> Well from the telstraclear website, there is no mention of
> differentiated international/domestic traffic. But here
> are the figures of these "low" data caps

Yes, they used to advertise it. Now they don't altho my
understanding is it still the case provided the traffic is
domestic. I heard TC were worried that people will complain
about being charged international rates for traffic which
should be domestic, which seems even more likely in the
future and I've heard they may just remove the
differentiation.

> These are the figures for residential cable modem high
> speed internet, fullspeed ADSL is in the vicinity of
> Jetstream pricing
>
> (note: prices are rounded a bit...)
>
> 2Mbps/512k, $50, 1Gb of traffic then $5 per 100Mb
> 2Mbps/512k, $70, 5Gb of traffic then $10 per 500Mb.
> 10Mbps/1024k, $150, 10Gb of traffic then $15 per 1000Mb.
>
> Compared to the newly announced jetstream plans which
> won't be available until the end of the month anyway,
> they're not too bad.

Not too bad but not too good either. I actually checked the
page just to make sure I was right b4 I posted so I'm aware
of their plans.

10mbit is very fast. But it's about double the price and the
only extra you get is the speed. Personally, 2mbit is
probably enough most of the time even for 3 users. Having
used Ihug Ultra for quite a long time with about 4 mbit I've
seen how nice extreme speeds is. But still I would def not
be willing to pay 2x more for 10mbit with the same data.
IMHO, 10gb is low for 2mbit let alone 10mbit. So I see it as
a low data cap. Even more so if they don't seperate national
and international.

> The 10Mbit/10Gb plan has been around for a few months,
> I've got a couple of geeky friends who are loving it,
> although they regularly exceed their 10Gb limit, compared
> to jetstream, $15/gb is peanuts.

Compared to the old JS it is. But it's still quite high IMHO
especially considering you paid double the new JS price in
the first place. Altho I like the idea of being able to pay
more for data, I probably won't especially if I'm already
paying $150/month but probably even if I'm paying ~$70/month
for JS.

Also, the new JS plan is 2 cents/mb if you want to pay
extra. This is nearly the same as the $9.95 for 500mb of the
2mbit 5gb TC cable plan! And you can use however much you
want with the JS plans, you don't have to pay for data
blocks first.

For the 10mbit plan, you'll have to pay $390/month before
you break even with the JS 2mbit plan with despite it's
slightly cheaper data cost (ignoring the higher speed)

So the TC plans, as they stand are IMHO clearly worse then
the JS plans (well due to the national differentation which
I believe still stands at the moment perhaps it's not so
clear) altho yes it was b4 Telecom and TC may respond with
lower prices and/or data cap changes.

But in any case, it's kind of irrelevant since I wasn't
suggesting Telecoms new plans were excellent. They are
better then TC cable at the moment IMHO but the best (altho
not by so much anymore) is still offered by WC ISPs.
Ezysurf's 2mbit for $109 and 20gb international (free
national) offers at least 10gb (the more national you use,
the more you get) more than the JS plan for ~$39 more (and a
lot higher upstream) altho it is still 5 cents/mb. If you
don't want so much data, you could go for Ihug's 1mbps plan
(slower than JS but maybe better esp if you use a lot of
national).

Hopefully now that Telecom is beginning to compete and as
more people get faster connections (and use more data), we
will see better things from all parties. This could be
greatly accelerated if Telecoms gets their act together and
offers real UBS with 2mbit...

P.S. Assuming you use the full 10mbps connection, you could
go over your 10gb cap in 2.5h...

P.P.S. I just realised Orcon is in even worse trouble then I
original though. Most people who do stick with their UBS
will be those who do expect to go over 10gb!

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