At 02:09 p.m. 15/03/2006, you wrote:
>Well I got an email from Orcon today laying out the new plans. It seems that pretty much everyone who has received these emails is getting less service for the same price they were paying before.
>
>For example, a friend on their uncapped 256kbps plan has been moved to a 40GB capped 256kbps plan (they're living in a flat and normally transfer more than 40GB per month)
>
>For me, I was on the 2mbps autosense, so the frst 1GB for $39.95 then $10 for every block of 10GB after that, and I normally do between
>1GB-11GB, so normally pay $49.95 per month.
>
>The new Orcon autosense plans charge $10 for 5GB of traffic (and somehow that's an 'improvement' ?), but they've increased the 'free' portion a little to compensate.
>So my new plan is 2mbps autosense, first 4GB for $39.95, then $10 for every 5GB.
>In other words, If I download between 9 and 11GB in a month, I'll be paying $10 more than I did previously.
>
>
>Or.. I could change to Surfer Medium, which gives me 3.5mbps/128kbps, but has 10GB included for $49.95, so 10GB of traffic on this plan is in fact cheaper (and faster) than the same 10GB of traffic on the surfer light plan above.
>
>But at 3.5mbps, I expect the contention ratio will be so bad that they'll perform no better than 2mbps plans.
>
>What I'ld actually like would be 2mbps down, 512mbps up, so that my ssh sessions to work aren't so damn jerky.

AFAIK, the contention ratio for Telecom/Xtra customers for the 3.5mbps is 148:1. Not sure if this applies to UBS as well.

Anyway although I moved away from Orcon a while ago due to the cheaper price for high data usage plans on Ihug and looking at the new plans, I have to agree they are rather disappointing. Interestingly Orcon has bettered most of Telecom/Xtra's new plans again except for Telecom's Pro and Pro Advanced where Orcon is only able to offer 9 gb and 19 gb (both via autosense) instead of 10 gb and 20 gb that Telecom offer for the same price and speed.

The CC have told Telecom they can't prevent ISPs who accept their offer seeking or supporting regulation as they have tried to do, so I guess this means Ihug are probably going to accept Telecom's new offer. Although I think the CC did the right thing here, it's probably going to turn out worse for me. I too desperately want higher upstream even though I'm running m0n0wall with traffic prioritisation. I also don't really care much about 3.5mbps cf to my 2mbps. But it sounds as if it will come at the expense of my current 40gb/40gb plan (or an increase in price) which I believe was already making little money for Ihug in any case. Which is a worse outcome for me. I guess Ihug may be forced to end their free upstream too...

I find the CC a bit bizarre though. IIRC, Telecom made the same restriction last time when they launched UBS which is why all ISPs eventually abandoned seeking a regulated service except for TelstraClear but the CC didn't make any noise then? What gives?

I can't wait for the middle of the year. At least we'll know whether we can expect something decent or we're going to get screwed over again...

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