My snouts who attended said even Dickie’s advisors were wincing as everyone tried not to catch eachother’s eye across the table.

As for the future of broadband in Australia, it’s worth keeping an eye on COLT.

Also I wonder if Bill Heffernan has had a little ASIO card made up so he can flash it at people. I’m sure it would be quite the icebreaker next time he’s down the Cross interviewing rentboys.

Convicted criminal pictures

cash it via the family Winery

Wine’s a far more reliable medium of exchange than money, to be sure

I am with aaNet, and they offer monthly direct debit from your bank account.

I’m not a fan of Direct Debit - I don’t even have a Bank Account, I get paid by Cheque and cash it via the family Winery. I prefer dealing with Cash, you know people will get their money and I don’t like the idea of giving a company carte blanche access to your money, I’d liken it to giving a thief the keys to your house and a note to help themselves.

And I’ve said earlier, unless the ISP own the infrastructure in the exchange, you are basically buying a resold Telstra product anyway. Id prefer to cut out the middle man and I know Bigpond will still be around whereas all these resellers of Telstra Wholesale may go out of business tomorrow.

I am with aaNet, and they offer monthly direct debit from your bank account.

And I highly recommend Whirlpool for info comparing different ISPs.

Dear BigPond(R) Member,

We’ve noticed that your estimated usage on your BigPond Broadband account this month has reached 8 GB.

Of course you can continue enjoying the internet, but we wanted to remind you that on your current plan, your service will become slower after you reach your monthly usage allowance.

If you are still getting capped at 10GB you should upgrade your account to the new 12gb plan. Its the same plan they have just increased the limit. They just don’t do it for you.

You will then have an extra 2GB to spend on the horrors of the Intertubes!

I’ve been looking around for a house for a while - is it only me that wishes that the real estate agents listed how fast the maximum broadband connection you get to the house is? I’ve resorted to mapping where the telephone exchanges are, and only considering houses within a certain radius.

Interesting point, Chris.

I’m a renter in the inner city so cable connections are probably about as good as they come.

My friend and I have been discussing her intention to buy her mum a laptop and sign her up for broadband and that’s where it gets really tricky - because she’s in Maroochydore and the nearest exchange is Buderim (quite a distance) and we suspect the copper wire isn’t all that flash.

I have found the cable connection extremely reliable, though, and I gather that’s not necessarily the case with ADSL.

Its really going to depend on how far away you are from the exchange and the quality of your copper line. If you’re out in the sticks and you find your phone line gets a bit crackly when it rains because the conduits leak, then you’re going to have problems with ADSL. If you’re in the burbs close to an exchange then ADSL2 will probably be better - and you don’t have the trouble of your network slowing down because your neighbours happen to be bittorrenting movies - ADSL is dedicated capacity for the user, rather than shared, as cable is (as long as your ISP has suffient external capacity, but good ones do).

I’m with bigpond because they are the only ISP which you don’t need a credit card (I’m on the DSP and I don’t want a CC) and you can pay in cash at your nearest Telstra Shop or Australia Post office. Every other ISP I know of won’t even let you sign up unless you have a Credit Card.

I believe Internode let you do direct debit - in fact they charge extra if you want to use a credit card.

I’ve been looking around for a house for a while - is it only me that wishes that the real estate agents listed how fast the maximum broadband connection you get to the house is? I’ve resorted to mapping where the telephone exchanges are, and only considering houses within a certain radius.

I don’t have a credit card either, but a debit card does the trick.

I’m a cash person But the fact is Telstra own the copper in the street and the infrastructure for ADSL1 (I’m on a sub-exchange) - anything goes wrong I only have one company to deal with. If you’re with another company, and there is a problem beyond their network, then they have to contact Telstra who then come out to do the work and sometimes they get it wrong big time. Better to cut out the middle man and deal with the one Telco - less headaches. Plus it does help if you have the direct number for the head of Telstra Cabling - it took me 5 years to get ADSL, and it involved a level 2 tech to remove me off a pair-gains system onto ISDN, and then pressuring them to install a pillar to the sub-exchange.

Dear BigPond(R) Member,

We’ve noticed that your estimated usage on your BigPond Broadband account this month has reached 8 GB.

Of course you can continue enjoying the internet, but we wanted to remind you that on your current plan, your service will become slower after you reach your monthly usage allowance.

I’m on the same Liberty 12 Gig plan, and I’ve used 6.2 gig. I normally only use around 7-8 gig per month anyway.

I’m with bigpond because they are the only ISP which you don’t need a credit card (I’m on the DSP and I don’t want a CC) and you can pay in cash at your nearest Telstra Shop or Australia Post office. Every other ISP I know of won’t even let you sign up unless you have a Credit Card.

What I know about Bigpond is that they are one of the few to metre uploads as well as downloads which sounds like bad value to me.

That’s true.

I have found the cable connection extremely reliable, though, and I gather that’s not necessarily the case with ADSL.

I have 20Gb peak and 40 GB off peak with iinet and am bumping my quota with more than a week to go til refresh. Gah.