in the next few months i'm going to finally get broadband internet.

I'm going with Telstra, why you ask ? i don't know.

anyway it is either between adsl or cable.....now i want to know which is better: adsl or cable? and why?

i've looked up the prices for adsl and cable and cable seems cheaper and faster than adsl.

both are available to be connected in my area.

also when playing in gamearena does it eat into your quota? i have heard that it doesn't but i just wanna make sure. ;)

cable > adsl

k, can u guys give me a reason as to why cable or adsl is better?

go adsl

one good reason - pipe!!

3gb is not alot

I dont download anything ... yet all 3gb goes
Where .. i dont know!

I ONLY play on GA .. and I ONLY get demos etc off GA

If be absolutely f***ed without Gamearena...

okay okay, seems like mixed emotions.

with telstra adsl and cable, the prices are around the same amount and for the same cap.

as for what plan i'll be going on....it'll be the 500meg/month *laughs.
the main reason why broadband for me is that it actually works out cheaper than dial up. so hence the reason why the low cap.

and i'll only be using it for uni work and to play games on GA. so i SHOULDN't download too much.

Your wrong
I use it, every month

Newb!

500meg/month *laughs.

Asif bother
Dont come crying when you fly past that, and cop extra charges

check out iinet or internode

3GB is a joke Obes, no matter how you attempt to justify it. There is no point in having broadband with such an intense restriction placed on it.

I disagree, otherwise I'd have changed.

It's certainly unsuitable for some people, yet it's heaps for others - it's that simple really.

I dont understand people that want to go to telstra. Honestly, their pricing and service is complete crap compared to other providers.

Obes, you must have gay adsl then cause I came across from cable to adsl and cogs pings rock for me, and i have dl 9 gig this month so far. Cable is completly crap unless you are a business. Then I can under stand it for WAN and what not.
www.dart.net.au

Say to your parents "Telstra can charge us whatever the hell they like and we can't do s*** about it", then show them the Huge telstra bill threads on whirlpool, see how quickly they change their tune.
(I know thats an exaggeration, but the point is to scare your parents into opening their minds to other options)

Im on 3 gig telstra cable, and its "just" enough (for me), if there was an unlimited adsl with 150kbyte/s for ~$85, then i would probably swap, but as it is cable is just good enough that i cbf switching. And i know i would miss the dl speed i get from GA, but if i never had had cable i would probably go adsl.

I have cable and thats the way i like it, its good for games and gettin fast downloads, but with the 3gb limit all you have to do is lay low till last week of month then download as much as you want cause even if you go over the limit you only slow down to 28kb which doesnt effect gameplay much and will bak to normal the next month, point made

CABLE!

benneth, you are extremely naive to think that just because you havent broken 400mb on dialup, you wont break 500mb on adsl. i somehow manage to download 1.2gb a month with dialup, i could probably download 500mb in a matter of hours on adsl.

i recommend that instead of pissing your money up against the wall with telstra, you consider iinet bliink home 512, $80 per month, 16gb downloads, and you dont get charged if you go over. thats the plan im going to be on in a few weeks once i get all the installation hassles out of the way. you'll need to get either a line splitter installed, or use multiple line filters on your phones, if you have any on the adsl line.

as for the reliability of this deal, if you search for the thread about which broadband provider/plan is the best, you'll see that everyone who is with iinet has nothing bad to say about them or their plans.

thank you and goodnight.

He is talking about Telstra ADSL, get cable over ADSL, but getting an ISP like iinet, internode or netspace ADSL would be better, you 6gb+ cap for $75ish

cable

i have optus cable, my download speeds are high, it goes up to 1.2meg/sec sometimes, but on avg. 650k-800k, had no problems and get great ping, as for the 3gig cap/plan, i don't go over, so it is good for me, but i am no warze monkey..

if you are having a cry about the cap you can always go for a larger plan, ppfffttt... tight arses with money :P
like everything in life, you get what you pay for.

we have optus 3gig at our house...almost always go over by the 25th

No one downloads much, just irc/msn/web browsing and playing games a bit.

australian broadband is f*****g ridiculous

maybe you should be pooling your money for a better plan.

4 users plus "others" on a 3 gig plan and you wonder why you run out??? LOL!!

it is just me here using the 3gig plan and i have no worries.

so just pool your money and pay the extra for a bigger plan, ggeezzz, it doesn't take a mental giant to work that one out. :P

if you can't afford a bigger plan then bad fucing luck, lifes like that. :P

First up,

With Telstra, if for >>> ANY <<< reason, a lot of data should come down that wire; and just only once mind you, no second chance here boys and girls, then you are %100 comprehensively and totally f***ed for years to come. No room for error, do not pass go, its game over.

secondly,

Anything that adds up to a few hours full use a month is Bulls***t no matter what spin a marketing dept or apologist might try to put on it. The Internet is a very very big place and one day, one just might decide to venture out there for a good look. What a surprise there'll be on realising the "car" has only enough fuel to get out of the driveway.

And lastly for all those, "3GB is plenty for me so everyone else obviously doesn't need it either".
Go away until you can come back with an intellegent arguement, these pompass jokers should have stayed with dial up.

/end rant

Telstra Cable is currently the best broadband servie imo. 900K/s downloads from GA, 10-50ms pings to most aussie gaming servers and a huge free downlaod site.

We rearely go about 800meg here between 4 suers using it all day every day for surfing and email.

maybe you missed my point and i have to spell it out to you code..

i am not saying that 3 gig is suitable for all, i am saying that if your house uses more than 3 gig a month, then pay the extra money and get a bigger plan, is it really that hard to understand???

like, it is a basic maths thingy :/

Obviously you missed this bit Primal

Whilst i was happy with telstras service and would have been prepared to go on a higher plan, their pricing structure is ridiculous. Dont know if it still is like this, but it used to be cheaper to get two 3 gig plans then for one 5 gig, really makes no sense to me. I would have been happy to stick with them if they offered a reasonably affordable 6 gig plan, but as it was we were forced to change to a different dsl provider.

As above, if Telstra internet used a logical pricing model like pretty much every other service and the price/unit came down as you purchased more then i would have been happy to stay with them. Instead, they have some ridiculous model which basically encourages people to stay on the 3 gig plan and then they get to charge through the nose for excess usage.

Hence we did pool our money and switch providers and couldnt be happier with the move.

yeah, i agree with the whole "go adsl but with a different provider" idea

firstly if ur only gonna download <500 a month (as uve said u wouldnt) then u arnt gonna notice a slightly slower download speed for documents, images etc - another point, if u get a isp with pipe, then ull have a way to download almost as much of the stuff as GA has via all the different ISP ftps
pipe also lets u use any pipe enabled isp to play games on their server too, so ull end up with a s***load of free game servers as well

secondly, most other adsl providers are cheaper then telstra, for as good as, if not better service, and a much bigger download limit, plus usually a few email boxes, webspace (not sure on what telstra offers in this department)

thirdly, if for one day u want to download a really big movie - for example - any E3 videos of upcoming games, (HL2, Doom3, Halo2 the list goes on) or a host of trial products for school (macromedia, adobe etc) then if ur stuck on 500mg limit ull find it very hard to stay under for the rest of the month HOWEVER with another adsl isp then as said above ull have plenty of breathing room to download stuff at will (well as long as u stick to legal stuff...ull prolly go over if u start to stray to warez, so thats just another reason not to download em) but yeah, as ppl have said before, no matter what u think - 500mg wont last long, and its a lot better getting a bigger plan from the start and not getting a HUGE bill from telstra for having gone a gig over the limit or something


there are a lot of other things that adsl are better then cable with, such as free uploads (putting stuff onto other ppls ftps etc), pipe (already mentioned), easier/cheaper installation - uses normal phone line ports but yeah


cable on the other hand is very fast, doing 1mg in about 1-2 sec from most local sites, but unless u can really justify that extra speed its not really worth it - im on 512 adsl, and forums load instantly, photos have loaded as soon as uve finished looking at the previous one etc, so the cable speed imo isnt needed as much as a bigger dl cap (but then i dont play as many games as other ppl so they might be able to tell u theres a bigger difference there, im not sure)

im sure there was prolly something else i was meant to mention, but ive forgotten it by now :S anyways - good luck with whatever u get, in the end uve gotta choose what suits u the best, however take other ppls opinoins in hand tho cause theyve been there and done that

ps - if u get adsl then make sure u know exactly what u need for extra phones etc - u need a line filter for any other phone etc - if u have any trouble working it out post on here again and ppl will know