Broadband: Which plan is for you?

Scenario
This medium-sized company is dissatisfied with its current Internet Service Provider and wants to change its carrier.

The company is increasingly dependent on the Internet and is seeking a reliable carrier with good throughput.

Concerns: Affordability, throughput, uptime, and suitable plans.

 

Editor's Choice: AAPT
T&B Editor's choice If this were a plan for mum, dad, and the kids at home then reliability and uptime would not be such an issue, but it is for a business, so uptime is critical. We were unable to assess Primus for the Editor's Choice as they repeatedly declined to provide the Lab with any indicative pricing.

Two of the vendors scored more highly overall than the rest of the field but for very different reasons. Pacific Internet were good in the performance stakes and include quite a range of freebies in its AU$149 plan for example you get a serviced firewall for a year, e-mail, virus, and spam filtering, and an unlimited dial-up account, the latter is great if some of your staff are out and about and need connectivity.

AAPT on the other hand is a little leaner in terms of features but it does include up to 32 static IP addresses in its AU$179 plan. Where AAPT stands out compared to Pacific Internet however, is in terms of performance and reliability. It was the second fastest overall and only had one dropped ping in the entire two weeks of testing.

AAPT is a little more expensive than Pacific Internet, its cap is one of the smallest at just 5GB and the excess charges are the highest of the group but reliability, in particular, and performance are significantly better than Pacific Internet so the Editor's Choice award goes to AAPT.

Bits and bytes
Data, or Internet Protocol (IP) network transmissions are measured in bits, whereas hard drive and system memory capacities are measured in bytes. These are defined by using upper and lower case notation. One gigabit is written as 1Gb, whereas one gigabyte is 1GB, same with kilobits (Kb) and kilobytes (KB).

There are eight bits in a Byte, (technically there is a bit more but I don't want to start with the semantics of nine or 10 bits to the byte and parity checks, words, etc).

This bit/byte confusion is one of the reasons some people don't understand why you cannot transfer a 4GB DVD movie in four seconds across a 1Gb network.

This article was first published in Technology & Business magazine.
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Talkback 11 comments

    Broadband review WOW ! Anonymous -- 14/11/05

    Wow what an excellent review, keep up the great work. This is what we love to see

    Legends Anonymous -- 14/11/05

    You guys really know your stuff great test and informative review. Pity there were not a whole lot more broadband providers included.

    Great Review... NOT Anonymous -- 14/11/05

    Love that fact that when I went to that page there was an AAPT ad at the top!!!

    I can't really see how this review is measured nor does it seem to be discussed.

    Why is the static IP options mentioned for Netspace and AAPT but not internode?

    Don't AAPT buy their international bandwidth though someone else?

    What the hell is future proofing? and how the heel can it be measured?

    I'll review the review..... poor very poor.... Some of the lines don't even have similar information.... and there not categories as to what they are there for...

    I think someone needs a kick in the arse for this review.... I'm now dumb from reading it!

    Read the How we Tested Anonymous -- 15/11/05 (in reply to #120123270)

    If you read the review you would see the How we Tested section.

    http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/software/internet/0,39023437,39221708-7,00.htm

    Pretty much covers it all.

    Wow, you really got this one correct... NOT. Anonymous -- 15/11/05

    How about you get a clue. Then have another crack at it.

    Why no mention of VOIP Anonymous -- 15/11/05

    Surely, a big component of any broadband review must focus on wireless and the elimination of line rental. All DSL does is give unearned revenue to Telstra.

    VOIP and Wireless present a big saving without the $30 dead money each month.

    Yes I have dumped the home phone..

    Very informative Martin Hamil -- 15/11/05

    Seems not all services are created equal despite purporting to be so!

    Very interesting to see the critics of this report don't publish their details or whom they are affiliated with.

    This is a bias article Anonymous -- 18/11/05

    This is a bias article for a number of reasons:

    1. It forgot to include Telstra and Optus
    2. It recommended AAPT and their website/banners have AAPT ads everywhere.

    I would not believe everything you read in this article.

    Did you even read the review before commenting? Mark Jacobs -- 24/11/05 (in reply to #120123486)

    It seems you did not even read the first few paragraphs! before commenting my friend. Both companies you mentioned are described and the reasons they gave for failing to participate.

    START QUOTE >>> "This month we invited the Internet service providers generally considered to be the top 10 in Australia to submit a plan for this review. Interestingly, both Optus and Telstra declined to submit, as did Exetel.

    Telstra's response was that they were simply too busy to participate as this extract from their e-mail shows: "Telstra Business and Government have declined your invitation and the BigPond production team has been flat out and indicated it's not able to assist at this time."

    Optus states that it does not have DSL available in the area of the Test Labs, and were clearly not willing to use Telstra's." >>> END QUOTE

    Seems to me that this review was very well put together and each provider thoroughly tested over time by an independent organisation Test Labs it seems. To wit an excellent and thoroughly scientific test methodology has been described, provided and used by them, and the resulting facts are supplied in a easy to understand format.

    Seems to me that AAPT have won fairly and squarely and have advertised complementarily.

    By the way what organization do you represent your post was marked anonymous, perhaps this Telstra or Optus hmm?

    WiMax Anonymous -- 24/11/05

    I am on a Hibis airspan Wimax service. It generally seems really good and the speeds are not bad - according to ZDs tester it is generally around 450Mbs. However I use alot of Voip and I am not sure that it isn't abit lumpy/has some lag problems..(I have tried pinging my Voip server and it generally comes in at 400-500ms)...any thoughts from anyone..any similar experiences

    What a review! I Anonymous -- 26/10/09

    Thanks so much for such thorough insight. I was a bit iffy in considering AAPT as a provider, but they're serious contenders now. Thanks!

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