16 June 2009

Naughty naked DSL

| seekay
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Optus – amazingly – say they can’t get a line from Telstra to run into our new home in Red Hill.

I say they can go and get screwed – but I also always say “Don’t get even, get ahead.”

It’s time to stick two fingers up at the telcos and go for naked DSL.

What services are good in the ACT and what are bad ?

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although people are correct in saying most any connection will still involve a lease of the copper line from the exchange to your house, which is owned by telstra.

Yep. A place I was living in in Woden was due to lose it’s ADSL2 access (thru iinet) due to the relocation of a Telstra sub-exchange.

And yes, iinet definitely DO charge for uploads with their naked plans.

Another for iiNet.

Years ago, I did a comparison of broadband providers using whirlpool.com.au forums and broadbandguide.com.au and decided to call up iiNet (whom I’d never even heard of at the time) based on what I heard about their service and the packages I saw.

A year or so later, Telstra called to ask if there was a way they could help me save on broadband. I told the guy calling that I was with iiNet, how much I paid per month and what my download limit was and asked him if he had anything better at ADSL2+ speeds. He said, “No, that’s pretty good, actually.” I told him he ought to check it out himself and the Telstra guy says, “I will.”

I agree with everything said above about their customer service as well, including that I have always spoken to a competent person – whether they had a foreign accent (like myself) or not.

@Jerry Atric, i have zwhat sounds like the same iinet deal, and they DO count my uploads. Maybe you signed up before the started doing it?

personally i use exetel naked adsl2+, i get excellent download speeds and quota for a very low price. i’d heartily recommend them.
although people are correct in saying most any connection will still involve a lease of the copper line from the exchange to your house, which is owned by telstra. i think even transact uses those copper lines? unless you have mad expensive FTTH.

I have used iinet naked dsl for the last 18 months without a hitch. My kids have it in Brisbane which means free calls from them as well as to them. We have never had a
sound quality problem. Uploads are NOT included in the allocation, I have 16 gigs a month for 59.95 all up, and this includes all local and national calls to fixed lines. Call costs overseas are minimal, around 2c a minute. The only expense is the cost to mobiles which indicates how much the telcos are ripping us off. The setup and cost of a good wireless VOIP router is soon amortised. My phone/internet bills are always around $70 a month

Check that they can operate from your local exchange. If not try another firm (you may have to be content with basic ADSL, but even that should be cheaper than the scam deals offered by the telcos.)

(PS: I DON’T work for iinet!)

Jono said :

iiNet++

Been very happy with iiNet – very speedy, reliable internet and the times I’ve had to call their support line they’ve been polite and very helpful. And while I believe their after-local-hours support is outsourced internationally, the guy I spoke to sounded like a South African, which was a pleasant change from speaking to Mumbai (or wherever) with TPG.

They are WA based, which would explain the South African accent. I have been with them since the early dial-up days when Ozemail was seperate and cannot speak highly enough. Biggest killer is price, but that is common for all good Aussie ISP’s

I stopped using Telstra Mudpond a few years ago when it took a total of 4 1/2 hours over 2 days of phone calls just to reset my email password as each person I spoke to kept dumping my call to another department.

I also kept getting bills for months after closing the account.

iiNet sounds good but as bd84 stated without a phone line you may have trouble..

Wasting your money with Bigpond, why would you pay $60 for the slowest connection possible, when you can source a top speed reliable connection from most other ISPs for cheaper. Hell I cancelled and transferred my connection a year ago and I keep getting bills from them. They suggested I log onto my bigpond account when I’m not even a customer.

If you can’t get a phone line from Tesltra, you’re screwed. Naked DSL won’t work without a working phone line.

@Jono: iiNet’s customer service is not outsourced. It’s all in house, staffed by their own employees. They have call centres in Auckland (mornings/daytime), Sydney (daytime), Perth (afternoons/evenings) and Cape Town (evenings/overnight).

In 2004-05 I worked at their Melbourne call centre prior to it being closed (they didn’t need 2 call centres in AU EST).

Outsourced suggests that the employees are somebody else’s employees. They’re not. They’re simply offshored out of hours. It saves on penalty rates. Funnily enough penalty rates costs more than international VoIP.

@Jono (again): As for TPG, their support is in Manilla. Filipino call centre workers usually speak fairly good English, except for the Boston accents.

@p1: With Naked DSL you aren’t specifically paying line rental. You pay an amount to the ISP, and a (very small) amount of that money ends up with Telstra. Substantially less money than just about every alternative. If you dislike Telstra as much as I do, it’s about as good an option as you can get.

I am looking forward to RuddFTTH though.

Ive gotta put my 2c in here, and say as that as answering phones is my job there is not much more annoying than a caller on VoIP who sounds like theyre on satellite phone in an underground mine in the middle of nowhere. While the cost of calls may be cheap, the service Ive experienced from others who use VoIP makes me never want to touch it for my own use. Just get a cheap mobile plan and dont spend hours rambling away on the phone.

iiNet++

Been very happy with iiNet – very speedy, reliable internet and the times I’ve had to call their support line they’ve been polite and very helpful. And while I believe their after-local-hours support is outsourced internationally, the guy I spoke to sounded like a South African, which was a pleasant change from speaking to Mumbai (or wherever) with TPG.

I’ll second Internode. Great service, and it took them no time to get my service running. Reasonably good prices and I’ve never had any problems!

I also like iiNet, plus Internode has a good rep.

Steady Eddie4:28 pm 16 Jun 09

Thoroughly Smashed said :

Steady Eddie said :

Just sign up with Bigpond directly and forget about the middlemen altogether.

This question was about naked, which uses Optus hardware.

Also, never sign up to Bigpond.

I’ve been with Bigpond since 2000 and have no problems with them. Fairly expensive, but at least you talk to someone here in Oz for tech support rather than Sanjay in downtown Bangalore or The Phillipines.

Thoroughly Smashed said :

Steady Eddie said :

Just sign up with Bigpond directly and forget about the middlemen altogether.

This question was about naked, which uses Optus hardware.

Also, never sign up to Bigpond.

Optus hardware yes, but it still uses Telstra wire. Sadly unless you have Transact cable none of us will ever be free of Telstra if we want a wired service.

I always find it funny that people see naked DSL as a way of sticking it to the telcos.

Guess what? You still have to pay rental on the copper line, and for 99% of Australia, that means that your are paying money, via your ISP to Telstra.

Yes, but my iinet naked connection all up costs a lot less then line rental and a broadband deal.

Only drawback is that naked counts upload and download in you quota, so be wary if you like to pirate movies from bittorrent.

never sign up to bigpond x 2

Thoroughly Smashed2:57 pm 16 Jun 09

Steady Eddie said :

Just sign up with Bigpond directly and forget about the middlemen altogether.

This question was about naked, which uses Optus hardware.

Also, never sign up to Bigpond.

Gungahlin Al2:56 pm 16 Jun 09

About to ditch Bigpond myself for naked and VOIP. Just gotta take my emails over to a personal ISP-free domain first.

But wondering whether to use the iinet VOIP or just their broadband couple with Skype (and maybe a Skype-ready phone – although non-computer ones seem to be about $200)?

Steady Eddie2:35 pm 16 Jun 09

Just sign up with Bigpond directly and forget about the middlemen altogether.

Pommy bastard2:18 pm 16 Jun 09

Jim Jones said :

iiNet are genuinely awesome – great service as well (which makes a *huge* difference). Avoid Optus and Virgin Broadband (which is, oddly enough, owned by Optus) like the plague – I ended up having to go to the Telecommunications Ombudsman to sort out the problems I had with that lot of motherfreakers.

Seconded,=.

I took Virgin broadarse to the ombudsman also.I have never, in 20 years of online life had so poor a service, poor support, poor everything, from an ISP as I had with them.

dosomethinguseful said :

canberratowie2 said :

I was with transact now I’m with iinet and love it cheaper and faster than transact and have not had a problem since it got connected

Cheap phone Calles as well using VoIP and if your no home and someone calls they can leave a message that gets emailed straight to you !!

+1 for Naked iiNet

iiNet are genuinely awesome – great service as well (which makes a *huge* difference). Avoid Optus and Virgin Broadband (which is, oddly enough, owned by Optus) like the plague – I ended up having to go to the Telecommunications Ombudsman to sort out the problems I had with that lot of motherfreakers.

Telstra are evil.

dosomethinguseful1:35 pm 16 Jun 09

canberratowie2 said :

I was with transact now I’m with iinet and love it cheaper and faster than transact and have not had a problem since it got connected

Cheap phone Calles as well using VoIP and if your no home and someone calls they can leave a message that gets emailed straight to you !!

+1 for Naked iiNet

And to follow up on my previous post, ADSL2exchanges.com.au has good information about what is available where.

http://www.adsl2exchanges.com.au/

I always find it funny that people see naked DSL as a way of sticking it to the telcos.

Guess what? You still have to pay rental on the copper line, and for 99% of Australia, that means that your are paying money, via your ISP to Telstra. All you are doing is not paying them for connection to a voice port on your exchange.

Also, if there’s not a line available for Optus to use, what makes you think that another provider will be able to get one? You might be lucky if Optus has simply run out of ports on their DSLAM and another provider in that exchange has available capacity

canberratowie212:46 pm 16 Jun 09

I was with transact now I’m with iinet and love it cheaper and faster than transact and have not had a problem since it got connected

Cheap phone Calles as well using VoIP and if your no home and someone calls they can leave a message that gets emailed straight to you !!

Optus will only enable ADSL where an Optus DSLAM exists on your exchange and a copper pair for the phone service run from your home back to the exchange.

If you are on a RIM or CMUX or some other pairgain they cannot and will not connect you.

If that applies to you, then you may also find it difficult to get NakedDSL.

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