Aussie ISP’s Suck

When I first got onto the internet dialup was king, the information superhighway was a twinkle in someones eye and broadband wasn’t even a word (it still isn’t). The slow speeds made me hesitate with every mouse click because I was constantly concerned about the amount of time it would take for wherever that click lead.

You see, I was quick to realise that the internet held more content than I could ever hope to possibly digest in my lifetime, and as there were only so many hours in the day that I could devote to it I had to choose wisely to make the best use of the time I had.

Later came ADSL and I was quick to jump on that bandwagon, constantly bugging Telstra to make it available in my area. They promised the amazing speed of 512KB/s and I was hooked. They had me at 51. I remember that even though I’d been so excited to get it I’d thought it would only mean I can download faster, but was more than just a speed increase – it changed the way I consumed the internet.

Content that I used to pass over because it would simply take too long to download to be worthwhile was now fair game and if the download I wanted was huge but I still wanted it, an always connected internet meant I could set it to download and forget it until it was done. I remember that time fondly because, despite various teething problems, it opened my eyes to what was possible on the internet.

But things were not to be. Telstra performed an abrupt about-face regarding their ‘unlimited’ internet (technically the speed was artificially capped, unlike Optus’ offering). They would introduce download limits, claiming that 10% of users caused 90% of traffic and that these 10% were making the performance worse for everyone else.

During the dialup days  the data bottleneck had been our measley modems, but the advent of broadband shifted the bottleneck to ISP’s because, and I know this might seem crazy, for one reason or another they didn’t expect that people might like to make full use of the service they’d had sold to them.

In Telstra’s case, they sold speed limited ADSL accounts (a practise they continue to this day). So, knowing how many of the various speed accounts they had sold and with customers not able to exceed their purchased speed, I am confused over how exactly it is any one customers fault. Even if 10% of users were causing 90% of the traffic, they’re not using anything more than what Telstra sold to them. In what other industry can you buy something and then be told by the very same people who sold it to you that you are not permitted to use it to it’s fullest capacity?

In a massive PR campaign that continues to this day Telstra very cleverly branded this 10% of their own customers as selfish bandwidth hoggers, shifting the blame from the poor performance of their service to the very people who pay them. What’s worse is that seeing Telstra could get away with it, all other ISP’s in Australia followed suit with similar download limits. Optus, the good-guy of the time, were Telstra’s main competitor during this period but even they eventually succumbed to the temptation of download limits after trying out an extremely vague ‘fair use’ policy.

In all fairness to Telstra, along with every ISP in the world massively over-subscribing their service (creating more bandwidth demand than supply exists for), it’s reasonable to expect that consumer accounts won’t be in use 24/7 and their pricing is set at a point comparable to their expected use, so it is ridiculous to suggest that they should have the full bandwidth they’ve sold to their customers available. Even telephone and mobile networks function on limited bandwidth.

The practise of enforcing download limits began with charging users for any data they downloaded or uploaded. During this time stories were everywhere about people receiving bills from Telstra in the thousands due to the extremely high data rates for people exceeding their limit.

Later on tools were introduced that made it so users could track their usage and know when they were approaching their limit, and even later changes were slowly made so that instead of charging people exhorbitant fees for any data they transferred over their limit, the speed of their connection would be capped instead (I don’t know who was first to start this practise but it is much better).

For a very long time Australia has been unique in the world with download limits, but the idea is becoming popular internationally (along with blaming 10% of customers) so I expect it, like the very popular internet censorship, will spread shortly.

Understand me when I say this: I absolutely hate the fact that I am having to go back to Australia and face all of this shit once more.