Loyalty isn’t usually something that should be associated with a corporation, but when it comes to preferred internet providers I’ve found it difficult to move away from my current one.
Right now, I’m with Internode. It’s partly borne out of the fact that they were quick to host their own Steam servers and offer unmetered Xbox Live content, which five or six years ago was a pretty good selling point. They also used to host games.on.net, which I wrote for at the time, and that was a major factor for the loyalty.
With more and more ISPs behaving like utilities though, reducing the focus on customer service, loyalty seems a bit silly. And having just moved into a place that is due to get the NBN in (at best) six months to (probably) a year, it seems a good time to start shopping around.
What ISP do you have?
Comments
69 responses to “The Big Question: What ISP Do You Have?”
Up until a month ago, I was with TPG for over a decade. Enjoyed flawless service from them, and the couple of times I had questions or small issues, things were responded to quickly and efficiently. (I know this is not exactly the norm for them based on what others say.)
Recently switched to MyRepublic for my HFC NBN, and I’ve been enjoying 100mbit internet since. Had a few disconnects, one which affected all customers, but only really had an “issue” yesterday. For some reason I lost my connection like 7 times yesterday. I emailed them, and after an hour, it has been rock solid again since. 🙂
interesting, HFC is available in my area now but im hearing that the routers provided by Internode, my current provider who have pretty much been flawless for 7 years, are complete locked apart from allowing password changes. Apparently they have had trouble getting HFC to work properly with all routers.
How s the router MyRepublic provided and what router is it?
Anyone heard of theses issues?
I’m quite happy with the MyRepublic router (Technicolor branded). The wifi has been solid on both 2.4 and 5 and I haven’t been able to overload it. My old router is loaded up with DD-WRT anyway if I need to range extend but I’ve found it is quite stable in the corners of my house where my old router wouldn’t quite reach. All the settings I’ve needed have been easily adjusted in the router such as setting fixed IPs for all my connecting devices and I’ve had no problems with the UPnP to need to do any port forwarding.
In regards to the HFC with MyRepublic, I’ve been very happy except for one little nitpick that isn’t really their fault – when I play FIFA 17 on my PS4 matchmaking seems to preference USA opponents now instead of Australians, I’m not actively noticing lag in games but I’m sure there is a bit of a reaction delay as I seem to be tackled more frequently by my opponents. No other games have screwed up locations for match making though so I don’t know why FIFA is detecting my IP location as in the US.
appreciate that, thanks!
I am also with MyRepublic on an HFC connection – it has been flawless. the connection speed and ping has been terrific and hasnt dropped out once. I hard wired network cables around the house so everything is pretty much plugged in but i do find that the 5Hz wifi distance is extremely short and temperamental. My bedroom is next to my study (location of the router) and i find that the 5Hz will drop out a bit with the iPad so i use the more stable 2.4Hz. Customer service isnt great, but i don think any telco is.
Speed, Price and Usage all get a big tick from me.
Only issue I have with their customer service, is the wait time to talk to someone. I think the shortest time I’ve waited to talk to someone is about 20 mins. Thankfully, once you get connected, they seem to be fairly competent at what they do. Apparently it’s all Australian based too, so at least you don’t end up talking to someone in Malaysia or Philippines who can barely understand you.
Good to hear. My 5Hz has been spotty on every single router ive ever used with all my appliances. I dont know if its just the frequency or if they haven’t nailed that technology yet. I dont really care though, 2.4 is totally fine
The router provided by MyRepublic is a Technicolor TG789vac. You can change the password on the admin account no problem, and it even allows guest account logins so you don’t have to use the admin account if you choose not to.
It’s not the best router around, and appears to be possibly locked down a little, but nowhere near to the extent of any other ISP routers/modems I’ve seen. (It may not be locked down, but I’ve not seen an untouched version of these routers before, so I can’t say for sure.) There is a firewall section and port forwarding etc., so most of the options you would expect to find are there, but it doesn’t have as many options as most of the routers I’ve bought for myself in the past. That said, if you’re on HFC, you should be able to use pretty much any WAN router to connect. There’s no username/pass required to connect. It just connects via DHCP, so as long as you can configure your WAN port to do that, you should be fine.
I have the MyRepublic supplied router plugged in to the cable modem(NTD), and then run my SMC gigabit router out of it on a separate subnet. That’s how I had it all setup on my ADSL, so change over was easy for me. Just replaced my D-Link modem router with the Technicolor and that was that.
thanks for that, helps a lot
Are they generally pretty good at customer service? i just looked at the prices and its so much cheaper then my current provider can give.
Regarding your point about routers working with HFC, as noted below, the requirements aren’t all that strict, but you need to make sure you can do VLAN on your WAN port.
There is a list of confirmed routers here http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/nbn_router_guide
(Not all of them are specific to HFC.) Unfortunately, there’s no really good guide to specific HFC routers that I’ve come across yet, but there is plenty of threads on Whirlpool where people ask about which routers are good for replacing ISP supplied rubbish.
totally just signed up because of your recommendation. Ill come for you if it sucks haha 😉
hahah well there’s at least a few of us here who are reporting being happy with them, so it’s good to know I’m not the only one!
I was a little worried about it when I signed up, because I live somewhat close to the Optus hub in Rochedale, and a colleague of mine was using their 100mbit cable service with mixed results. During the day, his connection was golden. 100mbit down no problems, but between like 5-10pm, he’d be lucky to pull dial up speeds.
I was a little worried that my cable might be connected through there, resulting in me getting similar results, but i also live much closer to a Telstra exchange (1200m cable distance.) Luckily, I had an unused foxtel point in the house already, so they just hooked me up to that, and I’ve been getting solid speeds during both on and off peak times!
Oh man, yes, I’m with Myrepublic now too. I hadn’t had any issues, but I did get a disconnect last night around 10:30pm (AEDT). I went to sleep at 12:00am when it was still down, but the issue resolved itself in the morning sometime.
Yesterday was the first time I’ve had an “ongoing” issue. I’ve been disconnected once or twice before, but only for a matter of a minute or so. Yesterday for some reason, it would disconnect me, and take like 10+ mins to come back up. After the 5th time, I emailed them, and within the next hour, I’d been disconnected twice in like 5 mins, but it’s been stable since. Whether those last 2 disconnects were due to them playing around with my connection or not, I’m not sure, but I’m guessing it likely was, as they were the quickest disconnects I’d had all day, plus it sorted my issue, so I’m pretty chuffed 🙂
That’s much like the service I used to get from TPG. I’d email their support with a question, or ask them to adjust my speed profile or something, and within an hour, they’d disconnect me, and I’d be sorted 🙂 Love it!
Telstra.
Optus. For no other reason than them having the EPL rights.
TPG.
Gets the job done, no major issues that have made me want to change. I’ll review my choice of ISP if / when NBN becomes an option for me.
I’ve had about the same level of service with TPG on NBN that I did before NBN.
Which is the same as you – gets the job done, nothing major thats wanted me to change.
Only drama across 10 years has actually been down to Telstra taking their sweet time (3 1/2 weeks) fixing a line problem a couple of years ago, which they made up for when it went down again for a differerent (but related) problem a week after that.
I’ve been with exetel for over a year now with NBN 100/40 speeds and always get 10meg a sec download when it’s givin to me bloody steam I’m lucky enough to get 3mbs they suck. Yeah anyway exetel have good price for unlimited and u haven’t had any problems and was quick to set up and get connected. Have been thinking about My Republic because they are cheaper but not sure how their service holds up yet.
With regards to your steam connection, what connection type do you have for your NBN?
As noted in my post above, I’m on HFC though MyRepublic. I live in Brisbane, and strangely, I’ve found that when I connect to steam using the QLD server, my downloads are anywhere from a few hundred kb/sec to 7 or 8MB/sec.
If I switch to the NSW server, I get rock solid 12MB/sec!
Try changing your steam server location. Some of the local cache servers can get pretty congested.
TPG, everyone says their CS sucks and it probably does if you have you don’t do some preparation beforehand
I’ve called CS up 4 or 5 times now and every time I run through the batch of tests I’ve done and which they asks you to do (general line test, isolation test etc) they listen for 5 to 10minutes and then go yep we’ll send someone out to check it out.
Telstra – FTTP nbn – due to staff discount and I’m fairly certain their CVC ratio is one of the best, although I can’t confirm that.
I’m with iinet. Sad thing is if I moved to Telstra they have told me I could get at least 35mbps down cable. I’m on 700kbs down right now and while the upgrade while be crazy fast, the fact It’s Telstra has stopped me. I’ve never had a good experience with them and they are so damn tainted to me I just can’t bring myself to use them again.
Example was I moved into a new house and was told my internet connection was ready only I couldn’t get online. I rang up to figure out the problem and got some Indian guy after an hour long wait who proceeded to tell me quote “all internet is down for Australia right now. call back in 4 hours” and hung up on me. I was fucking pissed so I called back and got an Aussie guy who fixed a faulty password within 5 minutes.
Don’t believe them. They never guarantee speeds and you’re likely to receive speeds similar to what you’re getting now but paying a lot more if you were to change.
Had telstra, they suck and are insanely expensive for the same service. As in went from dodo adsl2+ to telstra for the same speed and more problems. Now have optus for home wireless broadband 200gb. In comparison telstra home wireless 25gb is a lot more expensive.
I’ve been really happy with MyRepublic for the 6 weeks I have been with them. I switched from Telstra cable to NBN HFC. My DL rate dropped from around 125mbps to 98mbps but uploads jumped up from 2.4mbps to 39mbps. I can’t be disappointed that I’m within 2% of the max speeds. I mentioned in a comment that will probably be stuck in moderation limbo that the only problem I’ve had is that FIFA 17 seems to now match me with US players instead of Oceanic ones when I play online, which is quite frustrating. I don’t notice any lag per se just that when I look back at previous opponents they all have a US flag and I seem to be tackled a lot more than I used to which indicates there is some sort of reaction delay (or a higher quality pool of players).
Internode for me as well.
They’re the only ISP in town if you’re after “power user” features on a home connection.
I’ve got annex-m DSL, static IPv4, dual-stack IPv6 and unlimited quota.
No other ISP offers me that. Plus their customer service has always been stellar. They were kept as an IBU after the acquisition from iinet, and so far have remained so after TPG took over. I only hope that they keep them this way as I’m happy to pay a premium for what they offer.
They’re good, but I couldn’t justify the cost anymore when I wasn’t using the extra features, even with my unlimited quota I wasn’t using that much – the days of uncounted Netflix and Steam are gone when there’s no limit. Jumped to Exetel literally this morning – their NBN packages were better than Internode’s too and so it should be an easy transfer when my street finally comes on.
Internode were great for 10 years though. Money’s the only reason I moved.
Yeah they certainly are more expensive. I currently pay $89 per month for an unlimited plan with the features mentioned above.
There’s literally no other ISP which offers all of those features though, and I can’t operate without them.
I was paying 79.95 for unlimited, although they did have a habit of upping people’s plans periodically, especially if you were well inside. I was still only doing 160-180GB a month.
Only thing I’m not getting that I’ll miss is the Internode binaries servers which were handy. But I’d hardly used them in months since my home server died.
Yeah that’s the same plan I’m on. I pay an extra $10 for powerpack features.
It get’s used pretty heavily, so I don’t have any gripes paying it.
I’m also scheduled for FTTdp to be installed next year, so hopefully I’ll be able to roll over connections with little downtime.
With iiNet simply because I’ve been with them sine they are awesome and they aren’t rubbish yet. NBN with a 25mb pack and unlimited Netflix, works well for us. Much better than 1.5 then 4 we were able to get on ADSL (no ADSL 2 🙁 )
Just signed up with myrepublic. Cheaper and more stuff.
I have been (and remain, for mobile) an Internode customer since… 2002? I’ve had to switch on and off them over the years depending on where I lived. When I moved to my current apartment I went with TPG knowing that the Internode I knew and loved is pretty much no more. Given that I’m on NBN, Internode can’t offer me a competitive product any more so I went with TPG on price.
Long live the Node Ponies.
Until I either get an unlimited plan or someone else offers unmetered Netflix, XBL and Steam downloads, I’ll be sticking with iiNet. Which, if the NBN gets their shit together for my street, could happen within a few months.
Regrettably iiNet. I was with Internode for my ADSL2 connection, then switched to iiNet when we got FTTP NBN a few years back. Everything was fine and peachy on my 25Mbps plan, and then I changed to a 100Mbps plan around the same time as the TPG takeover.
Well, not a night goes by that my connection doesn’t drop below 1Mbps. It’s absolute rubbish, and if someone offered me my old ADSL2 connection I’d take it in a heartbeat.
The thing that annoys me most is how bloody strict the NBN slow speed investigation requirements are. 3x speed tests, at different times of the day, over 3 days. Do they not realise that some people work full time and simply aren’t home for 3 consecutive days? And so every time I call iiNet to point out my dissatisfaction, I spend literally hours on hold waiting to speak with someone, only to get the same answer. So frustrating…
I miss Internode. I miss ADSL2. I miss pre-TPG iiNet. I miss my old 25Mbps NBN plan.
I haven’t recommended iiNet to anyone in months now, and I won’t start now. Go with an ISP that will actually answer your phone call in less than an hour, and not give the same canned response to your every complaint.
They realise which is why the testing is so unreasonable. dont do the tests they dont lodge the fault and so their numbers look peachy. After 17 years of iinet i spent 2 months unable to do anythibg more than plain text in the evenings after switching to nbn fttp. I got fed up and went to skymesh and its been peachy since ( few hiccups during their perth data center upgrade though). Going to be going 200/100 next month 😀
Raise a case with the Telecommunications Ombudsman, you’ve clearly tried multiple times to get this fixed and they aren’t listening.
Previously I was with iinet for 4 years and they were okay. When I signed up and had it connected I was only getting 3mb/s I called them and asked what was going on and they said they would check it but if it wasn’t there fault I would have to pay the fee. I couldn’t afford it at the time so I put up with it for a year.
When I called again a year later they said yes there does seem to be a problem and they sorted everything out and said I didn’t have to worry about a thing and I would get a reimbursement for the sub par service I had received. Anyway my speed went up to 10mb/s which is about right considering the distance I was from the exchange but I never got the reimbursement.
When nbn became available in my area (FTTP :D) I called them about upgrading to it and asked them about their price discrepancy the 25mb/s speed was 80 bucks compared to adsl2+ at 60 and that was for 50gb of downloads which I would burn through very easily. So my question was, how can you ask for 20 bucks more for practically the same speed (adsl2+ is rated at 24mb/s) and 25% of the download limit and they continually tried to tell me that it was still an upgrade for me (10mb/s to 25mb/s) but I wasn’t having it. the 25mb/s and 24mb/s are theoretical maximums and either way I was still paying $60 for 24mb/s whatever speed I was getting is not the point. Anyway they wouldn’t help me, I guess they thought I would just put up with it. So I left and went with Exetel who could give me 25mb/s for $60 and 500GB of data.
Now I know that they’re not meant to have very good customer service and that they do dodgy things (ACCC won a court case against them a while back for illegal things in there terms of service) but I haven’t had any issues and now my 12month contract is done as well.
Have bounced around Internode/iiNet until they became the same a while back. From a price perspective iiNet is still cheaper (@$99/mo) simply because they still offer a usenet service.
Internode NBN Unlimited 94/31. I live in a low data traffic area right next to a pit.
FTTP NBN with AusBBS. 100/40, unlimited downloads and a decent price.
Customer service hasn’t been great, but I’ve had zero other issues.
Skymesh for NBN. They have good rep on Whirlpool, been with them for almost a year and haven’t come across any problems yet.
Me too and couldn’t be happier. Great customer service and stable connection.
I’ve got Skymesh for FTTP NBN. Couldn’t recommend them enough. I don’t know how they afford good contention ratios with the NBN CVC, but they do.
The quotas scare away the people who download just to be downloading i think :p
When I got internode a year ago they didn’t count XBL or Netflix towards your DL limit…I wonder if their current plans offer that still?
My internode plan did have unmetered netflix and PSN downloads [they run their own PSN cache server, presumably the same with XBL]. They then upgraded me to an unlimited plan, so for the same price it now makes no difference.
I’m almost certain they still have unmetered access, though, as they still run their own cache servers [and peering with Netflix servers].
Been with iinet for like seven years. Never had a problem with them and had nothing but great customer service. but since Christmas absolutely pitiful service. When you can get it. It got to a point when the computer said it would call you back in EG 30mins, five hours later at 0200 in the morning they would call your back. And if you dont answer they just keep ringing. That happened twice.
I do want to change but it just seems too much like hard work.
Very happy AusBBS NBN customer here. Was with iiNet for years and years but service went to hell after TPG buyout.
About to Ditch iinet
Live in manly have adsl+2 internet crawls, if i upload it crashes, tried to get a 5mb email off, wouldn’t do it,
I cant live like this, discovered my apartment has cable connection, so switching to either Optus or Telstra , yes I am now paying through the mouth but I need stable connection that supports work, gaming, streaming.
On a side note i’ve never actually had reliable internet anywhere I have lived in Sydney, maybe im just unlucky but i am so sick of it,
Any recommendations before i jump into cable shoot away, also NBN is not coming to Manly for a good year or 2 and even when it does i assume it will crawl like adsl when everyone jumps on it
Speaking to a friend in the business you just have to watch some ISP’s on NBN as they can oversubscribe on the bandwidth they wholesale from NBN. The result being very poor speeds in some areas. Westnet is one I know firsthand do this on a regular basis. A friend switched from them to Telstra and immediately got better speeds.
I’ve been with iinet for a number of years now, but since the whole TPG buyout I’m considering switching. Need to do some more research though.
Internode NBN here. I’ve been with Internode for 10 years and switched from ADSL to NBN when the time came. They are a bit more expensive than others but the service is excellent, barely any network issues and they provide a callback service if you need to call tech support. I see no reason to change.
Been with iinet for about 12 years and never had an issue, always stable and great customer service, since Christmas my speeds fluctuate so badly that often the internet is unusable and their support which was once flawless now involves wait times of over an hour and often their call back service takes 6 hours.
Want to swap but the naked DSL plan is good value and when the internet works i get good speeds, but with NBN still a few years away i’m stuck with either moving and paying more for what may be a similar speed service or just waiting and seeing what happens.
I cried the day TPG bought iinet as i knew this would happen, hate being right.
INTERNODE… get what you pay for… good old Aussies on the phone… and good tech knowledge. NEVER had an issue in the 10 years I have been with them !
Was with internode who were fine but decided to true skymesh when NBN went live early last year. The fact Skymesh has. I contract periods made trailing them appealing and they haven’t missed a beat so far. Was about $20 a month less than Internode would have been for a similar sort of plan.
Was on Internode ADSL and was pretty happy but the NBN price from MyRepublic can’t be beat. $60 for 100/40 vs $110 with Internode. It’s HFC and while I usually get 90+/30+ I have experienced a fair few speed drops to ~30/30. I’m putting that down to HFC being a sub-par technology
I used to be with iiNet and had been with them for 7+ years, but due to them having to rent their lines from Telstra, I couldn’t get a decent package. I was paying $100+ for about 100Gb on ADSL2+ and that would no longer do. Telstra had a 1000gb package + Telstra TV for the same price, so I didn’t really have much choice. iiNet was much more reliable speed wise, their customer service was second to none and my ancient modem was better than Telstra’s new one, but 100gb was way too little. Shame, but I guess now I’m glad after the TPG takeover and their destruction of iiNet.
I’m on exetel, I’ve enjoyed good CS from them and the price is decent for their 100/50mb NBN unlimited plan.
In a relatively new suburb (built after telstra privatisation) so telstra is the only viable option, everyone else offers “off net” plans only.
Currently with Internode. They are mostly solid, but notice especially that international transit is getting spotty in evenings. Considering the reviews and price of MyRepublic though, likely to churn.
Been a happy Optus customer for over 10 years, was originally on Unlimited Cable Broadband but have been on their new Unlimited NBN (HFC) 100/40 for about a month. Loving it so far, not a single dropout & a stable 100mbps during peak times whereas on cable the speeds would fluctuate every now and then. The Free YesTV Fetch Mighty PVR with 39 free channels was a sweet bonus too.
Been with iiNet for 8.5 years where I live now on ADSL2+, had almost zero issues with them – consistent speed, great tech support, reasonable pricing.
Then they got bought out by TPG. No huge issues, but the few times I’ve had to call, their call centre is in South Africa somewhere – so the communication, isn’t too bad but it’s nowhere near as good as their old phone support.
Signed up for the shiny new HFC NBN as soon as it was available in my street – that was 6 weeks ago. It hasn’t worked since the day it was installed. Apparently it’s an activation issue on NBN’s side, so it’s not really iiNet’s fault – but it’s been a month and a half. Still nothing, ring them regularly, no ETA. No one can even give me a rough estimate of when it’s going to be working.
This wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t sending me invoices for my NBN connection which I don’t have, and constantly have to ring them and tell them to cancel/extend the invoice because I’m not paying it. Then they billed my credit card $200 for a service I don’t even have.
Getting very, very frustrated. Again, not all iiNet’s fault, but it’s all a very unpleasant experience at this point regardless of who’s fault it is. Luckily my ADSL2+ connection is still going, but man – what a saga.
Telstra via NBN FTTP. Always within 2Mb/sec of max, up and down, and 6ms pings. Had 2 outages that I’ve noticed in the 12+ months I’ve been with them. All of them were resolved within a few minutes.
I’m with AussieBroadband on 100Mbps 500GB NBN. Was with Telstra for ADSL but moved house a month after the NBN went live in my area and Telstra wouldn’t offer any faster than 25Mbps. Aussie were $40 cheaper than Telstra for 4x the speed. Went with them as MyRepublic hadn’t hit the Australian market when I needed to get my connection set up.
Aussie have been great… once you actually get through to speak to someone. Their wait times for tech support are constantly more than 20 minutes. Sales and Accounts are way faster than that though so make of that what you will.
Telstra! Started off ’cause no-one else provided in our area.
Since then, moved, but stuck with them.
Mostly for the free Apple music and NRL subs. Though never had any major issue with them.
I’m with Telstra, whilst they aren’t the cheapest, they’ve always given us a consistent decent service. Just had my NBN connection turned on 2 days ago with them (FTTN) just opted for the entry level 25/5 speed, which I get with no dramas all the time. I can also upgrade to 100/40 for an extra $15 atm, which I probably will go for. I will be dropping them for someone else come contract renewal time next August though. I’d move now but I really don’t want to pay the fee to break contract.