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Thread ID: 40710	2003-12-15 11:13:00	Why do NZ & OZ have bandwidth caps?	Mark Veldhuizen (2570)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
200826	2003-12-15 11:13:00	They seem to be the only countries that do, and defeat the purpose of having a fast internet (To download lots of big files). I live in France, limited bandwidth is unheard of. No company does it. Same with america. I know of nobody with capped internet except for australians and new zealanders. In france, if you go with AOL ADSL, the 512kbps version, with free modem/filters/etc costs 40 euros a month. That's 80 NZD. I don't know about 128kbps but it's a lot cheaper, but nobody really takes that. If you go with an ordinary ISP, like TELE2, the 512kbps ADSL, with unlimited bandwidth, 3 free filters, etc, it costs 25 euros, which is around 50 NZD. I have 512kbps and download between 50-100 kbps but almost always it is 60kbps. It only goes to 100 on Kazaa with autosearch and lots of users. 128kbps costs about 25 NZD I think. Anyway, America is the same, but even CHEAPER. And I thought this was normal, I mean capping internet usage? Not even 56k have that. So ADSL (or "JetStream") is worse than 56k, apart from the speeds, which you can hardly benefit from if you are worrying about passing your limit. I just want to know WHY nz & australia implement these insane bandwidth caps, when no other countries seem to do it. And New Zealand is supposedly one of the most INTERNET savvy, using people. Haw! I'm not trying to put the country down, New Zealand IS my country, but I have been in France for a year taking a break and have got ADSL, and I can't understand how it could be capped for NZers...	Mark Veldhuizen (2570)
200827	2003-12-15 11:30:00	Wow... makes you wanna learn French, pack up and head for the northern hemisphere! South Africa is way worse; you pay through the nose for connectivity over there! And pending where you lived you didn’t have phone lines some of the time, lines were swiped because of the copper inside! But I don’t have an answer to your question. And I don’t know if the ISPs do either. Maybe it’s got something to do with the sheer amount of people living in those countries that are wired. Companies charge a lot of people less rather than like here and Oz (comparatively small population) charging a few people a lot, for approximately the same service.	Stryker (4374)
200828	2003-12-15 11:47:00	Monopoly of the lines and profiteering is the 2 main REASONS until competition is allowed nothing will change	kiwibeat (304)
200829	2003-12-15 12:17:00	Because New Zealand currently does not have the facilities to provide faster internet to everyone. If you made a healthy enough donation I'm sure they'd get it sorted though.	-=JM=- (16)
200830	2003-12-15 18:44:00	Perhaps we need more high capacity cables to link to the rest of the world.	Terry Porritt (14)
200831	2003-12-15 19:00:00	I think we need a similar population ratio per square mile that they do in urbanised areas overseas so that would attract more providers to NZ and therefore force more competition and that would lower prices and possibly make uncapped usage possible. hang on................................................ ..... That would mean more crime, more pollution, heavier congestion, a greater rift between socio economic classes, land price increases, price food increases................. sam m	sam m (517)
200832	2003-12-15 19:47:00	Basically telecom are becoming monopolous, and are of the general feeling that they can beat anything else offered by competition because of their larger base already in New Zealand. There's precious little cometition for them, and really very small incentive for telecom to be semi-nice. Remember everybody thought there was going to be a 256kbps plan with 10GB data transfer (speculation), we ended up with a 500MB data cap instead. Guess who was pissed off...! I honestly dont know how any body who uses their PC semi-frequently could survive on that. Ive just sold and setup a new PC to a customer. I let him ring up and get the ADSL himself for his PC, we'd done everything else and I figured it would be a good learning experience. I told him this when he came into the shop the morning he was going to ring the ISP to get setup: "Whatever you do, do NOT let them sell you 'JetStream Home', or you will find yourself a VERY unpleasant bill at the end of the month". After 3 1/2 weeks, he came in yesterday and spoke to me, telling me how wonderful it had been that he'd been online "at the same speed as the cybercafe" (Yeah right buddy...). While he was in the shop, I gave him instruction on how to check his usage. I received a phone call later thatt day telling me he'd used 900MB international and 300MB National. This from somebody who does precious little more than surfing and emailing with the occasional video-chat on Messenger. He still had two weeks left on his Data cap, and when I explained to him what it meant in relation to his 10GB (international only) data cap, he was very thankful indeed! Its just disgusting if you ask me!	Chilling_Silently (228)
200833	2003-12-15 20:08:00	. . . . MARK? This is Zygar . See you found pressf1 .	Wilky (776)
200834	2003-12-15 20:15:00	NZ has plenty of high-capacity bandwidth to the rest of the world - it's the local infrastructure which is the problem . NZ is a small country by itself, but the relative population density shows that people are living very dispersed around the country . I have friends who moved to Taiwan, who pay about NZ$20 for a 512mb/s cable internet connection, uncapped, plus 300 channels of satalite TV . The reason those companies can afford to charge so less in those countries is because of the population density - 20 million people crammed into the size of Northland + Auckland, it means that less cable has to be run to get to almost every household in the major cities with ease . Also with so many customers, they don't have to charge as much to be able to make a profit .	somebody (208)
200835	2003-12-15 20:19:00	they only reason nz has caps is because telecom is greedy and owns all the lines :) in aus its funny cause telecom(NZ) is the little beat up guy and telstra owns all the lines and they have sam problem :(	Budda (2736)
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