Ditch the NBN if you’re in Ballarat, Mildura or Geelong and can connect to iiNet/Westnet cable.
Typical evening speeds of 200/20Mbps. From seeing users Speedtests the speeds are closer to 250ish/50Mbps.
https://www.speedtest.net/result/6979172810
For $39.95 for first 12 months why would you even bother with the NBN?
$59.99 signup fee for the Cable box + $10 shipping fee. Works out to $45 a month.
Ultra Broadband: $100 Bill Credit for Referee and Referrer. Referral bonuses only obtainable if the product is ordered over the phone.
agp graphics card there
Nothing says speed like IDE.
ATA100!
What about good old MFM!?
Ahh.. My first hard drive.. 42mb MFM..
OP, I find "$39.95/12 mon" misleading.. ie, unless
this is a truly cheap Internet plan.
You must mean $39.95/ month, [intro offer?] on a 12 mon contract…
I think a little bit of common sense prevails when parsing the title right? Unless you took that it was $3.30 a month for 220/20Mbps? I have updated it though.
i think he meant the $79.99/month thereafter
It is that cheap. It used to be dependant on a 24 month contract but that restriction is gone, you can cancel without penalty at any time.
Man.. wish this was in Brisbane… so ready to ditch the NBN…
The NBN will be finished in June this year. Then there's no reason to ditch it, as, well, it will be finished! Just like a Mortal Kombat finished, it will be dead and the NBN will definitely not be asking for more money! They swear!
Think someone needed a /s
I thought they are replacing all cable internet / adsl with NBN-HFC/FTC/etc ?
Eventually, they will sunset cable internet and you'll be forced into NBN-HCF ?
No, this cable network has nothing to do with the NBN or government and is not being replaced.
nbn are replacing most of the network. There are other private fibre and cable networks in select suburbs that are not getting turned off.
I have nbn that supports these same speeds through Aussie Broadband. You guys just got fake NBN.
Lucky you. What about the price mate?
I think it’s like $170 for 240/100.
@ssquid: I'm just glad I even have the option. I thought the fibre 100/25 for between $80-$100 was a good deal compared to most rest of the country
So true mate, I signed up NBN 50 plan with iiNet - speed should be 45Mbps, but the maximum I can get is merely 20-25Mbps due to the stupid FTTN connection type and nothing they can do about it.
There's talk they'll continue to upgrade all FTTN lines to FTTC which would be nice if it's true..
Unfortunately I doubt that will happen.
NBN is already crying poor.
FTTdp is not that great. It’s had a lot of lab success but has sucked famously out in the field UK/Germany, now the UK government is going full fibre. Issues with copper at mass scale make for a lot of issues. Specially at upload speeds and consistency of ping, look at FTTB offered by TPG (technically that is FTTdp, copper under 100m) or VDSL2 they limit that at 90Mbps & 70Mbps because going higher than 100Mbps problems arise quickly.
The NBN version of FTTdp/FTTC is max 250/50Mbps with the new Nokia gear, but the cost to do so is so close to full FTTP that it’s actually another waste of money and NBN has to sell people on 250Mbps when 1000Mbps and 10,000Mbps is being sold for less in NZ. It’s just not that attractive for $129AUD a month for 250Mbps. The NBNs FTTC costs more than NZ FTTP by nearly $1000aud. Because once you pick one technology and scale it. It’s cheaper. The cost alone to get people out of bed and roll into a street is most of the cost. The NBN has these people rolling out three times to go from FTTN -> FTTC -> FTTP. How dumb!
I cannot wait to see the NBN say the have run out of money. Which is end of the year. Which means they can’t even afford to update anything or even maintain the outdated shite they’ve been rolling out.
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252441741/Government-ple…
@checkingthisout: To be fair, fttc>fttp is relatively cheap compared to fttn>fttp.
Nbn would to fttn>fttp.
We've had crews digging, finding and remediating old pits for months and months. It's a shitload of work.
I've had crews of 3-6 people come out to my house 4 times to try and locate a lost pit. They still haven't found it. They need to find it and clear the path in order to run fibre for fttc for me and my neighbours. They shoved yellow tongue down two identified pits either side of where the mystery pit should be, according to an ancient Telecom map. The yellow tongue didn't get very far from either end, leaving about 30m of potentially blocked conduit, which also runs under a driveway. What a mess.
I can't imagine the amount of work to get many of my neighbours further down the street onto fttc (those neighbours are slated for fttn).
I think our suburbs on 3BEL must be one of the last to get NBN. It'll be June at least before we're connected. We're getting FTTC, FTTN and Satellite in our area.
@kabammi: It is actually more expensive to do FTTdp than it is to do FTTP. In its current form FTTP green fields is cheaper than anything else. It’s just the way NBN wants to do things, makes FTTP look very expensive. NBN cherry picks an area and then drops it and changes to FTTN/HFC/FTTC in a neighbouring suburb. NBN never builds at scale, they never continue along a linear path, jobs are moved and trades are shuffled all over the place.
FTTC - $3279AUD
FTTP - $4300+AUD (NBN never lowers this number in 8 years)
Chorus NZ FTTP - $1550-1850NZD
The costs are high in Australia due to the fact we hand out 30%+ of each connection to Telstra for their junk infrastructure and then again pay to fix said junk infrastructure. Telstra also gets to continue to own the fix after! What the f***? That’s a liberal design.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/what-nbn-pays-telstra-per…
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/telstra-hands-over-copper-hfc…
NBN can not afford, literally, to upgrade any connection within a year. So FTTdp to FTTP is mute now. NBN will either need a government hand out again or NBN will be asking residential users to pay. NBN is also saying states must pay now. They won’t.
Every distribution point costs money. Every rollout costs money. Fixing faults, which is very high with copper is money. Then when you want to switch areas. You need everyone to switch. NBN select, is a program where NBN wants end users and ISP’s to foot the bill. But if only one person changes to FTTP the initial bill is huge. You need whole neighbourhoods to do so. No one will switch.
I get full 100/25 speed with iiNet nbn, I can test that I do by downloading anything from anywhere.
i thought when NBN is available in your area, conventional broadband will be turned off 1.5 years later? That's how it is in metro. You can't just 'ditch' NBN and stay with what you have. They will eventually turn off the tap.
"conventional broadband" are those telstra asset that gets sold back to government
these are private fiber network laid by TPG
these are private fiber network laid by TPG
This is the old TransACT HFC network that was purchased by iiNet in ~2011, then became owned by TPG when they bought iiNet.
To go one more, this specific cable was laid by and sold by Neighbourhood Cable originally, then it was bought out by TransACT about 5 years after, then the following was true.
@SuBw00FeR: True, I just didn’t want to have to go too far down the rabbit hole 😂
For people wondering why this is cheaper than NBN:
It’s a comparatively tiny geographical rollout area, would have been paid off countless times since it was first built and doesn’t have to cross subsidise a massive national build of a clusterf*** of different technologies that NBN have.
doesn’t have to cross subsidise
Correction: enrich Telstra by buying their garbage copper. And then immediately awarding the maintenance contract to Telstra along with 60 billion worth of other wastes of money.
This happened because Liberal voters chose Turdbull, a man who spent most of time as Communications Minister and Prime Minister behaving as though he was Telstra employee.
These moronic people have doomed Australians to decades of terrible internet connections as the copper network slowly degrades all over the country in exchange for fattening up the owners of Telstra.
The NBN plan should have involved removing the private sector from fixed line internet entirely given their two decade long period of never upgrading the infrastructure until the tax payer stepped in. Now the private sector acts as a middle man, pointlessly driving up costs and degrading services in order to make more money.
@Diji1: To make matters worse, in a lot of places where the copper HAD to be replaced, the opted for laying down more copper, instead of taking that as an opportunity to upgrade to fibre.🤦🏽♂️
@Diji1: I'm all for kicking the liberals in the nuts for the fubar that is FTTN and cable MTM, but they didn't pay anything for either the cable network or the copper pots lines. Labor negotiated that part of it as a compensation payout because they were overbuilding it. Telstra and Optus basically gave it the NBN for free because it was worthless under a FTTN overbuild plan. The liberals then decided to use it because it was going free - a stupid idea.
@Nousernamehere: The predecessor companies (Neighbourhood Cable and TransACT) actually lost a ton of money on these networks, after iiNet bought it the CEO at the time said they were valued around $0.
IMO having a big brand like iiNet behind it is the only reason its thriving today.
@Tremere: When iiNet took over they already had enough of their own backhaul in place that they weren't paying a fortune to get traffic to/from the regional towns, and could afford to offer decent prices. Before that take-up was slow because the plans were expensive and more limited than ADSL2.
IMO having a big brand like iiNet behind it is the only reason its thriving today.
Either way though, the network has either been paid off/written down in value, so the only real 'costs' for it seem to be just keeping it in somewhat working condition.
Kind of like the Telstra and Optus HFC networks (as well as the copper network which was described by Telstra themselves years ago as "we are at five minutes to midnight.") as just keeping them in somewhat working condition for what they needed to do. Which has now been found to be vastly inadequate for what their usage needs to be with NBN.
doesn’t have to cross subsidise a massive national build of a clusterf*** of different technologies
Yet. The anti-competitive regional fraudband tax will mean users on this network end up paying off the NBN, even though it was built a decade earlier.
Yet. The anti-competitive regional fraudband tax will mean users on this network end up paying off the NBN, even though it was built a decade earlier.
Whilst I don't really agree that it should apply to networks built a long time ago (or the networks that are from other operators in new development areas etc) I do agree 110% that the likes of TPG with their FTTB should be paying it.
Why should they be allowed to cherry pick the profitable areas and leaving NBN (as well as the taxpayer) holding the bill for not being able to just service these cash cow locations.
I stand corrected. Good to know.
That is true in most cases but iiNet cable is not getting turned off.
Also keep in mind that after the 12 months it may not be the $79.99 that they're currently advertising as the NBN tax will likely be in effect, so the RSP's will most likely pass on the increases in their costs to the customer.
I've been on this cable since it originated around 15 years ago? When it was neighbourhood cable, it's the best shit ever, and only ever gotten even better. 100% If you live in one of these areas, get it. It shits on the NBN for everything.
Speed test just now: https://www.speedtest.net/result/9104820722
Which plan are you on?
There's only one plan, you get whatever you can get based on usage in the area.
This could be us but you tripping
NBN edition.
Awesome because we didn't pay much for the NBN anyway :(
I thought cable internet had a maximum upload of 5Mbps?
definitely not, not sure where you got that from. I've had up to 80mbps before when they were testing it out.
Hell no. iiNet's cable used to allow up to 100mbps upload (momentarily) but was reduced last year to 40mbps. Physically it can do more but since the bandwidth is shared between everyone connected to the node, there has to be limits to prevent one person hogging it all.
5Mbps upload is Telstra capping the speed.
Can somebody explain this to me? I'm in Sydney, i have cable now, just got the letter for Telstra that i can get a NBN in my area but for this price i'd rather this! Now when i check my address it redirects me to NBN page, could somebody please explain?
NBN cable is not this cable, this is a privately run cable infrastructure owned by TPG, so therefore it needs to compete and has nothing to do with the NBN, thankfully.
NBN cable is a government owned monopoly run by a CEO who is a financial advisor, not a technician or someone with industry knowledge of networking, thus you won't see this price or this speed until a write down of the NBN is done.
You maybe able to get 250/25Mbps in the future (not sure what areas of the HFC network have got it), plans are $159-169 a month unlimited. https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/nbn-plans/
Thank you!
"Ditch the NBN if you’re in Ballarat, Mildura or Geelong"
It's only in these three suburbs.
Melbourne is certainly expanding, but these can be suburbs yet, surely?
Thanks for clearing that up
There's more than one suburb on Geelong lol
You have to move across to nbn or 4G/5G.
what kind of infrastructure does this rely on? FTTP?
This is Hybrid Fibre Coaxial Cable, don't let the name Fibre fool you though, it's no where near as efficient or 'good' as real Fibre, but it's sure better than FTTN.
Pretty much why every other country has better internet than us. They get their internet through HFC which offers vastly superior speeds than copper lines meant for phones.
I believe there is much more active Fibre premises globally, 396+ million premises in China alone in 2019. Going full steam into a brand new HFC build now would be more expensive than a Fibre build.
People like to tout this but my experience is we're not nearly as bad as people make out. I've traveled to dozens of countries, from city hubs to out in the sticks. We are better than most counties for mobile internet. Fixed internet max/peak speeds are our downfall and having an absurdly large geographical foot print plays a part in that arguably as much as the political muppets behind the nbn. One thing we can look forward to i think is with the NBN build wrapping, plus 5G gathering momentum, competition should force nbn's hand. From a pure marketing a perspective they'll need to offer faster access speeds because you can bet your backside the telco's will be marketing 5G aimed right at it.
@Xizor: By 'wrapping' you mean that you believe the NBN has finished by June this year? There is a full write down coming, and the network will be moved to FTTC with a user paid model upgrade to FTTP, which will be a political pill to sell, so i doubt it, but most likely the network will go full FTTP and CVC will be abandoned and the write down will mean the government will take a loss. No hedge funds will buy the MTM knowing that the upgrades will cost $30+ Billion.
NBN can never compete, the government cannot allow competition with this much of a loss now, thus the 'broadband tax' and other weird ways to recoup the $54ARPU. The problem is that 5G will cherry pick the low end, and NBN with FTTN/FTTC/HFC has nothing 'premium' so it cannot sell 1000/10000Mbps connections. So there will be mass exodus to anything else.
NBN has only one way to fix this now, full FTTP and admit the failure. They simply won't be able to sell the MTM network. Neither in a commercial sense, or a political one. It's a dud and big financial funds look for high returns with minimal capital. The NBN is going to need huge amounts of capital and to take a loss for quite some time.
@checkingthisout: No fund would buy into it under full fibre for the same reasons. Labor tried, no company would partner or loan it cash cash. The NBN was always going to be a financial dud, they should have just subsidised it and taken the loss up front and taken the hit to the budget. Long term you hope productivity gains in the economy get you more tax and that pays you back for the initial subsidy. FTTP, more money up front, provides the best long term boost.
Teoh is going to make NBN laugh stock amongst all government infra projects. (Not that it has a good reputation to start with).
TPG + VHA merger is likely to benefit the general public by removing monopoly - namely conglomerate between fed/state/territ/tls.
The NBN is already an embarrasment by their own skill sets, Teoh is not needed for that, just let the current board keep doing what they're doing.
Our PM and pollies disagree.
Considering they're an embarrassment too! It wouldn't surprise me if they think the NBN is the greatest thing on earth! :/
@Cousin IT: The politicians most likely haven't used their nbn because they don't know how to hook up their mobiles to WiFi.
@stinkydog: I forget the name of the politician who racked up mobile bills in the thousands from data usage, instead of getting a mobile broadband plan or decent data allocation
Isn't part of the problem of the NBN that it got turned into a patchwork of different technologies by the LNP?
Yes, the MTM (Mutli technology Mix) was a scam sold by Tony Abbott/Malcom Turnbull ("Finished in 2016 and for $29.5 Billion") both those figures will have doubled by the time full FTTP is finalized, which it will be. The $ amount is already nearing $50-60 Billion with no real 'finish' in site. As most likely a lot of the HFC and FTTN connections will need to be redone/replaced with Fibre.
IS a scam. ;)
One of the greatest cons ever.
Only joy I get is not helping my liberal voting suburb with their internet problems unless they cough up something good.
Maybe trickle down economics works after all?
Hills district by any chance? Still waiting for some suburbs here. I'm happy with my 4G connection though. Really fast and I got it for virtually free on an Optus 200GB deal for 24 months. I sold the Samsung S4 tablet the free pair of JBL headphones that came on the plan, claimed the rest on tax so my net loss was about $200 over two years. I won't be moving to NBN.
Sooo HFC are getting better higher speed plans than FTTP….what a rip
HFC is being held back by the NBN as to not show that it cannot compete with FTTP. Also, not to embarrass the entire FTTN network. Aka, 'why do they get 1000Mbps and i can't get 50Mbps!?'
Meanwhile in FTTP kiwi land, the NZ'ers are going 4/8/10Gbps with their FTTP for i believe $129NZD a month.
https://www.chorus.co.nz/blog/supercharging-new-zealands-bro…
Tell me more. I've been on Telstra HFC for the last 24 years (yep I was one of the very first 100 customers) and despite it not being prefect I am used to it. I just got the letter about NBN being rolled out to my neighbourhood the other day an am worried I'll be paying more for a shittier service.
I've seen that you can pay to upgrade to FTTP, is this worth the outlay? I own my house with no plans to move so happy to pay a couple of grand for a top notch service, but I've seen others quotes upwards of $10k-$20k which seems absurd, especially since Stephen Conroy's plan was giving that to us for free.
If you can get some neighbors together and do the street you may get the final cost to thousands, if not you're, in the 10's. Thus, it was always better to do a rollout at scale, economics of scale at work.
@checkingthisout: There's a house in Mildura (Plantation St) that paid to get FTTP over FTTC. Could have saved a bundle by getting iiNet cable instead…
I’m in the same boat… got BigPond Cable in 1998 if I remember well… been on and off it since. My suburb goes RFS this month (Melbourne CBD basically), while the liberal seat across the road has had fibre for years. Now the timer starts for a forced FttC migration within 18 months, but we already invested in HFC because that’s what they said they were going to use. We’re essentially paying more and getting less.
You can get higher speeds on nbn FTTP but yeah it's expensive.
Anyone that has this available to them and is on the fence, don't be. I've been on it for years and 200/20 isn't accurate. Seen it at twice that or more at quiet times. It's the dog's bollocks this product. If I ever move, availability is what I'm checking before I even consider the house.
at twice that or more at quiet times
I'm so jealous right now
Saw a 550+ like a week ago.
But this type of result not unusual and that's my phone over WiFi.
https://imgur.com/a/H1bTCpo
Yeah. Almost worth living in one of those 3 towns. Really sweet benefit.
That result looks a bit strange, they capped the upload speed to 40mbps about 12 months ago. It used to be 100mbps but I guess they got too many customers signed up.
@ssquid: Yeah cannot explain that. Does seem higher than usual. I recall the 100. Can't replicate the 50+ now. Feel like a switch is changing every now and then in terms of performance. Seems to be almost uncapped at times but in all fairness that's the exception rather than the rule.
Nice deal,
Now all I need is a good deal on job and house in Ballarat/Geelong so that I can signup to this one.
I don't understand. I have fttp and thought this was the best connection you could get. But I can't get this deal. What cable is being used to connect these lucky households???
You are very lucky to get FTTP but NBN uses a charge called CVC (RSP's pay per Mbps CVC) which makes all speeds expensive and leads to peak time slow downs, you can think of CVC as a limiter on a motorbike. Where NBN is the limiter and the engine is the internet, and lets say you have a 1000cc/1000Mbps engine with FTTP, but NBN won't let you have said 1000cc/1000Mbps unless you pay them per cc at a high rate, $8+ per CC. Thus you only ever use 1/10 of it. 100Mbps or 100cc.
FTTP is the best connection. You have to wait for nbn and ISPs to drop the prices.
iiNet are using HFC.
What is your point?
We all aware fttp is the best technical connection.
the thing is, it's a turd service at caviar prices.
Nbn is outdated, yet so expensive thanks to the government.
The biggest scam is that people on this network (iiNet's cable) are going to be taxed to pay for the NBN, even though they're not using it.
I've had this plan for a while now, deal has been around for probably a year or more
It's HFC and I get usually 400-500 Mbps down and 40 Mbps up all day
I'm jealous
The first-12-months-at-half-price deal is 5 years old, ever since they switched to only one (unlimited) plan and removed the speed limits.
![[VIC] 200/20mbps iinet Cable: Ballarat, Mildura & Geelong $39.99/mth for First 12 Months ($79.99/mth Thereafter) + $69.99 Setup](https://files.ozbargain.com.au/n/89/522989.jpg?h=433b0713)
https://www.westnet.com.au/internet-products/fibre/cable/
Westnet link above