TPG Internet
www.tpg.com.au
When we accessed TPG's URL to register online we noticed that the access to the site was noticeably slower than most of the other ISPs at around 10:30am in the morning. Even so, registering was quite easy with TPG opting for a single, admittedly reasonably long, registration page. The page is clearly laid out and includes a short description of each of the plans offered.
TPG has nine dialup accounts (that is, if you count their Trial Pack), and to be honest, what any particular plan has to offer is not clearly explained. We found that unlike many of the other ISPs we had to reread the plans to figure out precisely what the user was entitled to.
The Wild Pack is a case in point, it is not terribly clear whether the AU$33 is per month or per quarter although delving deeper it becomes apparent that the charge is quarterly. TPG's plans are interesting in their structure; the Wild Plan, for example, is for unlimited three-hour blocks per month as long as you do not exceed 100MB for the month. If the megabyte limit is exceeded, every additional megabyte is charged at 22 cents and if you remain online longer than the 3-hour limit it is likely that TPG will kill your connection.
An option for low-volume Internet users is the Basic Pack, which is 12 hours per month over 12 months for $192.40 (that includes AU$13.20 per month and a one-off AU$33 connection fee). If you don't use your 12 hours per month you lose the unused portion, however if you exceed the 12 hours it comes off your next month's tally. If pay-as-you-go appeals, then the Easy Pack at a flat AU$1.10 per hour with no service fee looks pretty good, but then there is also a "free" Internet option. It's called the Night Rider but, and it's a big but, only if you are an insomniac and connect for no longer than three hours at a time between 1am and 8am. Nor will you get the trimmings like e-mail or server disk space.
The lowest cost plans with respect to cost per hour and cost per megabyte are the Professional Pack (AU$330 per year for 50 hours a month, unlimited download and no connection time restrictions) or the Value Pack (AU$21.95 per month for unlimited hours, 300MB maximum a month and limited to 3-hour connections). In the latter case, downloads in excess of 300MB are charged at 22 cents per megabyte.
All the dialup accounts (excluding Night Rider) include 10MB of Web space and an e-mail address with two aliases. And, for all new subscribers, TPG offers 150 bonus hours free of charge for the first 30 days.
For business TPG offer permanent modem or ISDN connections, Domain Name Hosting and Web Site Hosting with the full range outlined on their Web site.
There is a reasonable number of POPs in NSW, Victoria, and Queensland, but all states except ACT have at least two POPs. Modem support is also pretty good with X2 being the only standard not supported. As for protocols Slip and Unix are not supported, but PPP is.
Support hours are good with 8am to midnight Monday to Friday and shorter hours over the weekend.
To be blunt, we were a bit disappointed with TPG's overall performance. True, the local performance was only slightly behind the leaders, however international downloads were the problem. TPG faired the worst in this test by quite a large margin, while all other ISPs managed over 2KB per second, and some up to 3.5KB per second, TPG languished on an average of just 1.15KB per second with a peak of 2.15KB per second in the morning time window. While TPG's average performance in the morning and afternoon time windows was relatively consistent it did take quite a dive in the 6:30pm time window. TPG's POP performance in Melbourne was superior to Sydney by a reasonable margin and as far as carriers were concerned, the performance of TPG over Telstra and Optus lines was nigh on identical.
It was interesting to note that TPG's relatively low US download performance coincided with some of the worst US ping times that we recorded.
For the casual home user and Net junkie TPG has some of the lowest priced plans on offer amongst the ISPs we tested. Unfortunately, this is somewhat overshadowed by some of the lowest performance scores amongst the target ISPs as well.
4%
1%
Do not use Dodo ADSL- They have really bad customer service. And technical support.
On their unlimited plan. You start downloading until it get to 1G and then the service starts to have ‘problems’ and you can’t connect no more.
When you call technical support, they give you a phone number to call only to find that a machine answers and ask you to leave your phone number. And then no one call back.
When you call customer service, you speak to a person, they redirects you to a blank line and then you hear a dial tone. Which means the line hung up.
I spoke to a customer sales representative called Steve to pay the bill using credit card. When I asked him to select a plan for the next month, instead of having to call back, his reply was : “ You have to call back next month to select.” And then he hung up on me. This is the kind of service Dodo provides.
I have never spoke to any customer service person who hangs up on the customer.
And then later I find that my service was suspended. Even though I had just spoke to Steve 5 minutes earlier to pay for that month using my credit card.
I am on a 3 months contract with DoDo. I still have 2 months left to go. After this kind of customer service I get I will not be using them after the 3 months period.
Note: If you disconnect before 3 months they charge you a disconnection fee $100.
Don’t sign any long term contracts with any ADSL Provider unless you are sure that you trust the service.