TransACT 5 months in...

[Bob Edwards]

Brett Worth wrote:
> 
> I've been on TransACT for 5 months now and thought I'd share my impressions
> so far.
> 
> <RANT>
> 
> What I like:
> 
> The home package that I signed up for included 256K data channel.  I've
> consistently been getting 50Kbytes download so the 256K is really 500k.
> 
> WebOne, my ISP, has been very good.  Good support and the person who
> answers the phone is generally someone technical.  The connection has been
> very reliable.
> 
> The TV channels provided are OK.  Most of my viewing has been on the
> old free-to-air channels but the reception is better that I used to get
> from the rabbit ears.
> 
> The telephone component has been OK but I'm yet to see what happens if
> there's a problem.
> 
> What worries me:
> 
> I know a couple of people who subscribe to Telstra ADSL and while the
> reliability is rumoured to be bad the resources seem to be much better.
> e.g. the access to plenty of Linux downloads inside the ADSL network that
> doesn't contribute to your download quota.  The Linux ftp area at webone is
> still "under construction".
> 
> I realise that Telstra seem to be under pricing their ADSL but even with
> the recent price rises it seems a lot cheaper than TransACT from any ISP.
> 
> Webone offer no-charge data transfer between subscribers so I could setup
> my own ftp area to serve a few linux cds to other webone users. Of course
> this would be better done from inside webone.  Perhaps we could offer
> to donate recent linux cds to webone for them to serve from an FTP server.
> Of course if the TransACT peer-to-peer existed this could benefit
> subscribers to all TransACT ISPs.
> 
> The contract with TransACT is only for 12 months so I'm wondering what I
> should do at the end of that period.  Will TransACT ever match Telstra in
> pricing and resources?  What ever happened to peer-to-peer on TransACT?
> Are and TransACT ISPs is actually offering a linux download area?
> 
> </RANT>
> --
> Brett

My understanding, from a meeting with TransACT sales guys about two weeks ago,
is that the "free peer-peer" service will be called something like "City-Link"
or something equally as non-specific. No problem with me what they call it.

The problem appears to be that they are planning to feed the entire networks'
worth of "free peer-peer" traffic through a single 1Mbps "channel" on their
VPN
router. Effectively, the "free peer-peer" will be unusable for anything other
than the occasional e-mail. I laughed when they told me this. I have been
waiting
since October last year for the free peer-peer service - I have been foolishly
paying my monthly "TransWeb" service fee without having used it at all so far
and now I discover that it won't be worth waiting for.

Do I feel misled?

Cheers,

Bob Edwards.