Connectivity in .au - Help!
Wednesday, 3 January 2007
So, no that we have a place to live, there are a few choices;
Phone — Since we’re keeping jobs as well as friends and relatives in the States, we’re going to be making a lot of international calls. Rather than pay line rental, I’m very tempted to go the VoIP route with someone like MyTel; for $5.95 a month, I get a lot of features and calls to the US for less than AU$.03/minute.
Is this the way to go? Are there better VoIP providers? The traditional alternative is to go with Optus’ HomeOne + WorldSaver; for $65 a month, I’d get calls to the US for about the same rates.
Internet — There are lots of options in AU, but if we don’t have a traditional phone line, cable seems like the best option; with Optus (again; I’m not terribly inclined to give my money to Telstra unless it’s a much better deal), I’d get 20G of data (plus 40G more in the first 12 hours of the day, when I’m most likely to use it) for $69 a month. I know that cable is controversial (and maybe a bit unreliable) in the States; are the AU experiences good, or is the extra cost (i.e., access + phone line) of ASDL justified? We don’t need a tremendous amount of bandwidth, just reliability.
Mobile Phones — Right now we’re on Optus Prepaid (we have two unlocked phones), and somewhat happy; I’m planning to go to their Cap plans, with a bit extra for data. Any reason not to?
Cable — Foxtel seems like the only game in town; assuming that I use them for other things, one of the Optus packages seems to make sense.
Tivo Replacement — This is probably the most difficult. Foxtel has iQ, whose main problems seem to be a) cost and b) lack of program data for channels 7 and 10. I know about ozTiVo, but don’t really want to do the work; I try not to have to administer extra boxes at home. Anything else out there?
Any thoughts/advice/experiences/other options appreciated; we move in Friday.
9 Comments
Alastair said:
Thursday, January 4 2007 at 2:22 AM
Mark Nottingham said:
Thursday, January 4 2007 at 7:12 AM
Dean said:
Thursday, January 4 2007 at 9:06 AM
Phil McCluskey said:
Thursday, January 4 2007 at 9:24 AM
Dean Jackson said:
Saturday, January 6 2007 at 11:21 AM
spuds said:
Sunday, January 7 2007 at 11:19 AM
Adam Fitzpatrick said:
Monday, January 8 2007 at 1:31 AM
Luke Mewburn said:
Monday, January 15 2007 at 1:41 AM
Matthew said:
Monday, February 19 2007 at 8:16 AM