[Tony&Kat]

Hi all,

Can anyone recommend who the best broadband provider is - we're looking for a decent download speed and also a decent download allowance but not too pricey - having looked at a couple they seem to cost the same as over here?

We've sent our wireless router over and also our house phone in our container but just noticed that on the Telecom website it says something about getting a Telepermit for your own equipment? Is this standard practice?

Also could anyone suggerst a decent prepay mobile phone company that's reasonibly priced per month?

Thanks!! :nice1

Tony

[Gar1]

Same as UK it is now normal to have your own phone. The Telepermit is just the same as the BT approved sticker. It means that you should not really connect anything to to the phone network that does not have the sticker attached as in the UK. However the phone network is the same as the UK, so adsl modems, phones etc work fine here ( I am using UK equipment). Remember you will have an issues with electrical chargers, will need a new plug or some sort of adapter. Hopefully you also shipped extension leads (power bars).

Only really 2 choces for Mobile phones vodafone and telecom (Telstra is new to the market)

[bstlaurent]

Pretty happy with Snap (http://www.snap.net.nz) so far. 69.99$ a month gets you full speed up and down and 25gigs a month, with additional gigs being 2$ per.

We also got our phone line with them, so our bill's about 100$ a month with them.

Oh speeds are higher than i've ever had in Canada, we get about 10mb down and anywhere between 800k and 1.2k upload.

easy to eat up that quota.

[deepthir]

Hi,

Aren't there any unlimited plans in NZ? Here in India, we have a plan that gives us 384 kbps speed and unlimited download for Rs. 999 + Rs 99 for the wireless router per month i.e. about NZ$ 35 per month!!!!:nice1

Looks like our internet bill's gonna shoot way up once we move to NZ!!! :wah

~dee
Hoping to move to Auckland in Dec. '08

[Potato]

Xnet is one I've heard good things about.


Hi,

Aren't there any unlimited plans in NZ? Here in India, we have a plan that gives us 384 kbps speed and unlimited download for Rs. 999 + Rs 99 for the wireless router per month i.e. about NZ$ 35 per month!!!!:nice1

Looks like our internet bill's gonna shoot way up once we move to NZ!!! :wah

~dee
Hoping to move to Auckland in Dec. '08

There are unlimited plans, but they tend to be very expensive and not many ISPs provide them.

[Tony&Kat]

Thanks guys.

Does Snap work in Auckland as on the website i noticed it says that it's cheaper for Wellington / Christchurch.

Cheers.

Kat

[deepthir]

Thanks for the info! that's the first i've heard of unlimited plans... but if they're really expensive, guess i'll have to forget about it and go for something more affordable! sigh!

~dee

[Brian]

I wound up going with Telecom because with them, after you hit the monthly limit you can continue using the connection with no additional fees but at what they consider dial-up speeds. Webpages like this work fine, but any sort of video is frustratingly slow.

I hit the 3Gig limit in about 4 days. I'm stubbornly staying with this plan for the moment, but realistically I'll probably want to pay the extra $20 to get 20 gigs unless I can curb my addiction to downloading a half dozen US TV shows every week.

[Tony&Kat]

I wound up going with Telecom because with them, after you hit the monthly limit you can continue using the connection with no additional fees but at what they consider dial-up speeds. Webpages like this work fine, but any sort of video is frustratingly slow.

I hit the 3Gig limit in about 4 days. I'm stubbornly staying with this plan for the moment, but realistically I'll probably want to pay the extra $20 to get 20 gigs unless I can curb my addiction to downloading a half dozen US TV shows every week.

Yeah good point there Brian!! Looks like Telecom might be the best option for us too then

Cheers

Tony

[Questor]

If you're in Wellington city, Kapiti or Christchurch you can get Telstra cable, which is excellent. We pay around $100 a month for 10Mbit down, 2Mbit up and 20Gig per month allowance. It's only gone down once in the 18 months we've had it.
If you can't get cable then your line will be a Telecom phone line, but remember you are NOT stuck with Telecom for ADSL - in fact you'd be much better going with other providers. We used Maxnet in our rental and they were great, and they don't slow you down if you go over the limit like most providers over here seem to.

[Potato]

Yeah good point there Brian!! Looks like Telecom might be the best option for us too then

Cheers

Tony

If you "like" (relatively!) the sound of being cut back to dial-up after hitting your cap, another option is Actrix.....the difference being:

They have a daily cap (you choose.....from either 70MB (yeah right!) up to about 1.5GB). When you hit that, you are cut back in speed. *But only for the rest of that day* as opposed to hitting a monthly cap in a few days and being stuck on slow-go for the rest of the month.
They roll back at 2AM....at the moment they are effectively doubling the limits by also rolling back at 6PM. :)

[canajanz]

Xnet is one I've heard good things about.



There are unlimited plans, but they tend to be very expensive and not many ISPs provide them.

Have a look on the telecom / xtra website

I pay $49 and have unlimited broadband

we have a telecom prepay (no fixed plan) that is really postpay is it shows up on our telephone bill... kept it very simple till vodafone came into it with their great deal for keeping track of immediate family so now we have a couple vodafones too.
Coverage is patchy around the country.. some places vodafone works, some places telecom ... so an awful lot of people have one of each or one each to cover them in out of the way areas.

[canajanz]

I wound up going with Telecom because with them, after you hit the monthly limit you can continue using the connection with no additional fees but at what they consider dial-up speeds. Webpages like this work fine, but any sort of video is frustratingly slow.

I hit the 3Gig limit in about 4 days. I'm stubbornly staying with this plan for the moment, but realistically I'll probably want to pay the extra $20 to get 20 gigs unless I can curb my addiction to downloading a half dozen US TV shows every week.

That is the downside .. we've only had it happen twice .. both times daughter downloaded movies. Even then it was not that slow.

[Tony&Kat]

Thanks,

Has anyone had any bad experiences with Snap? A few people have told us that Telecom took ages to get their broadband and phone line set up (about 3 weeks), is this the norm with all of them or are Snap generally OK?

Cheers

Tony

[Brian]

Have a look on the telecom / xtra website

I pay $49 and have unlimited broadband


I'm looking... and the $49 plan only includes 10 GB. Is there something I'm missing?

https://www.telecom.co.nz/broadband/select/1,10627,205836-204473,00.html

[Spooky]

Will watching videos off Youtube be counted towards the allocated data space? Or will it only count if you 'download' the videos onto your harddisk?

I only download songs once in a blue moon and catch couple of funnies on Youtube once a fortnight. The rest of my internet time is spent on surfing and emailing. Not sure how much data space I should need.

[russetoak]

Just signed on with Telecom last week on Tuesday with phone and broadband and it was working on Wednesday night. The rental had a telecom account previously. I checked out vodaphone and telstraclear and telecom they all offer much the same. I have costs if anyone interested.

[dbonnett]

Thanks,

Has anyone had any bad experiences with Snap? A few people have told us that Telecom took ages to get their broadband and phone line set up (about 3 weeks), is this the norm with all of them or are Snap generally OK?


I am looking at Snap as well, along with xnet, orcon and some others... so far the info I am finding is pretty positive and they seem to have decent phone support.

Since every DSL provider depends on Telecom for the copper loop (from your house to the exchange) the turn up times should be pretty similar across the industry.

Just be warned that Telecom has been really pathetic about deploying enough capacity in the exchanges and if you are in a fast growing or high utilisation area there may be no ports available to connect you. A friend here in Nelson is looking at Feb 2010 to get broadband due to a shortage of ports - her blog (http://www.dna-nz.com/blog/2008/blog-sep-2008.html#20sep) on it is priceless (scroll down to read about the fun with Telecom)

Here are some good sites I have been using for info:
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp <-- scroll down to forums on each ISP and people's experiences; just remember that most happy subscribers don't feel a need to post about everything being fine, so the ratio of complaints may be higher than in actuality
http://www.nzconnection.net/Internet_Plan_and_Pricing_Comparisons <-- Wiki on different plans
http://ispfind.co.nz/ <-- Another plan comparison tool with better filtering

[richard]

Thanks,

Has anyone had any bad experiences with Snap? A few people have told us that Telecom took ages to get their broadband and phone line set up (about 3 weeks), is this the norm with all of them or are Snap generally OK?

Cheers

Tony

We moved to Snap a couple of months ago. We were with Orcon for 12 months on a cheap deal but at the end of the deal the charge for a similar package would have gone from around $85 to $120. Snap is our internet provider at work so as I can get a discounted deal through them we moved. We pay $86 for Internet and phone (FS/128 30GB limit).

When I first phoned snap I was told to phone them 3 or 4 days before my Orcon plan expired to arrange the move. I phoned a week before and having heard nothing after a few days phoned back to check on progress to be told that my application had been rejected. It turned out that it had been logged as a new line when they actually should have logged it as a move. They hadn't bothered telling me so I could have been waiting a long time.

They resubmitted the application and after another couple off delays finally got everything connected after 9 days. I may have been impatient but I felt that there was little communication coming back from them. I had to do all of the chasing.

Now that we are connected the service is fine. I think that the download speed is a little slower than Orcon but it is fine for us.

[Tony&Kat]

We moved to Snap a couple of months ago. We were with Orcon for 12 months on a cheap deal but at the end of the deal the charge for a similar package would have gone from around $85 to $120. Snap is our internet provider at work so as I can get a discounted deal through them we moved. We pay $86 for Internet and phone (FS/128 30GB limit).

When I first phoned snap I was told to phone them 3 or 4 days before my Orcon plan expired to arrange the move. I phoned a week before and having heard nothing after a few days phoned back to check on progress to be told that my application had been rejected. It turned out that it had been logged as a new line when they actually should have logged it as a move. They hadn't bothered telling me so I could have been waiting a long time.

They resubmitted the application and after another couple off delays finally got everything connected after 9 days. I may have been impatient but I felt that there was little communication coming back from them. I had to do all of the chasing.

Now that we are connected the service is fine. I think that the download speed is a little slower than Orcon but it is fine for us.

Cheers for the info Richard, might give them a go then - the price of the packages seem quite good compared to others

:cheers

Tony

[melly]

we have xnet naked dsl. Means our phone is VoIP through our broadband, so we don't pay any line rental to Telecom !(there was no way we were going to pay them $45/mnth for nothing but a piece of wire) Although we still had to deal with Telecom as they have to do the plugging in at the exchange and they managed to stuff that up and plug in the wrong line and so it took another week for them to fix it up!

[Wooly_Cow]

I use WorldNet - speeds are OK (full up and down) Just upgraded to 50Gbts per month as housemate is a heavy user (he's paying for the BB :-)).

...but their customer service and web portal are poor. You can see what your usage is but not how close you are to your limit (have to do the maths in your head which when you don't know exactly when the end of the billing month is is rubbish). Also can't pay on line or see what account you've got.

Telecom used to have an unlimited package but reckoned they lost money on it so have canned it for new users.

...and I remember the UK .... unlimited BB, Sky TV, free calls anywhere in the world, all for under 35 quid....

...my tip get those with cheap calling plans to call you :-)

[Tony&Kat]

Cheers for the help. My parents have just moved to Gulf harbour and signed up for broadband with Telstra. Telstra told them all was fine when they signed up and they would be connected within a couple of weeks. Now, 4 weeks down the line they still haven't been connected and have been told that there aren't enough lines to go around and couldn't tell them when one would be available (they said it could even be months).

Just something to be aware of, they were happy to get them to sign up for the service but when it came down to it they never had enough lines in the first place. Think I might go with snap just to be safe.