dingo blue
www.dingoblue.com.au
dingo blue is a wholly owned subsidiary of Cable & Wireless Optus, and they offer local, long distance and mobile telecommunications as well as Internet access. Connection is very simple: fill out the online form with your credit card details, and you are on the way. There are approximately 45 POPs across Australia, covering each of the states and territories. dingo blue offers only one plan, with unlimited time and unlimited downloads for a flat rate of AU$49 per month (or AU$27.50 per month if you use their long distance service). According to dingo blue, there is no maximum connection time for this account either.
Up to 5MB of Web space is provided and five e-mail addresses are allowed for each user. The FAQ pages on the dingo blue Web site are excellent. They provide full setup information, step-by-step instructions for dialling in and configuring various applications and information on uploading Web pages to your site. All of this information is provided for Windows 95/98/NT and the Mac OS. Browser setup is included for various versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape on both platforms and there is another section for uploading pages to your Web site from FTP Explorer, WS_FTP, Fetch, and Transit. Linux support is not heavily advertised, but http://k9.dingoblue .com.au is a Macintosh G3 running Linux that provides information on all the basic setup information for Linux.
dingo blue's performance was a little below the average for the ISPs tested. In particular, it scored fairly low in the International Download Performance test. Time seemed to affect performance in a big way, with speeds in the 6:30pm window dropping 30 percent from the performance seen in the morning slot. The lack of speed is generally offset by their excellent prices.
Information on bandwidth, cache, modem ratio and number of users is considered confidential, and was not disclosed. The helpdesk is available Monday through Friday: 7am-11pm; Sat: 9am-5.30pm; Sun: 9am-5.30pm. Also if you are having any problems (after you dial in) or want to ask a question, you can chat online to a consultant 24 hours a day. I spoke to a helpful staffer, who was happy to answer my questions and point me in the direction of other valuable resources.
If speed is not your most critical concern, dingo blue provides real value for money.
4%
4%
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.