12 March, 2011
How great is broadband? We can download a song in under a minute, browse the internet like flicking through our favourite magazine, email friends the happy snap from last night’s party and conveniently buy from online retailers – but are you paying too much for this service and could it be faster? Chances are, that if you are with one of Australia’s largest Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) and you’ve been a loyal customer for a while now then you ARE paying too much! When you join up to an ISP you go on a particular broadband “plan” for a certain monthly fee. All broadband plans are rated at certain speeds – which are usually different for downloading (receiving) information or uploading (sending) information as well as monthly quotas for the amount of information downloaded/uploaded. However, due to competition for your hard earned dollar these plans are constantly getting cheaper. Many ISP’s will automatically upgrade you to either a cheaper plan or a faster / larger plan when they change their pricing, thus providing you a better service for the same fees or a similar service for less than you were previously paying. This is not the case with the most trusted and largest ISP’s in Australia and is a real consumer rip off (I hope I don’t get disconnected for this). But seriously it is like loyally going to the same servo for fuel each week and they keep you paying $2 a litre while everyone else has dropped back to $1.50 and they don’t ever change it unless you ask!!! If you have been on the same plan for the last 1 to 5 years you WILL be paying up to double what you should be! In this case you need to either call your ISP (make a coffee first) or manually log into a toolbox on their internet site (if you know your username and password) and change to a more economical or better plan. Be very careful of plans that will charge you extra if you go over your monthly quota, the best plans will be capped at a fixed price per month and may only slow your connection speed when you do exceed your quote (it will speed up again automatically in the next billing period). I have seen many customers’ bills for $1000 or more for the month when they were on a $40/month plan because their Granddaughter stayed for a week and downloaded just one movie or several hundred songs. Kerr Solutions is at 128 Musgrave Street & is contactable on 49 222 400.
