Santa I really want a Cable Modem for Christmas...............

[Jim Fang]

On Tue, 16 Dec 1997 10:43:55 -0800, aek <a...@gist.net.au> wrote:

>David Stanaway wrote:
>[snip]

[...]

>I'm so glad I didn't now. After finding out what a crock of shit both
>Foxtel and especially, Telstra's internet service is. As a friend of
>mine put it. "Telstra are trying to destroy every ISP who've actually
>built up the net in this country for them. Everyone's worried about
>being stomped all over by telstra. But with a service like that, our
>fears are unfounded. Telstra couldn't run a chook raffle." As I
>understand it, of the 700 odd people signed to telstra's cable service,
>699 of them are trying to get off it. Only the contract is like one of
>those mobile phone contracts. If you want to get rid of it before the
>minimum time period, you have to pay telstra 1200 bucks. So people are
>stuck with it. The word is that as soon as the time period is up, people
>are leaving the cable network in droves. They can't wait to be shot of
>telstra. A feeling that all thinking people who use telecommunications
>share in this country I believe.

The fixed contract is just like any other sweatheart phone deal. They
sell you a phone for a cheap price, and make up the cost in service
charges. They do spell the terms out clearly in their advertising
(pick up a brochure from Dick Smith, Tandy, etc) or check out their
web site, www.bigpond.com.au/cable

Do you know anybody who does have the service? 10mb onto the
internet, 60KB/s is very good access. The cable modem box is not
that much different to a cable TV box. I know someone who is very
heavily into the web and plays doom, quake, etc and loves the no-lag.
He can also forward his mail to himself, work from home, do live video
conferencing with the office, etc.

If Telstra drop the per mb over 100mb download charge, I'll sign up
straight away. For $40 per month, I get busy lines and share a 128KB
ISDN link with 32 other users, being an average 4KB. Many other small
ISP's have large number of modems per KB of bandwidth. For $65, I get
close to 400x the bandwidth with cable.

A 56.6Kb modem costs me $250. A cable-modem box costs ~$600

>> >It almost appears that false or incorrect advertising may be taking
>> >place. As one of the lures in the Foxtel advertising is access to the
>> >Telstra Big Pond Cable Modem facility.

You may get a slight discount if you already have Foxtel hooked up. I
on a pole house built into the side of the cliff. The road is 6-10m
below the house. I don't have any power-poles on the street, the
road is a private concrete road shared with the other residents on the
way. Everything is underground, power, telephones, cable. If I pay
a flat rate for Foxtel installation and the cable-modem guys
piggy-back on the existing connection, I save several hundred dollars
on the installation cost.

YMMV. In a best case scenario, you will save money on the
installation cost.

At the worst case, you will have to pay for another co-axial point
somewhere in the house ~$30. I doubt if you hook up your computer
right next to your big-screen TV, hi-fi and surround sound setup.

Admittedly, the advertising is confusing, as it seems to imply that
you can get cable internet access for free.

- jimbo

[aek]

Y-ellow Jim 'n' y'all.

Jim Fang wrote:

> The fixed contract is just like any other sweatheart phone deal.

Obviously.

> Do you know anybody who does have the service? 10mb onto the
> internet, 60KB/s is very good access. The cable modem box is not
> that much different to a cable TV box. I know someone who is very
> heavily into the web and plays doom, quake, etc and loves the no-lag.
> He can also forward his mail to himself, work from home, do live video
> conferencing with the office, etc.

That all sounds really good until reality steps in and ruins your day.
Firstly this is telstra we're talking about. Secondly at some point,
when enough people get on the cable network, the bandwidth will become
so crowded that you may as well be talking Morse code to the net. What;
Do you think they're going to just keep adding cables down streets to
keep up the bandwidth or something? I don't think so. At least your
local corner ISP can add another 128K ISDN link if the bandwidth
warrants it. Or as most of them do these days, A 2meg link at a time.

> For $40 per month, I get busy lines and share a 128KB
> ISDN link with 32 other users, being an average 4KB.

If your getting slugged that much for that poor a service, perhaps it's
time to look at the competition.

There are really only two points here.
(1 is) All the small ISPs built on the original AARNET back bone to
build the net in this country and as such, the axiom "No-one owns the
net" currently stands. If you want to just give the net to telstra and
therefore big Bill and his mate Rupert then be a dick-head.

(2 is) If you've got more money than brains and wanna join all the other
clueless idiots to form the biggest block of fools since AOL, be our
guest.

But.

You'll be sorry.

And

You're just giving up without a fight. Making it all that much harder
for the rest of us who give a shit.

In reality However I personally don't really care what you do. It may
look inviting, as I myself initially thought but then I realized what a
crock it really was and the fact that it can only get worse. If all you
do is play games over the net then I guess it's for you. If you wanna do
anything serious or even just have reliable e-mail, take another look.

And of course once Bill, Rupert and Telstra have had their way with the
net in this country, having wiped out all the competition, we can look
forward to $165 bucks a month plus 8 bucks an hour and probably a dollar
per meg. Why not. If there's no competition, who are you gonna turn to?

Be absolutely Icebox.

Batz
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[Richard RUDEK]

aek <a...@gist.net.au> wrote:

[snip]

>There are really only two points here.
>(1 is) All the small ISPs built on the original AARNET back bone to
>build the net in this country and as such, the axiom "No-one owns the
>net" currently stands. If you want to just give the net to telstra and
>therefore big Bill and his mate Rupert then be a dick-head.

Umm. Do a trace route to a US site. Microsoft for example (This is slow due
to me doing a 3.5KB/s download at the time):

C:\Win95\TRACERT microsoft.com

Tracing route to microsoft.com [207.68.156.54]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

[snip]

6 2331 ms 2317 ms 2160 ms Fddi1-0-0.pad13.Sydney.telstra.net
[139.130.32.5]
7 2307 ms 2230 ms 2403 ms Fddi0-0.pad8.Sydney.telstra.net
[139.130.249.228]
8 441 ms 412 ms 418 ms bordercore4-hssi0-0.SanFrancisco.mci.net
[166.48.19.249]
9 602 ms 564 ms 528 ms bordercore2.Seattle.mci.net [166.48.208.1]
10 430 ms 417 ms 449 ms microsoft.Seattle.mci.net [166.48.209.250]
11 442 ms 449 ms 423 ms 207.68.145.54
12 207.68.145.54 reports: Destination net unreachable.

Trace complete.

Can you see 6 & 7 ?

__ __ _______________________________
//)) //)) | Richard RUDEK. MicroDek. | Most people have opinions
//\\ //\\ | Chatswood, Sydney. Australia. | .. they just don't commit
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