mobile broadband
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From: SolomonW on 1 Jan 2010 23:55 I do some travel in the bush. Because it is not continuous, I prefer to prepay my mobile internet. In every trip, I tend to use quite a bit. Now I am with Telstra mobile. I have no complaints about the service and/or the coverage, but I do find it expensive. It costs me between $60-$100 for each trip. At the end of the year after three or four trips I am up for $300. If I went with Optus, a year would cost me about $260. The problem is I am not sure if they have the coverage. If I go with Virgin mobile broadband, who claims to use the Optus network it would be about $150 a year. Anyone tried these in the bush and what do you think?
From: me here on 2 Jan 2010 02:19 SolomonW wrote: > I do some travel in the bush. Because it is not continuous, I prefer > to prepay my mobile internet. In every trip, I tend to use quite a > bit. > > Now I am with Telstra mobile. I have no complaints about the service > and/or the coverage, but I do find it expensive. It costs me between > $60-$100 for each trip. At the end of the year after three or four > trips I am up for $300. > > If I went with Optus, a year would cost me about $260. The problem is > I am not sure if they have the coverage. If I go with Virgin mobile > broadband, who claims to use the Optus network it would be about $150 > a year. > > Anyone tried these in the bush and what do you think? Try posting this question in Whirlpool discussions. They deal with broadband issues and generally give good advice. http://whirlpool.net.au/ Rob
From: Fred on 2 Jan 2010 06:58 SolomonW wrote: > I do some travel in the bush. Because it is not continuous, I prefer > to prepay my mobile internet. In every trip, I tend to use quite a > bit. > > Now I am with Telstra mobile. I have no complaints about the service > and/or the coverage, but I do find it expensive. It costs me between > $60-$100 for each trip. At the end of the year after three or four > trips I am up for $300. > > If I went with Optus, a year would cost me about $260. The problem is > I am not sure if they have the coverage. If I go with Virgin mobile > broadband, who claims to use the Optus network it would be about $150 > a year. > > Anyone tried these in the bush and what do you think? FYI Virgin Mobile Australia has been a wholly owned Optus subsidiary for a few years now. They license the Virgin name for marketing reasons. "The bush" is a big place but you will find Optus are well behind Telstra with coverage in remote areas. For instance I recently travelled the Stuart Highway. For much of it there is no mobile coverage at all. A few small towns have a Telstra tower which give about a 10km radius of reception. Only larger towns like Alice Springs have an Optus tower.
From: Don McKenzie on 2 Jan 2010 15:31 Fred wrote: > "The bush" is a big place but you will find Optus are well behind Telstra > with coverage in remote areas. > For instance I recently travelled the Stuart Highway. For much of it there > is no mobile coverage at all. > A few small towns have a Telstra tower which give about a 10km radius of > reception. Only larger towns like Alice Springs have an Optus tower. Yes, depends very much on which part of the bush you frequent. http://www.exetel.com.au/residential-hspa-pricing.php Exetel uses Optus, and appears to be currently the cheapest. You also get an updated 1762 modem, that has a connector for an external antenna, which I have used from time to time. I just did a trip from Adelaide to Darwin on the Ghan railway. (29-Dec-2009) Took a 10" netbook, a GPS, and the Exetel modem. Where I got good coverage, I was able to grab the co-ordinates from the GPS, and punch them into Google maps, for a precise fix on my location. The GPS worked all the way, the modem coverage was flimsy to say the least. We left Adelaide and lost it, picked it up at Port Augusta, and did a good video link with skype. It was fine at Alice and Katherine, and picked it up again coming into Palmerston on the outskirts of Darwin. There are a lot of spots that we passed through during the nights, that of course weren't tested. At Adelaide river, we got nothing. I knew we wouldn't, as I had driven there recently with an optus phone. So it was just the three towns we got coverage during the day, in nearly 3000 km of travel. We have broadband cable where we stay in Darwin, but the monsoon storm blasted the network 2 days ago, and we are running on the Exetel modem waiting for the network to be repaired. :-) But this is Darwin, so that's normal. No network, heaps of rain and lightning, and plenty of Crocs! Cheers Don... -- Don McKenzie Site Map: http://www.dontronics.com/sitemap E-Mail Contact Page: http://www.dontronics.com/email Web Camera Page: http://www.dontronics.com/webcam No More Damn Spam: http://www.dontronics.com/spam The World's First Large-Scale, Multi-User, Real Time System. http://www.dontronics.com/first_multi_user_real_time.html
From: Frank Slootweg on 2 Jan 2010 15:37
SolomonW <SolomonW(a)nospammail.com> wrote: > I do some travel in the bush. Because it is not continuous, I prefer to > prepay my mobile internet. In every trip, I tend to use quite a bit. > > Now I am with Telstra mobile. I have no complaints about the service and/or > the coverage, but I do find it expensive. It costs me between $60-$100 for > each trip. At the end of the year after three or four trips I am up for > $300. > > If I went with Optus, a year would cost me about $260. The problem is I am > not sure if they have the coverage. If I go with Virgin mobile broadband, > who claims to use the Optus network it would be about $150 a year. > > Anyone tried these in the bush and what do you think? Forget it with anything non-Telstra. While I did *use* Telstra, I often *checked* if there was any other coverage. There wasn't (except, as another poster mentioned, in *some* of the bigger towns). Just look at Telstra's coverage maps and those of others and you'll see for yourself. If you know, roughly, where you're going, you can pre-check on the on-line (with zoom) coverage maps whether or not there is coverage. There often is, also in small towns/communities, especially in/near Aboriginal communities. We did 14,000 km in 3 months, mostly 'dirt' roads, and non-Telstra just didn't exist, period. BTW, which bundle(s) did you use and how much did you use? |