"Unlimited broadband" might not be so...

[Tamara (Homes Down Under)]

I have been having a few issues with the speed of my broadband service. For the past few months it's been painfully slow. I know, what do you expect from old copper cable Adelaide which has the slowest internet in the country but it's not that simple...

 

Three houses next to each other.

All with TPG unlimited broadband plans.

All with the same modems.

But the house that I am living in has a speed that is 1 third of the others....somethings wrong!

 

Anyway, have phoned TPG (who are pretty good with their customer service) and they tweak a few things their side and the speed goes up a little. At the moment it's the same as the other houses.

 

My son says (conspiracy theory?!) says that because we are large users (he plays games, we watch tv, internet on all the time etc,that when the internet slows down it's because the internet service provider is slowing down your service to restrict data usage.

 

Any thoughts on this? Are they slowing it down because they don't want you to continue on a data binge? Is it built into the contract in the small print that once you reach a certain usage your service will be slowed? I don't see it in my contract and TPG said no way...but am being told otherwise.

 

Anyway...bring on NBN..am sick of buffering movies!

 

Was in the UK last week...speeds were 10 times faster....!!! Whoever wins the election in a few weeks time needs to sort this out.....

[John Browning]

well if TPG is bad you should try BigPond

 

Is it my imagination, or does the old copper network slow down even more in wet weather ( -i know that sounds ridiculous....but have you ever been down one of those cable pits -they are really archaic)

 

I'm voting for the first party that stops obsessing about "balanced budgets" and comes up with a plan to buy back all the utilities...Telco's; Electricity; Gas ; Water; Freeways ; Prisons - the whole lot

 

 

JB

Edited June 21, 2016 by John Browning

[Tamara (Homes Down Under)]

It does slow down in bad weather. I don't think that TPG is bad...have had Telstra and Adam and my daughter has a Dodo (dead as a dodo for service!) and TPG has been the best of the bunch. They are all hostage to Telstra for infrastructure maintenance though.

I have a sub exchange a couple of hundred metres away so the copper length shouldn't be too bad...but it is. Was honestly amazed by the UK speeds in the different locations. Was amazed by a lot in the Uk actually...had been 15 years since last visit....but I digress!

 

I have one of those pits outside of the house. I chat to the Telstra technicians every time they are trying to sort out the copper corrosion problems. There's a mass of copper cables surrounded by a gel / rubber type material but it's still green inside because the water gets in.

The one bloke was showing me all the bite marks on his legs where the spiders bite him when he dangles his legs inside!

 

The NBN rollout is so frustrating and Malcolm doesn't want to spend to do it right.

[robeaves]

I'd say your son is partly correct, I'm no expert but have read enough forums to learn a thing or two. ISP's may slow some users down at peak times to protect their service to other customers, there's only so much bandwidth and it needs to be shared unfortunately, your average user wouldn't notice but a gamer or heavy downloader certainly would.

 

Our speeds have been shocking due to our distance from the exchange but yay NBN arrived last month, we expected to get connected on Friday just gone but it was not to be, instead they started the job and disconnected our ADSL but then couldn't complete it and we are now without internet until 28th June if it happens, maybe third time lucky, here's hoping.

[Tamara (Homes Down Under)]

It's just happened again.

We were away for a month and didn't have any usage.

However, we need to change some pc's from windows 8 to windows 10 before the free period ends (this month!) and the updates have swallowed a lot of data.

Speed was shocking this morning and after a call to TPG threatening to change accounts it's now back to normal...and 4 times faster than this morning.

 

Hollow threat really as TPG seems to be the best of the bunch?

[victoriasquare]

I used to have very slow broadband in Adelaide with AAPT, but I didn't pay for a top speed. In Torquay South Devon it is up to about 76 Mbps using fibre optic, I have BT Infinity 2 costing £20.35 per month including telephone calls. (I think my discount cuts out next month, so may well go up to about £32) At the moment it is only 74.45 Mbps so varies. My GP who lives near Dartmouth isn't so fortunate, when I told him my speed he thought I had the decimal point in the wrong place!

 

Hasn't all of Adelaide received fibre optic yet? You have to consider that at times when usage is highest in the community, speeds will be slower. Sometimes when mine shows only about 40 Mbps, I switch off the router and switch it on again, and the speed shows up to its usual 76 Mbps. Have those of you with slowed speeds tried this?

[NicF]

I used to have very slow broadband in Adelaide with AAPT, but I didn't pay for a top speed. In Torquay South Devon it is up to about 76 Mbps using fibre optic, I have BT Infinity 2 costing £20.35 per month including telephone calls. (I think my discount cuts out next month, so may well go up to about £32) At the moment it is only 74.45 Mbps so varies. My GP who lives near Dartmouth isn't so fortunate, when I told him my speed he thought I had the decimal point in the wrong place!

 

Hasn't all of Adelaide received fibre optic yet? You have to consider that at times when usage is highest in the community, speeds will be slower. Sometimes when mine shows only about 40 Mbps, I switch off the router and switch it on again, and the speed shows up to its usual 76 Mbps. Have those of you with slowed speeds tried this?

 

Most of Adelaide does not have fibre optic and what's more with the coalitions fibre to the node plan most of Adelaide will not get fibre optic to the house either. We are on ADSL with no cable in our area (Foxtel customers here have to use satellite) and are lucky to get speeds of 1Mbps. My OH has managed to speed it up to about 1.5Mbps but the reliability has dropped. We are due to get the NBN sometime around 2018, although our implementation does involve installing cable as well so hopefully we will get much better speeds once it is installed.

[Tamara (Homes Down Under)]

I used to have very slow broadband in Adelaide with AAPT, but I didn't pay for a top speed. In Torquay South Devon it is up to about 76 Mbps using fibre optic, I have BT Infinity 2 costing £20.35 per month including telephone calls. (I think my discount cuts out next month, so may well go up to about £32) At the moment it is only 74.45 Mbps so varies. My GP who lives near Dartmouth isn't so fortunate, when I told him my speed he thought I had the decimal point in the wrong place!

 

Hasn't all of Adelaide received fibre optic yet? You have to consider that at times when usage is highest in the community, speeds will be slower. Sometimes when mine shows only about 40 Mbps, I switch off the router and switch it on again, and the speed shows up to its usual 76 Mbps. Have those of you with slowed speeds tried this?

 

Thanks for the info.

 

I have a mixture of different modems. The ones that the service provider provide with your contract are rubbish. They lock all the time and I have a pile of them in my shed!

I have Billion modems and more recently I am changing over to Fritbox modems. Both seem quite stable but you are right..the occasional reboot can work wonders.

 

Most of us in Adelaide can only dream about those internet speeds. Our present prime minister decided to halt the previous NBN (national broadband network) plan that was started by our Labor gov at great cost, and with more cost over runs to follow. The replacement system (unless you were one of the early install adresses) is a combination of different technology designed to save cost....

 

The main problem is the piecemeal rollout of the system. The suburb next to me has NBN but I don't have it, and install date may be another 2 years away. I can understand it if the rollout was gradual but it makes no sense to roll it out to an adjacent area and then stop for years! So frustrating.

 

My ADSL connection is now getting speeds of 4.5mbps which is wonderful but pathetic compared to your speeds. We had a Telsta technician here this morning who informed us that TPG were not to blame for the slow speeds and they were not limiting the line speed...apparently the cable from the roadway was shorting out and had been branched (shared) which was causing the issues. He fixed it in minutes.

The 4.5 mb is enough to stream and watch tv and is better than a lot of other areas and in the meantime we can only wait for the installation of our NBN.....which is going to be to a node and not to the home despite the billions of $ it is going to cost....