Hello, I am a secondary school teacher in Belgrave and we don't have the NBN yet. I am responsible for teaching around 160 students each week, but my internet cannot cope. The school requests that we use video (WebEx) in our calls with students. I'm wondering if there are any affordable large data-pack 4G options, or other solutions folks out thee are using? I get decent Telstra 4G reception out here. Thanks.
I'm a Secondary Teacher with 0.8mbps Upload Sharing Internet with 5 Others without NBN
Lridgeroad on 18/04/2020 - 10:42
Comments
CIRCLES.LIFE's 100gb / month for $38 / month
(was a Promo, it's Now a Plan w/ No t-Limit)Coinsidentally, this provider just changed
their earlier Promo (To get it, you had to
Port-In a phone no., that was with Telstra,
Voda' or Belong), ie, to make it a Plan -
so IF Optus is strong & Not overused there
- you order & post-pay $38/mon for 100gb).Pretty good timing, eh…? ;~)
I just noticed.. Telstra? Only Telstra?
I have same plan but got 100gb for transferring from Telstra . I can actually turn off 20gb and save $10. So it's 80gb for $28 4G Optus. This should easily be capable of handling your connection and no contact
Can one exit anytime from this plan?
I have told the school and they haven't replied to me yet, as the principals are pretty swamped.
The Vic govt was working with telcos to get 4g dongle for students. See if they can do the same for you as a teacher?
https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/new-website-to-help-closed-sc…
Can you not go and work on site and use the school's Wi-Fi?
Short answer - probably no. We have been told by our admin that staff are not to attend school. We had until the end of week 1 to pick up anything we may have needed from our desks, and we had 15 mins to do so. The office were to monitor who was on site and who would be in each staffroom, so they could limit the number of staff in one place. I have read Department of Education guidelines that seem to indicate the no staff on site directive, apart from the skeleton staff who are supervising the essential services and vulnerable students who are attending. At my secondary school of over 1400 kids, this is two students.
Then, as stated above, they should supply you with the tools needed to work from home. You can't magically force NBN to provide a connection to your house, so a 4g dongle will be needed.
My school did invite staff to identify their internet capacity or lack thereof so they could manage it. But apparently that was not the case for OP's school.
@ms_caz: Most likely the case. I'm across multiple primary and secondary schools and they all offer WiFi dongles for staff with limited internet access. They even offer dongles to students. They're not great in terms of data and speed but it's enough for completing school work.
@ms_caz: .
You might have luck running an:- "URGENT" Go-Fund-Me (crowd-sourcing) campaign
BUT I agree with others:
You should be provided w/ needed tools OR
See if any Nearby Neighbor(s) have extra Bandwidth to share (It wasn't too many decades ago, that UK's BT provider REQUESTED that their Customers SHARE their Unlimited Internet data w/ neighbors, as BT weren't able to keep up with the demand) &/OR
Be reimbursed for you actual out-of-pocket costs to provide 'em for yourself
Ring an Educ Union & see if they want to run a "Class Action" campaign on the issue
(BTW, a big Toronto Hospital sought donations of N95 masks, ie, when their supply of such masks was running low. Lots of places have+use such masks, in the Community; most were closed, so their new + unopened masks were sitting idle
Maybe you'll find a neighbor who uses ~Nil of their [Unlimited] NBN bandwidth, who'll help out)
If there's decent Optus reception, might be worth considering Amaysim? I haven't looked in a while, but I think for $40 I have unlimited calls and normally about 40 gig of data each month, but at the moment it seems upped to unlimited.. Talk and data seems to be more cost effective than data only?
Awesome that you are webexing (or trying to).. our primary school is not doing any video conferencing with students, just text based learning delivered via Google classroom. It isn't entirely optimal for the age bracket or appealing to different modes of learning. I think video conferencing would be so much better!
At first that seems like a good option however I don't think the OP would want to commit to 12/24 months and the modem cost for month-to-month is quite high ($216/$252) - better off buying an unlocked portable modem for $10-$30 and using prepaid sims (CC if Optus reception is good or the Boost $30 sim for $20 - 34GB)
If you go locked-ni for 24 months and then decide you want to cancel, you only need to pay the pro rata modem cost out (about $9 per month). So probably still worth it if you only need it for say 6 months.
Yep…definitely wireless broadband…
in Belgrave and we don't have the NBN yet
Do you mean that your house does not have the NBN yet, or that the NBN is not available to your house yet?
If you already have a mobile with Telstra they are giving customers an extra 25GB data (per month I think).
It may also be worth talking to Telstra to see if they can do anything else for you.
https://exchange.telstra.com.au/supporting-our-customers-dur…NBN Co says they'll have finished construction in Belgave in May 2020, for what that is worth.
OpenSignal says that most of Belgrave has fairly good coverage from Telstra, Vodafone and Optus, with upload speeds tested at around 8Mbps for T and V, and 3Mbps for Optus.
Something like a TP-Link Archer MR600 AC1200 Wireless Dual Band 4G+ LTE Gigabit Router, with a prepaid SIM would allow you to test things out. Kogan have 3 month plans with a reasonable amount of data, as does Amaysim, Boost and others.
Webex says that it uses from 0.5Mbps upload for standard video. 1Mbps (counting up and down) would be about 20 hours for 10GB in plan usage.
Just one more example in the millions of victims Malcom Turdbull created when he allowed Telstra to recieve 60 billion dollars in exchange for screwing up the NBN project.
Telecom should never have been privatised. A 1989 (eight nine, before the internet) Government inquiry found that Australia need a fibre network and the only entity to build it was … Telecom.
After Telecom was privatised in 1994 and failed to upgrade anything, taxpayers paid for an NBN 15 years later. And then before they finished paying for it, Telecom hijacked it and added 60 billion dollars to the cost by selling it's copper network back to the moronic tax payers who built it in the first place.
The same taxpayers having their internet screwed up LMAO.
Yeah, just ignore all the countries miles ahead of us with privatised telecom.
Those countries would be small, densely packed ones where it is financially lucrative to install good internet infrastructure for everyone.
Ouch….need a minimum 6Mb/s x 160 to supply each student with decent HD resolution quality video live stream, unless the students don't care about stream quality, but it kinda does matter if you need to read stuff off the stream as well and when quality is crap, you cant read anything small….so you need a gigabit connection upload speed at the minimum.
It doesn’t work that way. The op will have a single stream back to webex, who will then broadcast it out to all the viewing clients
Oh, so it's not using your bandwidth to upload to all 160 students, but Webex's? I thought that's how streaming services work….which is why you need a strong upload speed to keep up and moreso if you intend to stream to a wider audience…
need a minimum 6Mb/s x 160 to supply each student with decent HD resolution quality video live stream
hahahahaha no you don't, by your calcs the OP would need 1GB internet connection ;)
Video conferencing doesn't work the way you think it does.
hahahahaha no you don't, by your calcs the OP would need 1GB internet connection ;)
Nope, 1Gb is enough, assuming consistent and reliable speeds of course.
Video conferencing doesn't work the way you think it does.
Is it not like streaming then?
If you don't know what you're talking about, how about you don't talk about it and make wild claims. Based on your comments, clearly they show you have no idea how video conferencing streaming works.
My wild claims happen to be on assumptions….
Your assumptions are wrong and you have no idea how this tech works.
This works exactly like streaming - both of them do not need any more than one outbound connection.
You load up your videoconferencing app - say you use Skype - and this starts sending data to the Skype servers. Anyone else looking to join the call will connect to Skype themselves, and they will then receive your stream from Skype. This is the same process, whether you're speaking to 1 or 1000 people - no extra usage on your end required.
Nope, 1Gb is enough, assuming consistent and reliable speeds of course.
Ahh, if only you had been in charge of the NBN rollout instead of Abbott/Turnbull.
Ahh, if only you had been in charge of the NBN rollout instead of Abbott/Turnbull.
If I was in charge, I'll give everyone straight fibre all the way, irrespective of the cost! Then make a law that every household or building that has access to the net, has a minimum 100/100 Mb/s connection rate. That should bring it up to speed with our generation of technology and data requirements…
Just a tip- I claim my mobile phone on my tax every year. You will be able to do the same now. You can’t claim prepaid mobile phone recharge vouchers. Yes, there are ripper prepaid deals around. You might want to look at a post paid plan to claim it on your tax.
I'm not a tax agent, but have you any references for not being able to claim legitimate prepaid mobile phone usage, which is used to earn income? https://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Income-and-deductions/Ded… gives a specific example of claiming prepaid mobile phone usage. Having a prepaid plan for this specific usage would seem to make things simpler to claim. Yes, the OP should keep diary entries for the classes it was used for.
I claim a portion of my prepaid sim plan every year through my accountant.
I'm a Secondary Teacher with 0.8mbps Upload Sharing Internet with 5 Others without NBN
Honestly there isn't much you can do, other than get a big 4G data plan or go into the school and work. You'll be the only one in your class room so all social distancing etc will be ok.
This is the school's problem. Not your problem. Make it their problem and tell them.
Your poor home internet connection isn't the schools problem, nor is it my works problem if I have to work from home.
It kind of is, the employer needs to make sure their employees have what they need to do their job. I was able to borrow a proper office chair and monitor when I started to work from home.
Suitable office chair and monitor would fall under WHS. Internet connection wouldn't.
Borrowing a 'chair' from the office, is not the same as supplying a internet connection. You will be returning the office chair and monitoring when you return to the office.
The OP has advised DET has given one off payments and a weekly 'increase' to cover WFH, so these 'tools' to work from home are on you, not the company.
@JimmyF: A teacher is not a contractor.
They have been instructed to teach kids, remotely, via the internet, from home. They should be given all the tools require to do this.
A teacher is not a contractor.
Things I didn't say.
They have been instructed to teach kids, remotely, via the internet, from home. They should be given all the tools require to do this.
Things I did say, DET has given them a allowance already to cover the costs of working from home.
Things I didn't say.
That's because it's my statement. I typed it. In my comment. I never said you said it.
DET has given them a allowance already to cover the costs of working from home.
Which is a completely unsuitable, thoughtless solution. They should have been provided suitable connections or dongles to each and every teacher to allow them to do their job. OP isn't the only one faced with receiving small token payments and NFI what to do or what options are available to them where they reside. Not all teachers are internet savvy.
Yet again you've responded directly to my comments and made an ass of yourself.
That's because it's my statement. I typed it. In my comment. I never said you said it.
things not related to the topic
Which is a completely unsuitable, thoughtless solution. They should have been provided suitable connections or dongles to each and every teacher to allow them to do their job
hahahaha you're funny and all over the place.
Teachers can go to school and sit in their empty classrooms by themselves. No risk at all.
Simple fix to this problem if you can't work from home.
things not related to the topic
It's absolutely relevant to the topic and my comment you're replying to.
They are not contractors. Directive has been made to work from home and teach these kids. They should be provided every tool required to do so.
Teachers can go to school and sit in their empty classrooms by themselves.
Teachers are prohibited from attending schools unless they are the designated staff member(s) assigned to essential students that must physically attend.
So your simple fix proposal is as good as your comments. Utterly useless :)
They are not contractors.
You sure? So tell then, how many are under fixed term contracts then?
Teachers are prohibited from attending schools unless they are the designated staff member(s) assigned to essential students that must physically attend.
and this statement is outlined where?
@JimmyF: Directions from Deputy Chief Health Officer (Communicable Disease) Stay at home directions (No 4)
Victorian Government Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) guidance note - Victorian Public Service
Victorian Department of Education and Training Learning From Home guidelinesI'll assume you haven't read any of them and are simply talking out of your ass.
I won't bother explaining the difference between a contractor and fixed term contract employee is either, lol.
If you've requested to WFH, then it is your problem.
If you're forced to WFH, then it's your employer's problem.
My department laptop shit itself after I didn’t connect to a domain controller for more than 21 days. I had to stand outside a school to download updates and make my device compliant again. Not even a fast internet connection could help me at home.
Thanks for all the comments and ideas. I haven't heard back from the principal class, I'm guessing they are swamped (but other schools did make this a priority to sort out during the holidays).
DET is paying an additional $100 as a once-off payment and $20 a week which enables us to cover additional expenses, so I'll look into one of the MNVO data plan options as that seems to be the most reliable.
If anyone hears of Telstra offering additional data to teachers, that could be very handy. I am on Telstra and have claimed the extra 25gb, but I seem to get through it pretty fast at the moment.
You can also consider OVO, it's Optus MVNO and is pay as you go. So you can try their plan as backup if you run out of Telstra data.
I think schools can pay teachers an allowance for 4G. My partner gets an internet allowance of $16 per week. As an aside, I’m in Tecoma and my home ADSL went out for three weeks. I tried all SIM cards for 4G - Telstra was very slow, Optus was unusable but Vodafone was the best. Kogan seems Among the cheapest for Vodafone. I recommend you go and get a 4G modem and get a $2 sim for each provider to run a speed test to see which one performs best at your house. For us in Tecoma Telstra was about 4Mbps up + 4Mbps down, Optus 0.2Mbps down + 0.1 Mbps up (useless) but Vodafone was 20Mbps up + 20 Mbps down - better than adsl. After 3 weeks without ADSL And a complaint to TIO our line was finally fixed yesterday so we are happy to be back on our unlimited plan.
Good on you for caring about your kids and looking for ways to make teaching a better experience for them.
The best price 4G I could get was from Amaysim https://www.amaysim.com.au/plans/data-plans.
I am using their 240GB data plan for only $80. I could not get any other 4G plans to compete.
Hope this helps.
Why wonder.
Just tell the school your internet sucks. Take a screenshot of your speedtest and get them to provide you with a 4G device of their choice.