How much we are disadvantaged
Our driving motivation for Pacific Fibre is a sense of frustration, of being left behind. This chart from the OECD Broadband Portal shows one measure of that.
There are others – one favorite is this spreadsheet which rather cruelly shows how many days it would take to hit the limit at the fastest advertised speeds for sampled providers in Australia and New Zealand. The worst plans get consumed in less than a minute, while 93% of the plans hit the bit cap in less than a day of continuous use at advertised maximum speeds.
This implies two things – firstly that there is a lot of contention for the same bandwidth, and that actually getting that maximum speed is unusual, and secondly that customers are going to be hitting those limits pretty frequently.
I’d like Australia and New Zealand to become places where low datacaps are a distant memory – and where ISPs are able to deliver uncapped high speed broadband for reasonable prices.
Yes! It’s 2010, can I have ADSL2+ please, from a provider other than Telstra? Also, I’m happy to pay for an unlimited plan, but give me the option. Please….I don’t want a plan that I consume in 55 seconds (and is from the most expensive provider in the country to boot).
I’m just about fed up and ready to go to the office of these ISPs to beg at the CEO’s feet. Surely it’s not that hard to understand that these days people work over the internet, play, watch movies, listen to radio, share their photos, have webcam calls, etc.
And no, I don’t live in Woop Woop.
After 7 years in the UK I’m finding the plans, caps, and prices back here abysmal. I had hoped that things had improved whilst I was away, – and the speeds have somewhat, but this graph puts it all in perspective nicely.
Roll on that venture capital PF!
I love that the Excel spreadsheet is from September 2008, since then, the caps haven’t changed but the connections are indeed faster. The spreadsheet is going to look even worse now.