iprimus
www.iprimus.com.au
iPrimus is a division of Primus Telecommunications, a part of the international Primus Telecommunications Group. Connection options include signing up via the Web, over the phone, or ordering a connection CD. The Web signup was plain but effective. It steps you through the process and you are ready to start.
Coverage was quite good with over 65 POPs around Australia covering 174 local call areas with more POPs planned in every state and territory across the country. Plans are available from the economiser at AU$9.75 per month for 6 hours and the Family Plan, which is AU$16.25 for 11 hours per month. Then there is a AU$300 per year for unlimited access in 4-hour blocks with disconnection after 20 mins of idle time. Most of the plans feature four e-mail addresses and 10MB of free Web space. A newly introduced plan, the "Infinity" is available in Melbourne only for AU$24.95 per month with unlimited hours/unlimited download.
According to the iPrimus Web site, prepaid kits will soon be available for 10, 30, or 60 hours from retail outlets.
The Service and Support area of the iPrimus Web site contains a plethora of information on configuring dialup adaptors for both Windows and the Mac, information on Web browsers, e-mail, news, and ftp. Web editor setup info is also provided.
iPrimus has an excellent modem ratio of 7:1 so you should never get a busy signal (total number of users is reported to be about 167,000). Total bandwidth seems pretty good with five STM-1 links (155Mb each) to a variety of different peers. This gives iPrimus good speed and a large degree of fault tolerance. Cache size was not specified.
Customer support is available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, and email responses should be received within 12 to 24 hours.
iPrimus was right up at the top of the speed tests, both international and national. It was quite consistent across different times of the day, although in our tests it performed better in Melbourne than it did in Sydney. International downloads suffered from a range of speeds. It provided the fastest time recorded, but also one of the slowest. Overall the performance was ranked number two just below Netspace.
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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.