ADSL Upgrades

G'day Age,

My place in Sydney is 1.3 km from the exchange and we get roughly the same performance from ADSL2+ as you. It makes me very skeptical about any claims being made by the telcos about their future plans.

Cheers Frank.

I'm probably about a km from the exchange, and the ADSL2+ clocks at about 18MB/s from exch to home, but a data test only shows about 7MB/s ISP (Amnet) to home (!). Probably a bottleneck with the data pipe from ISP to exchange, probably deliberately restricted to save money.
Still fast enough for my needs.
As soon as iinet and amnet provided ADSL2+ from my exchange, Telstra rang me up to say that theirs was available as well. Too expensive tho.
Gerry

"There are plenty of ADSL2 providers around already in most capital cities. They don't need Telstra and can put a slammer of their own in the local exchange"

That may be the case but they don't, My local exchange as one example has not had ADSL2 available to date.
I guess from the article extract I posted above its been because Telstra have been concerned that they will have to open up their service and equipment to the other telco's who only wish to ride on the back of Telstra without undertaking their own hardware upgrades??

"There are plenty of ADSL2 providers around already in most capital cities. "

and thats all that matters. Us country bumpkins in the state thats keeping your country above water will just use carrier pidgeons till the Chinese take over!
People in the city only give a toss if they have plenty of cheap access. But how can Telstra provide for everyone else beside Sydney and Melbourne if they have to give away the cream and forced to provide the bread and butter?

Fish O. That's what I keep trying to tell you on this thread. ADSL2+ is a lot more widespread than is commonly thought. Go to the website I gave and check all the exchanges (in every state, not just Melblourne/Sydney. I don't live in Melney) The number of exchanges coming on ADSL2+ is growing very rapidly without Telstra. Somewhere on the site I gave is a list of the status of ADSL2 exchanges. ie, it not only shows what is available but also the exchanges new companies are currently putting slammers into. The list is pretty impressive.I reckon that is why Telstra have had to move. They were in danger of too many people finding out they could sign up with other companies.

well I looked at it and found lots of purple and red dots in my (country) area. So I repeat what I said earlier.
"People in the city only give a toss if they have plenty of cheap access. But how can Telstra provide for everyone else beside Sydney and Melbourne if they have to give away the cream and forced to provide the s++t for the same price?

Fisho. What I said was, there is a lot more ADSL2 than people realize and not just in Melbourne and Sydney. I think the info I gave supports this. ADSL2 technically is limited in distance from the exchange, when used over copper wire so it is unlikely to be very practical once you get away from urban areas, which has nothing to do with whether or not the city cares about the bush. What a pity Telstra was privatized. Makes you start to wonder about the virtues of capitalism versus government owned economies. At the very least, perhaps we should be rethinking the privatization of all our public utilities. By the way, which state is the one that is keeping Australia above water? Any chance that it is one of the States that was subsidized by the rest of Australia for years? That's the thing about a Federation and the reason why the full title for Australia is "The Commonwealth of Australia."

Their mantra is obviously "we won't do ANYTHING to make life better for those who are customers and paying our exorbitant prices, UNLESS we get spanked first and are forced to do it."

Ummmm!!! Doesn't the same mantra apply to the other telco's???
Optus, Vodaphone, 3, Virgin etc etc all don't offer me anything either unless its in THEIR interests.

No one says that (almost) any business has to provide you with anything if they don't want to and if you perceive that they don't care about you or are losing money by not providing you with whatever it is you may want, then thats still an issue for them alone.

In the same breath no one says that you have to pay the price asked by any business so in your view Telstra may be a ripoff organisation but I use and happily pay for many Telstra services which are in the first instance far better supported than their competition in my area and they are as price competitive as their competition in my area.

The story is simple.... If you don't like what is offered then go elsewhere.

As for the political comment about past government, well its easy for the incumbent to blame the past when they are so far out of their depth and don't know what to do to fix the problem.
How long is acceptable in your view before for Mr Dudd stops blaming the past and actually stands up and takes responsibility for his governments actions??

P.S. If you think Dudd has it bad now, just watch the effect of his policies on the future. Mitsubishi in SA is only the start of the new manufacturing exodus from this country.

You couldn't seriously believe Mitsubishi's closure is anything to do with the current Gov't.

You don't think that the proposed Dudd Governments future change to labour and workplace policies is going to have a positive effect on whether a business stays in this country or leaves??

It would be pretty naive to believe that Mitsubishi didn't take those proposed changes into account in its decision to stay or go??

Its a tough market out there and the future cost of Labors pandering to the union movement will have a serious effect in this country.

Mitsubishi's decision to go is purely due to the fact that they can't sell their 380 car. A poorly run or loss making business is not the fault of the Govt, or the Unions. Either the product is no good, or there is no market for it, or whatever.

The workplace policies were un-necessarily introduced when the libs gained control of the senate, and Mr Howard's dictator dream came true, and he undid himself, as all dictators do.

(They were un-necessary, because we already had full employment.)

Now Mitsubishi didn't hang on in dreams of the new IR laws happening, they held on hoping that the 380 would sell. It didn't, and they were never going to get more money since they had already burned millions of our taxpayer funds (given to them by Howard and the SA gov't).

Your right the product didn't sell and the review undertaken by Mitsubishi in whether it would replace the model in its Australian production line with a new one was quashed because it was unviable to continue future investment in this country.
One that was influenced by the issue of future labour costs being such an unknown factor.

You don't think labour costs influence whether a business makes money or not??

Remember they as disassembling the plant not destroying it, guess where the production line will turn up next???
For sure it won't be a country with a union movement that has a seat at the table of the government.

John

you can only blame the past, if YOU can blame the future your a better man than me... LOL

Cheers

Richard

Just remember that Dudd is on the record to the tune of pretty well matching those same $34 billion in tax cuts.

With the level of union heavyweights now sitting on the labour bench's and the support provided by the union movement its not hard to see which way Dudd will turn.

Yeah, I have never followed this. As I understand it, any company can put their own slammer into an exchange and then offer ADSL2+ which is then running on telstra's copper. They don't need Telstra to have an ADSL2 facility at the exchange. I am also under the impression that companies that do this have a limited number of sign ups they can do on that particular exchange. Not sure whether this is a technical issue with the slammers or some other limitation. If however Telstra offers ADSL2 from a particular exchange, I think they have to make their slammer available for rental as well as their copper. Anyone able to confirm this?
I get my ADSL2 from an exchange where the slammer is owned by another company, however Telstra are most unwilling to discuss this with customers.

Gary thats interesting info.

As you say mfrewster that may be the point of why Telstra is now opening up all those new exchanges with ADSL2 as they have now cleared up the issue in relation to making the slammer available to others.

Question, Does ADSL2 give you more range from the exchange?
Standard ADSL has a limit of about 3.5 to 4 km's from the exchange does ADSL2 do better than this??

John, I don't know the theoretical range limits/comparisons. All I can say for sure is that we are at the very outer edge of an exchange that is notorious for poor copper lines and poor broadband. Our service is very good. I was really nervous when we signed up because there were lots of horror stories from neighbours with broadband problems. Some were even talking of setting up a co-op to get their own wave link. None of them had adsl2 at that time. Telstra told me it wouldn't work. I signed on with Adam internet on the understanding that I could cancel the contract if I wasn't happy. Adam said flatly that they wouldn't be putting slammers in if it didn't work throughout the exchange area. I'm happy. Our system comes on a regular phone line, then goes to the phone,which has 4 wireless points around the house and also goes via a wireless router to three computers. It all works very well. And I thank the ADSL2+ genie every time I get a telephone bill. Sample. Unlimited time interstate calls. 8 cents at any time of the day. Overseas calls incredibly can be even cheaper.
I still reckon that a lot more people have access to ADSL2 than realize it. There seems to be a conspiracy to keep the speed and extent of its growth quiet.

I can't agree, at least, not from our experience. We are at the very furthest edge from our exchange. Neighbours on regular broadband have all sorts of problems. Our service is fine. Not as fast as max theoretical speeds, but still very good. Much better than regular broadband. Easily fast enough to run Voip. So if you use it to run Voip, it more than pays for itself. We get the convenience of fast downloads and our combined net/telephone costs are very much reduced compared to having a phoneline; paying for phonecalls and having an internet connection.

It is still only partly telling the story. Go to Whirlpool or http://www.adsl2exchanges.com.au/
to check where non Telstra adsl2 is actually available

Well thats an issue with the technology behind ADSL so I believe and not a Telstra or Optus etc problem.

From what I understand ADSL only works for about 4 km's cable distance from the exchange and I think ADSL2 will work about one km further???

I understand the frustration, I run a business that is located 5.5 cable Km's from the exchange and we can't get ADSL either for that business.