[clug] Feedback...

Michael Cohen scudette at gmail.com
Tue Jan 19 05:31:17 MST 2010


A few years ago I coped a $500 overcharge with 3 pure broadband as
well for going over about 1 gb. This taught me a few important
lessons:

- Having a plan with overuse charges is like gambling - any potential
saving you might make from not having installation fees etc are likely
to be blown away when you accidentally go over use. 3s website is crap
- its difficult to log into it (you need to click through a randomised
keypad?) and it doesnt get updated frequently enough.

- It seems to me that they specifically design low usage plans with
very low monthly prices but very high overuse charges in order to
entrap people. If you provide speeds of about 600kb/s as you point out
it doesnt take long to use up 1gb. In this sense this is nothing short
of entrapment and is plainly malicious in my mind.

- The service from 3 is patchy at best - for example in my new place
there is very little reception from downstairs and barely enough
upstairs (I live < 1km from Brisbane CBD). This coverage is pathetic -
I rang 3 and they informed me that I need to get up high to improve
reception. Even after getting an external antenna I could only get
600kb/s at best which i was informed was "very good" by them. A
typical ADSL2 service can pull about 3mb/s without a problem.

- The worst problem in my experience is that the broadband connection
is very intermittent. It seems that the modem disconnects from the
network when there is no traffic so you typically drop the first
couple of packets at the start of a connection, until the modem kicks
in. If you download it will start off really well at about 600kb/s but
then the network seems to prioritise short connections (e.g. web
browsing) so you find that a download gets throttled down very
quickly. You can download a file on average at 20-30k byte/s. So even
the ideal 600kb/s advertised is not really sustained.

This is my experience with the 3 network, I believe Telstra next g is
much better from other people i know.

I think 3 mobile broadband is a toy - its not really a replacement for
ADSL2. Any potential saving you have (i.e. in moving house etc) are
blown away by deceptive pricing policies. Once more you get signed
into a 2 year contract - so i ended up paying out the contract without
really using it. I definitely would not recommend it as a replacement
for a proper connection. It might be ok for travelling - but I think
telstra next g prepaid is the way to go in this space - at least your
costs are capped and it has good reception everywhere (3 coverage is
pathetic - no coverage in sunshine coast for example - thats
definitely not a rural area!).

Michael.

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 4:05 PM, Angus Gratton <indogus at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:47 PM, George Bray <georgebray at gmail.com> wrote:
>> people are generally unaware that their capped plans
>> don't cap data usage, leading to stories of people getting large
>> bills.
>
> Caution, shameless self promotion.)
>
> I did a blog post last week comparing some of the costs of mobile data
> plan excess usage in Australia (for example Virgin Mobile, $15 for a
> 1Gb plan incurs $2097 for the second gigabyte.)
>
> http://projectgus.com/2010/01/in-australia-a-3g-mobile-data-plan-can-cost-you-thousands/
>
> - Angus
> --
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> linux at lists.samba.org
> https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/linux
>


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