Telstra, Lebanon, Punks and a very socialiable week

[tcpip]

Tuesday night was Linux User's Victoria; Richard Smith gave a surprisingly entertaining talk on Opteron Hardware Performance. Russell Coker gave a less entertaining, but thoroughly valid, presentation on security issues in /tmp and /var/tmp. On theme, Friday night attended the local node of 2600 AU, whereupon caseopaya partied damn hard for a couple of older folk.

On a somewhat related topic Telstra are being arsehats again, by deciding not to upgrade to a national fibre network leaving Australia with broadband speeds so slow they're not even counted as broadband on international standards.

Obviously still in the partying mood, attended the Continuum ball the following night; I like Continuum balls, it means I can go clubbing with Perth people once a year ;-) Following night had dinner post Contiuum at the increasingly famous Xanghai on St Kilda Rd and followed up with East Timorese (I really can't get a grip on Timor Lestenese) coffee afterwards at home.

In between all this (Thursday night) visited Mr. and Ms. txxxpxx who proved to be most delightful hosts as we watched the notorious Hitchcock film Jamaica Inn and on Wednesday night watched "Punk's Not Dead" at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Included lots of footage of elder punks (most in their fifties) like the Exploited, Subhumans, GBH, UK Subs etc and a fair bit of the new scence in the US (not so good, imo).

Briefly visited the peace vigil on Friday night against the recent invasion and violence in the mid-east. More than a handful of the local Lebonese community present, poor blighters. In comparing Israeli attacks you can either use abstract maps (hat-tip to erudito which suggest one thing or aerial photographs (courtesy of Professor Juan Cole).

Oh, and ran Cybernoia on Sunday. Players went to Berlin, foiled an assasination attempt against them and blew up more hotels.

Comments

[greylock.livejournal.com]

On a somewhat related topic Telstra are being arsehats again, by deciding not to upgrade to a national fibre network leaving Australia with broadband speeds so slow they're not even counted as broadband on international standards.

And I would be happy with affordable sub-standard broadband.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ahh, see I haven't paid for Internet access for over 18 months, all courtesy of the ISP I used to work for..

I should also mention that your links on this topic have been very good.

Telstra are arsehats (see, I've picked this up)... I cannot imagine why anyone subscribes to them.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

I cannot imagine why anyone subscribes to them.

In my case, I'm too lazy to change, and I am yet to find a Telco that offers better rates.

Those who have either employ telemarketers, or want you to bundle your phone, mobile and internet services.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Would a bundled offer really be that bad? I mean I have seperate services for all, but the offers are usually fairly kosher.

Ahh, but you can't get xDSL can you..

Now it makes sense.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

I also don't call international or interstate, nor own a mobile (there is one in the house but it is work-provided)... I can bundle my phone with a dial-up I suppose...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Like, with WestNet/iiNet?

[greylock.livejournal.com]

I expect.
I did look at Westnet (I intend to switch if T3 is sold), and there really weren't any savings on offer.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

Stay away from iiNet. Their infrastructure does not meet the Sales department's optimism. Their internal processes were designed by Michael Malone, back when they used to be a garage outfit. They haven't changed. The customer database they use is still the same as the one Malone created back in the garage, they've just been adding functions to it ever since. iiNet is the most disorganised, incompetent and institutionally stupid organisation I have ever had the misfortune to work for or do business with. I cannot warn you against them enough.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

However, if you signed up on their Bliink Lite plan (which is now grandfathered) you'd be getting a pretty good deal.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

Yes you would, on paper. The actual service, when it is running, is generally fine. If you ever want to get something changed on the line, start planning a couple of months in advance. Their volume usage calculator is utterly wrong so they'll shape you early (we've managed to download our full 40gb peak 40 gb offpeak quota twice in as many months, all while I have 500MB storage and my flatmate plays BF2). The customer service is terrible because they do not train their staff effectively. They think that a hundred staff barely trained in all areas (accounting, provisioning, tech) is equal to or better than thirty staff in each area with specific training. Their executives are not telco long-termers, just administrators. The entire company is shoddy, understaffed, and incompetent.

You may guess I'm somewhat bitter about my time with the company. Bastards.

[cheshire-bitten.livejournal.com]

Telstra where forced to have a $20/mth landline plan, which is great seeing as I don't use the landline for anything but ADSL.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

I very seldom use my landline either, and it took me ages to find out that existed! Telstra doesn't exactly advertise it. Indeed, they actively obscure its existence and actively discourage switching to it, by doing things such as not allowing you to select it online.

[cheshire-bitten.livejournal.com]

They also call you if you get it, and try to convice you to
switch back.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

I've yet to experience that particular joy. I can only hope they've taken notice of what I said to the last of their telemarketers, which was that I'll never give more money than is absolutely necessary to any company which charges credit card surcharges.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

What's their minimum monthly line rental?

[reddragdiva]

ISDN was not much higher bandwidth than modem (64kbit or 128kbit instead of 40-52kbit), but was much nicer to use - because the latency was really low. That's the time between when you click on something and it starts loading.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

The cost of ISDN today (for the same service I get on dial-up) is $60 per month. So I can pay $60 per month for a service at least one-fifth of the speed as what people in DSL-areas can enjoy. Yeah, that seems fair.

ISDN didn't, last time I asked, offer the same "use the phoneline for two things at once" as DSL, which is a major plus.

I'm going to follow up Cremmin's argument that Telstra use a 1.5 mbps test rate. One third of that would be 10 times what I get. If what he says is correct, I would happily accept that.

[reddragdiva]

Yeah, there is that.

Here DSL is free with cereal packets, so if my work ISDN actually cost any significant amount (like it used to), the company would say "buggre thatte" and just put in a second DSL. Yes, a second DSL. And trust me when I say the customers pay for our on-call services being there, which means a laptop, the ISDN, the second phone ... good thing our systems basically work.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

The Age article about broadband is appalling. Whoever Garry Barker is, he's a liar and a fool. His lack of understanding of mega (M) vs milli (m) is a poor start. After 3 lies within 2 opening sentences, his credibility drops to zero.

The international minimum broadband standard is 2 megabits per second (mbps)

Lie. ITU FAQ says "1.5 or 2.0 Megabits per second". Most homes can get 1.5Mb/s so, of course, using the 2.0Mb/s figure is just a beat-up.

The best domestic service in Australia offers 1.5 mbps

Lie. The best domestic service in Australia offers 24Mb/s. (DSL2+ is offered by Internode, Iinet, and various others.)

and is available only to subscribers less than 1.5 kilometres from a telephone exchange.

Lie. 1.5Mb/s DSL is available out to over 4km from the exchange.


After the lies, he moves on to merely misleading commentary. Singapore, for example, has more than 10 times the population density of Melbourne. Of course they will be able to build broadband cheaply for all Singaporeans and we will never, ever, be able to compete with that, except in the CBD. There's also the question of how important that is. Singapore is tiny. I've found international links to Singapore sites to be appallingly slow and overloaded in the past and the vast majority of internet traffic into Singapore will not be local. 100Mb/s to every home is utterly useless when their international links can't possibly supply a fraction of that.

A much more appropriate comparison might be the USA, where most DSL is between 640kb/s and 1.5Mb/s. DSL2+ is much more widely available in Australia than in the USA.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I think you need to send a letter to The Age on the subject. Start with the assumption that Gary Barker is ignorant rather than being a deliberate liar.

That said, I have absolutely no love for Telstra.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

Judging by the reaction on Whirlpool to his recently bullshit-filled articles, quite a number of people are indeed contacting the Age.

And I don't care whether his lies are deliberate or not. If he is completely unaware of reality, he shouldn't be allowed to write articles for a major newspaper.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I feel a littl embarressed that I didn't double check the article more carefully myself. :/

[greylock.livejournal.com]

1.5Mb/s DSL is available out to over 4km from the exchange.

Not in my case it isn't.
We live around 4km from the exchange... and we are unable to get broadband.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

The article claimed that no DSL is available at >1.5km from the exchange, a number presumably extracted from thin air. Internode has some 1.5Mb/s customers at over 9km. 4km is a reasonable expectation, but won't work for everyone. Dodgy exchanges and poor quality copper wires can reduce the maximum significantly.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Whoa, hang on... Internode can do this (because they're better at it), but does Telstra. For whatever his faults, Mr. Barker is clearly talking about Telstra's standards.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

While it's clear to you or I that Barker is talking about Telstra, he doesn't say so, so it's not going to be clear to readers. (... and there's a hell of a lot of broadband out there that isn't Telstra.)

In answer to your question, yes, Telstra does do broadband out to over 4km. There is no specific distance limit. The Telstra method is that when you apply to them for DSL, they test your line first and either allow you to have DSL or not (for any plan) based on whether your line can cope with 1.5Mb/s. This is why they don't offer higher speeds: it would require re-testing the line and they apparently consider this too much of a pain to bother with. (It might resemble customer service!) It also means that those who would be happy with a lower speed of, say, 1Mb/s or 512kB/s, are denied any DSL service at all if their line can't cope with 1.5Mb/s.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

If Telstra do test at 1.5 Mb/s, and they are telling me I am unable to get broadband (where 512 kb/s would be 10x faster than dial-up) any suggestions as to what I can do, and how I can argue the fact?

I know Westnet, my ISP, rely on what Telstra tells them, but there's no reason I need to put up with that.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

I don't think you've got much hope in arguing it. They do have an understandable point: Most of their customers are within range for 1.5Mb/s. If they test at that speed, then all plan changes and "shaping" are simply software changes, which greatly simplifies administration. Best place to read about such things is whirlpool.net.au.

Totally unrelated: The picture on your LJ bio also appears on my home page. I guess we'll have to find something else after the next US presidential election.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

I don't give a shit what the theory says, or the optimal parameters are, but in reality, effectively, this is true: ADSL 1 is not able to transmit over copper further than 5km. ADSL2+ has extended this out to a little over 8km.

Agreed

[maxxxie2.livejournal.com]

I was wondering if anyone would comment on the factual accuracy of this guy's article. What a bunch of malarky. And you're right, the average peon would interpret it as "Australia doesn't support greater than 1.5Mbps", not "it's just Telstra being backwards boobs".

Max

[zey.livejournal.com]

Looks like Michael Malone at iiNet picked it:

"They've had this fibre to the node project, which we call Telstra's bunyip - it's a large mythical creature that we don't actually think is real. Telstra has put it out there as the ultimate bogeyman. What they're really saying to the market is, "You can go out there "and you can invest in your own infrastructure if you want, "but in three years it's all going to be worthless "because we're doing fibre to the node." The industry is a roller-coaster ride."

That comment from back in late July...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I think that metaphor is very accurate.