So in Australia, the internet is controlled by the omnipotent phone company that owns the phone lines and exchanges throughout the country, the evil SuperDuperMegaUltraCorporation known as Telstra, and they limit the speeds of all ADSL to a maximum of whatever they feel like, currently around 2Mbit, so as to be bastards to all, as is their wont.
But my ISP has a cunning plan. They have created their own nodes within the exchanges using their own DSLAM equipment, bypassing most of Telstra’s direct influence, therefore allowing superduper speeds to those who sign up with them. So far they’re the only ISP who has managed to achieve this within Australia, which is a lucky coincidence for me as originally I only signed up with them on a random whim.
Only last week, after mucho work being put into my local exchange, they had new DSLAM equipment installed that I have now been migrated onto, and I now have ADSL2 speeds - that is, up to 12Mbit download, 1Mbit upload.
If that wasn’t absurdly excessive enough, just yesterday I received an email from them to say that due to some trickledown from Telstra, they have been forced to increase their charges, so they decided to increase everybody’s speed potential to ADSL2+, which is up to 24Mbit!!!
Who the hell can get 24Mbit speeds from anybody? I sure can’t, the best I get is 3Mbit from the US, and maybe 10Mbit locally. But there it is anyway, the seeming unlikely possibility of 24000kbps.
I have no idea what I will do with it. Apart from boast.
What ISP are you with? I’m intrigued by your needlessly fast connection speed.
Incidentally (as a bit of backstory for those unfamiliar with Australia’s telecommunications industry), Telstra control internet access (and indeed, most telecommunications within the country) largely because they own almost all the physical infrastructure (that is, the copper phone lines and fibre optic cables). They then lease access to the network to various ISPs, for a cost, etc etc. The main problem is that Telstra also, alongside providing access for ISPs, also directly sell Internet plans to the general public. They got in trouble last year for selling it to their domestic customers cheaper than their business customers.
ADSL2 is also out in the UK. You have to be very close to the exchange for the higher speeds. I’m currently on cable, not ADSL, with NTL, and get 10Mb/sec.
Just out of interest Guanolad, what speeds are you actually getting?
You can check out download speeds from here OzBroadband.
I’m also with iinet and live about 1.5kms from the exchange, which gives me an actual download speed around 690KB/s according to the link I just provided.
I’d check with iinet because if you can get broadband at all, there’s a decent chance you can get iinet which is running different architecture to Optus.
