The government-backed Australian Broadband Guarantee scheme is designed to ensure rural customers don’t get rorted when it comes to broadband. However, changes to the rules around the scheme might see some customers turned away.
Picture by rubenerd
As Mitchell Bingemann at AustralianIT reports, the rapid expansion of Telstra’s Next G service means that it now represents a viable option for rural customers who might previously have lacked any realistic broadband alternatives other than satellite. While the overall requirements for the Broadband Guarantee have been strengthened — the minimum speed is now 1Mbps — Next G options might be a viable alternative in some instances, and one which the government does not have to subsidise. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course — having an equitable service that isn’t subsidised is an improvement over the alternative.
Have you benefitted from the broadband guarantee scheme? Share your experience in the comments,
Broadband subsidy gets new rules [Australian IT]
Bernie
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 2:46 PMIf your not within 5kms of an exchange you’re screwed if you want any kind of broadband. And a friend of mine lives less than 1km from an exchange, and can’t get ADSL becuase the exchange is full.
I work from home, and need a decent connection, but with no ADSL the best I can do is Telstra NextG 10GB at $119.95. It’s too expensive and an inadequate amount of data. I’m lucky to go 20 days before I’m downgraded to 64k.
It’s a shit situation. Your forced to live close to exchanges and your forced to live in a suburb that isn’t tech savvy, ie, connections are still available.
What’s the point of the Government Guarantee? It’s certainly not for a fair and balanced service.
ajd4096
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 2:52 PMThere is no way NextG can average 1Mpbs, during office hours I get < 50kbps.
Dialup, the new national broadband network.
Bernie
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 4:59 PMAs much as I hate my dependance on Telstra, the NextG network can and does go that fast.
I live 100kms north of Melbourne and way outside their superfast NextG, but I still see > 3Mb/s I often get up to 450KB/s download speed and have seen approx 600KB/s (which is approx 4.8Mb/s).
Please don’t mistake the difference between Kb/s and KB/s; that is, bits/sec vs bytes/sec.
Robert
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 3:51 PMWhat a joke, no chance of ADSL, Next G too expensive. How well doe’s monopolies work for Telstra. Thumbs down for Bigpond, bring on NBN.
WellThen
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 3:56 PMSo what does this mean to me? Could some please clarify?
I have a service rated at 1Mbps down/256Kbps up. And we all know that it will never go at its maximum speed. I can’t get a wired connection and 3/NextG is too expensive. So since my connection doesn’t meet the minimum, what does that mean with these new rules?
David
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 3:30 PMLuckily, I got my wimax approval before this change was made… Saved me a 700 buck install or 3 year contact…