Broadband Internet & Broadband Australia  

Choosing Broadband Providers

Dealing with broadband providers on an almost daily basis, there are only 2 worth considering at the moment and that is either Adam or Internode. We have had a few dealings recently with Adam internet and they gave us direct access to their engineers to help solve problems for their customers, which is a level of customer service not often seen.

Internode are also a worthwhile consideration, although their plans are more costly than Adam internet and we do not consider their support to be any better than Adam Internet.

Most of our business customers are on Internode due to some of the technology they use although Adam have recently caught up in this area too.

We would like to call this common mistakes, however this article is based on opinions gained through experience rather than hard facts. I'm sure the consistent bad experiences with the big ISP's over several years are isolated experiences that other I.T consulting firms never face.

Generally the less a client knows about broadband, the greater the chance they will go with either Telstra broadband, Optus, or (for some strange reason) AAPT. Going with these three ISP's is only a bad idea if you value your time and your wallet. If you like paying for a technician at $150 per hour to spend 4 hours chasing up passwords, then either of these ISP's will serve you well.

IInet is another shining example of poor service. Trying to tell a client that they have to wait 3 working days to get a change made all the while knowing full well its a 30 second job is no fun at all. What does this mean for the average business then?

These are the two areas that need your greatest attention. Unfortunately many focus on saving a couple of dollars a month on cheap broadband and then complain bitterly about the service.

What makes it even more difficult is the inexperienced generally go for the absolute lowest cost plan, for example a 200mb plan from Bigpond, not because they are cheap, its because they don't understand the underlying technology, they are blind to the extra value of more expensive plans, and so they see a $30 broadband plan versus a $60 broadband and of course there's no competition, the cheapest plans win every time.

Unfortunately a great majority of people who are signed up to these 200mb cheap broadband plans would not know the difference between 200mb and 6 kilos of spuds. Telstra broadband know this, and benefit a great deal from people who are not up on the latest technology.

As a gauge, on a decent high speed broadband connection you can get through 200mb in less than 5 minutes of downloading, it really is a small limit. 5GB should be the absolute bottom line for anyone that is not sure, or at least get a plan that does not charge for excess downloads, this basically means any ISP apart from the majority of Telstra broadband and Optus plans.

The big ISP's often block popular ports that enable "extra" features (standard everywhere else) for example, port 25 is blocked on Telstra servers preventing the easy use of an email server at your business. It means sending emails like myemail@my business.com.au is not possible, you have to use @bigpond.net.au.

Internode, one of the biggest ISP's in Australia started in Adelaide, it has its head office in Adelaide. If the service gets that poor or you feel in some way aggrieved, you can drive to their office and demand to see an actual human being. The same goes for Adam internet, they are a local ISP. Apart from the fact it feels good to support local business, their support is so far ahead of the competition that its very hard to express in writing.