Submitted 11 months ago by WaterWaiver@aussie.zone to australia@aussie.zone
https://www.gadgetguy.com.au/internode-westnet-shutdown-tpg-iinet/
Internode used to be a high quality home internet brand.
My understanding is that loyalty is never rewarded for competitive subscription services (gas, eletricity, water, internet, insurance, etc).
I wonder how long until AussieBB enshitifies?
The end of an era.
Internode WOULD NOT move you off a grandfathered plan.
I rode that until I had to move somewhere without FTTP :-(
Any recommendations as an alternative? I don’t think I should surf them into the next repurchase?
According to whirlpoot.net forums these guys seem to be the best quality for home users:
For online gaming, Superloop and their reseller Exetel are particularly good as they take the fastest route to Asia. You’ll get significantly lower ping on Tokyo-based servers, which opens up more options if you play competitive PvP games or MMOs. Others like Aussie Broadband only take that route one way so you’ll have higher ping overall.
I use launtel, I pay a premium i think, but I don’t know because I’ve go no desire to change.
I am using Ozot. Small new company and no complaints with anything.
Sad times. I remember spending a lot of time playing CS on internode servers.
Aussie are already headed down the toilet. They changed his they billed me without asking and then denied it for 6 months. TIO complaint ensued where my desired outcome was an apology and that they would notify others before changing billing parameters.
TIO eventually left it with Aussie to sort and they refused to help.
It was an unusual situation, their change to least cost routing incurred transaction fees on my (very) small business account, which lead to issues with my subscription accounting package on a basic plan that had limited line items it could reconcile (about 10 per month I think).
It’s a specifically shitty situation, but my setup at the time was reasonable given my circumstances.
Had Aussie told me they were switching I could have changed to direct debit, but remember, it took 6 months to figure out it was them while they denied it the whole time.
I do tech support on an occasional basis when I’m well, and even dismissing my past history with Aussie I still find them going down hill with regards to inflated pricing and slowing support.
Their support is still above average, but at the prices they’re adding it bloody should be.
Sorry, least cost routing for phonecalls? Or did you peer through them?
It’s a feature for payment processing. Aussie began using it about 5 or so years ago.
I have nothing against it generally.
But what it did do is switch my payments from Visa debit to a type of cardless EFTPOS cash out type transaction that incurred a fee with my backward bank.
Had I known they intended to change how they charge I’d have taken the card off file with them and used another method.
Their support has some absolute dumbarses. I had fun and games when they somehow tangled my personal home account with me being an authorised rep on the client services that my workplace provided. Still no idea how the fuck they managed that. The only point of intersection is my name.
Yeah that sounds like modern Aussie.
They’re trading on the reputation they had years ago. So many people blindly recommend them it’s concerning.
There isn’t much to differentiate ISPs anymore. It used to be a huge benefit to have unmetered, low latency game servers, streaming radio mirrors, usenet feeds, IP phone services and ISP email. Internet offered a huge amount of extra value through the dialup, ISDN, ADSL1, ADSL2 era. They offered IPv6 early which was interesting to a techie early adopter and were rolling out ADSL2+ in some exchanges and wireless systems. I stuck with Internode for a long time because if your system just works there isn’t a lot of incentive to chase other providers who are more or less the same. In the NBN era hey were a bit slow to deal with congestion a couple of times and I ended up moving to Superloop. I don’t think they are anything special but that is kind of the point these days. The industry is commoditised and as long as their network and billing is competently run all the NBN resellers should be fairly comparable.
Latency is particularly important to me. Indirectly this means congestion, available bandwidth and buffering policies.
I run SQM on my home router, this keeps things like web browsing buttery smooth even if someone starts torrenting. The ability for SQM to have control over the connection relies on it being the weakest/slowest/most controlling link (I configure it to a bandwidth slightly slower than my normal connection speed). If a router somewhere in the NBN/ISP networks starts buffering my packets heavily (ie my connection speed drops) then my SQM loses its control and ability to fix things.
That’s quite a mouthful :P All I know is that with Aussie things have been OK, but that’s also probably because I’m on one of the lower tier speed plans. Higher speeds might fluctuate.
ISPs would definitely compete if they ran on different medium; but mobile broadband is hit an miss and I don’t see any other affordable alternatives to the NBN at the moment. Starting up a community WISP sounds romantic but I’m sure it’s a lot of work and I live in the suburbs, not the urbs, so it’d probably be hard to find participants.
cries in ihug
I was a part of the project team that assimilated ihug into iiNet. Honestly, they were on the verge of falling apart. All their gear was old and it was a lot of work to just keep everything online. The profitable part of the business was the mobile phones, and iiNet absorbing ihug started them on the path of being a contender in the mobile space.
Had ihug not been bought when they were, their Internet service would have collapsed within a year.
Still, it was really nice to be stationed in Sydney during the Rugby World Cup. Was that really 20 years ago?
DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com 11 months ago
Back when Simon ran it, sure. That’s a looooong time ago though. iiNet also used to be a really good home internet provider. Like Internode, they were an ISP built by techies, for techies.
So far, I’m still happy with Aussie BB. But, they’re listed now. That means they have shareholders to keep happy. That said, on my FTTP, they (very quickly) passed on the nbn price cut to me, which was nice.
Taleya@aussie.zone 11 months ago
I’m a shareholder and a customer, i’ll fuck 'em coming and going
joannaholman@aus.social 11 months ago
@DeltaTangoLima @WaterWaiver I've been on internode but thinking I might move to Aussie Broadband. Last time i needed tech support from Internode after my connection was somehow disabled was an unpleasant weeklong saga
ajsadauskas@aus.social 11 months ago
@DeltaTangoLima @WaterWaiver Internode was quality when @NewtonMark was running the network...
legios@aussie.zone 11 months ago
Been with Internode for over 20 years, not looking forward to changing provider…
DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com 11 months ago
Now there’s a name I haven’t heard since my SAGE-AU days…