  My parents use this option in Christchurch at a second property, so it doesn't get a lot of use and while it works well at times (download speed runs at 200mbps often), upload is always good (20-90 mbps), sometimes the download will crawl to 5 - 8 mbps down which can be a real frustration especially when TV / radio is all streamed if there are 3 or 4 people in the house.  Probably a VDSL consistent at 40mbps would be better. 

Unfortunately, my uncle and aunty's new property is not within Skinny's rollout and nor is fibre, leaving the decision between Spark 4G or VDSL.  I would have thought that VDSL was a better option, from my experience of the bottleneck on the Skinny 4G in Christchurch, so was surprised to see that Spark's website is recommending 4G wireless rather than the available VDSL. My personal experience with VDSL has been mixed - one connection was fantastic and fast, the other was unreliable and troublesome. 

Is it likely that Spark's 4G service will suffer from the same bottleneck that we experience in Christchurch on Skinny 4G? Is the bottleneck actually a Skinny issue for bandwidth management that they don't apply to Spark? What would you do? Opt for 4G wireless or the VDSL?  

While I said my uncle likes to save money, in reality the difference between $80 (VDSL) and wireless ($100) won't really make or break the decision.  Cheers!