[Snap] Questions regarding VDSL

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › [Snap] Questions regarding VDSL

nedkelly

659 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#132379 20-Oct-2013 13:10

So I am currently on ADSL from Snap with a POTS line still running from Telecom (not my fault and not my account) I am thinking about getting VDSL in the next few months, would love UFB but no plans at all for my area

.
I have looked at the Broadband and Phone plan and the Broadband & Snap Plus plans one thing I am wondering is the difference between the phone on both of those, the first plan says standard phoneline and the second says Snap Plus phone line, are both of them still a voip line?

1 | 2

meow
13243 posts

Uber Geek

Moderator

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#917714 20-Oct-2013 13:41

Snap plus is VoIP - I'd recommend going towards the standard line else go to Telecom VDSL, it's really quite good for the pricing and works fast too. I know other people here would agree with me here, nothing wrong with Telecom.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
Referral Links: Quic Broadband (use R122101E7CV7Q for free setup)

Are you happy with what you get from Geekzone? Please consider supporting us by subscribing.
Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

nedkelly

659 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#917742 20-Oct-2013 14:27

So standard phone is actually just a normal phone not voip?

michaelmurfy

meow
13243 posts

Uber Geek

Moderator

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#917745 20-Oct-2013 14:28

Indeed, it's just phone over POTS so through your standard phoneline.

SamF

1578 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#917747 20-Oct-2013 14:35

Snap pricing is significantly better than telecoms plus why would you pay for a POTS line when you can get a perfectly good VOIP connection which does the job as well, if not better, for half the monthly price and with probably much better toll rates!?

michaelmurfy

meow
13243 posts

Uber Geek

Moderator

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#917753 20-Oct-2013 14:50

SamF: Snap pricing is significantly better than telecoms plus why would you pay for a POTS line when you can get a perfectly good VOIP connection which does the job as well, if not better, for half the monthly price and with probably much better toll rates!?

Erm, it's essentially the same price with Snap. There are advantages and disadvantages with VoIP such as if you have a monitored alarm that works over POTS or if you're downloading tonnes and receive a call the line can turn pretty dodgy. I've got VoIP, POTS over a Telecom VDSL connection, for me it's handy having POTS there since the old Telecom exchanges are far better in a natural disaster than Broadband / VoIP (experience from Christchurch earthquakes)

It comes down to personal preference, VoIP has to use the broadband to make a call which is often not as stable as the POTS network, voice quality is about the same since you're still eventually using these exchanges anyway, the whole call unless if it's to another Snap SIP customer is not all digital.

sbiddle

30853 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#917757 20-Oct-2013 14:53

SamF: Snap pricing is significantly better than telecoms plus why would you pay for a POTS line when you can get a perfectly good VOIP connection which does the job as well, if not better, for half the monthly price and with probably much better toll rates!?

If you have legacy low speed data services maybe? Or want certainty that your phone service will still operate during a power cut?

SamF

1578 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#917766 20-Oct-2013 15:19

michaelmurfy: Erm, it's essentially the same price with Snap. There are advantages and disadvantages with VoIP such as if you have a monitored alarm that works over POTS or if you're downloading tonnes and receive a call the line can turn pretty dodgy. I've got VoIP, POTS over a Telecom VDSL connection, for me it's handy having POTS there since the old Telecom exchanges are far better in a natural disaster than Broadband / VoIP (experience from Christchurch earthquakes)

It comes down to personal preference, VoIP has to use the broadband to make a call which is often not as stable as the POTS network, voice quality is about the same since you're still eventually using these exchanges anyway, the whole call unless if it's to another Snap SIP customer is not all digital.

Ok:

For 100GB and a voice line:
Telecom: $115
Snap: $95

I see Telecom have dropped their prices recently, however snap are still quite a bit cheaper for the same bundle. Also I think you'll find that snap will give you better personal service that Telecom.

Sure, if you have an alarm then yes, you will need POTS. As for dodgy / unstable VOIP calls when you're downloading, a half decent router / firewall will take care of that.

I have a UPS on my phone & modem which gives me phone connectivity in a power outage (albeit for a limited time), but that's what mobile phones are for. Also, POTS service isn't guaranteed in a natural disaster - exchanges are vulnerable just the same as anything else.

And this discussion is regarding VDSL options, low data speed legacy connections are of course a different story.

Samsung

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

NonprayingMantis

6434 posts

Uber Geek

#917767 20-Oct-2013 15:23

SamF:
michaelmurfy: Erm, it's essentially the same price with Snap. There are advantages and disadvantages with VoIP such as if you have a monitored alarm that works over POTS or if you're downloading tonnes and receive a call the line can turn pretty dodgy. I've got VoIP, POTS over a Telecom VDSL connection, for me it's handy having POTS there since the old Telecom exchanges are far better in a natural disaster than Broadband / VoIP (experience from Christchurch earthquakes)

It comes down to personal preference, VoIP has to use the broadband to make a call which is often not as stable as the POTS network, voice quality is about the same since you're still eventually using these exchanges anyway, the whole call unless if it's to another Snap SIP customer is not all digital.

Ok:

For 100GB and a voice line:
Telecom: $115
Snap: $95

I see Telecom have dropped their prices recently, however snap are still quite a bit cheaper for the same bundle. Also I think you'll find that snap will give you better personal service that Telecom.

Sure, if you have an alarm then yes, you will need POTS. As for dodgy / unstable VOIP calls when you're downloading, a half decent router / firewall will take care of that.

I have a UPS on my phone & modem which gives me phone connectivity in a power outage (albeit for a limited time), but that's what mobile phones are for. Also, POTS service isn't guaranteed in a natural disaster - exchanges are vulnerable just the same as anything else.

And this discussion is regarding VDSL options, low data speed legacy connections are of course a different story.

Telecom doesn't have a 100GB plan, and hasn't for ages, so not sure where you got that price from.

Telecom do a 150GB plan for $99 including voice line. If you want vdsl it's an extra $10.
Or 80GB for $85, extra $10 for vdsl.

SamF

1578 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#917770 20-Oct-2013 15:31

Telecom do an 80GB plan for $95 and charge $1 per GB after that; $95 + $20 = $115. Just comparing apples for apples here.

Sure, for $109 with telecom you can get 150GB, but for $110 with snap you get 200GB! So any way you look at it snap still wins.

NonprayingMantis

6434 posts

Uber Geek

#917774 20-Oct-2013 15:38

SamF: Telecom do an 80GB plan for $95 and charge $1 per GB after that; $95 + $20 = $115. Just comparing apples for apples here.

Sure, for $109 with telecom you can get 150GB, but for $110 with snap you get 200GB! So any way you look at it snap still wins.

you aren't comparing apples with apples by including overage in one, which distorts that value for money, and not the other.
Especially when you most definitely can get more GB for less $ on that ISP.
I.e. The cheapest way to buy 100 GB is NOT $115, it's $109, yet you still picked $115 as your comparison.

If your allowed to compare plans that aren't the most economical, then why not go all out and compare to $75 30GB plan, and add another $70 worth of overage to get $145? Makes snap look even better value!!

Or, if I wanted to make snap look worse, I could decide to compare how much to buy exactly 150GB and ignore plans that have higher data caps, even if they are cheaper (which is what you did)

So, telecom vdsl for 150GB is $109

Snap vdsl for 150GB. Only way I can get that exact amount is the 100GB standard, then buy 50GB additional data each month which costs $75.
So the total is therefore $170. Wow, telecom is so much cheaper for 150GB of data!

See my point?

johnr

19282 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#917775 20-Oct-2013 15:39

SamF: Telecom do an 80GB plan for $95 and charge $1 per GB after that; $95 + $20 = $115. Just comparing apples for apples here.

Sure, for $109 with telecom you can get 150GB, but for $110 with snap you get 200GB! So any way you look at it snap still wins.

That is not comparing Apples with Apples

My parents have a good ADSL2+ connection and use about 500 - 800MB per month

michaelmurfy

meow
13243 posts

Uber Geek

Moderator

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#917777 20-Oct-2013 15:45

SamF:
Ok:

For 100GB and a voice line:
Telecom: $115
Snap: $95

Telecom also have a $129 500gb pack, their prices ain't much different plus you're comparing a 12mo contract with free installation to a 24mo plan with free installation.

I see Telecom have dropped their prices recently, however snap are still quite a bit cheaper for the same bundle. Also I think you'll find that snap will give you better personal service that Telecom.

Telecom's support is actually pretty darn good, you don't need it if you have a reliable service also plus you can manage most things online. I've had awful support from Snap on several occasions, it really comes down to the level of support you expect from the ISP. Telecom's consumer grade so I don't expect the CSR staff to know anything about bridging routers etc.

Sure, if you have an alarm then yes, you will need POTS. As for dodgy / unstable VOIP calls when you're downloading, a half decent router / firewall will take care of that.

I have a UPS on my phone & modem which gives me phone connectivity in a power outage (albeit for a limited time), but that's what mobile phones are for. Also, POTS service isn't guaranteed in a natural disaster - exchanges are vulnerable just the same as anything else.

QoS doesn't always work on a connection with any router unless if you reserve that bandwidth, VoIP is a real time service and I've got a very decent router, QoS has my VoIP set in real time mode and if this connection is saturated I find that VoIP just isn't reliable. Even if you've got a UPS your cabinet is powered by Battery in a power outage and will last between 10minutes to 2 hours, so when this battery goes down there's no generator hooked up unless if Chorus come out and physically connect one. Exchanges have both battery and automatic generator backup so in a natural disaster POTS will always work better, remember, I'm taking this from personal experience. Mobile phones in a natural disaster are not reliable, it was 2 days before my texts were delivering successfully in Christchurch and 80% of the time my calls were not getting through or data didn't work due to the network being so overloaded.

For your standard household family POTS is still far superior since there's not as much that can go wrong with it. With VoIP you've got the phone, router, cabinet, power, VoIP provider etc that could cause this to go down at any given time and most people simply don't understand this or know how to fix it if it's their router or ATA playing silly buggers. I've got my parents using SIP so they could keep their number when they moved, I've got a Cisco 877 connected doing traffic management but if they're downloading, their phone is still very unreliable but dad knows if this happens just turn off the Wireless Router, it's just not as seamless as POTS.

Quite a few businesses will have a dedicated connection for their SIP trunks else use Centrex.

Anyway, this is very off topic.

SamF

1578 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#917780 20-Oct-2013 15:51

NonprayingMantis:True, but you aren't comparing apples with apples by including overage in one, which distorts that value for money, and not the other.
Especially when you most definitely can get more GB for less $ on that ISP.
I.e. The cheapest way to buy 100 GB is NOT $115, it's $109, yet you still picked $115 as your comparison.

If your allowed to compare plans that aren't the most economical, then why not go all out and compare to $75 30GB plan, and add another $70 worth of overage to get $145? Makes snap look even better value!!

See my point?

Yeah, fair call, it is difficult to compare plans with different amounts of data.

If you do it on a $/GB on the base plans only you get:
Telecom: 0.94GB / $
Snap: 1.05GB / $

It doesn't sound like a lot when you compare it that way, but it's still 11% cheaper with snap.

SamF

1578 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#917784 20-Oct-2013 15:54

michaelmurfy:

QoS doesn't always work on a connection with any router unless if you reserve that bandwidth, VoIP is a real time service and I've got a very decent router, QoS has my VoIP set in real time mode and if this connection is saturated I find that VoIP just isn't reliable.

As I said, a decent router / firewall will properly take care of QOS - I am running a free version of Astaro / Sophos and even completely maxxing out my line, I never have any issues with VOIP quality.

michaelmurfy

meow
13243 posts

Uber Geek

Moderator

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#917785 20-Oct-2013 16:07

SamF:
michaelmurfy:

QoS doesn't always work on a connection with any router unless if you reserve that bandwidth, VoIP is a real time service and I've got a very decent router, QoS has my VoIP set in real time mode and if this connection is saturated I find that VoIP just isn't reliable.

As I said, a decent router / firewall will properly take care of QOS - I am running a free version of Astaro / Sophos and even completely maxxing out my line, I never have any issues with VOIP quality.

And do you think a residential router will do this? Like the ones ISP's are giving away for their VoIP connections? Do you think an average user will know how to fix voice quality issues? Would an average user set up a PC and use Astaro on it? This is the problem I'm talking about, I could quite easily grab a Raspberry Pi and use it as my router and fix these myself using iptables etc but what I'm getting at is your average user (which is what these plans are targeted for) will likely experience more issues using VoIP than POTS.

1 | 2