Internet
New Zealand has a lot of things going for it, but internet access is not one of those things. Basically, you have three options for broadband access: ADSL, cable and wireless - I won’t mention satellite because that’s not really an affordable/usable option for us.
ADSL sucks, because the upstream speed is limited - to 128Kbit for affordable plans. But the biggest suckinesses of adsl are the bandwidth caps and being forced to sell your soul to Telecom: Because we’re so far away from the rest of the world, international internet access is expensive, which means that ISPs limit your monthly usage to, for example 15Gb, after which you pay extra or suffer slow as speeds. And you’re forced to get a Telecom account and a landline, even if you don’t want it. Just recently, legislation ordered Telecom to “unbundle the local loop”, so this will hopefully change in the future.
Cable is great, in theory, because you get mucho up- and downstream speed and you can use it for a home phone too, which means that you don’t have to deal with Telecom, and it’s cheaper. Unfortunately, Telstra/Clear, NZ’s cable provider, sent me a letter, two months after I asked to be connected, thanking me for my “recent inquiries” but it wasn’t commercially viable to connect us since we live too far away from their network. Bugger! Does it really take two bloody months to figure that out??
So, our next option was wireless - great in theory, but again, we live too far away and on the wrong side of the hill from their existing network. no go. A shame, because NZWireless looks like a decent company and I would’ve loved to be one of their customers. The guy that came to our place for a site inspection was friendly and knew what he was talking about.
So, unfortunately, our last option is getting an expensive, useless Telecom landline and finding a decent ISP - not an easy task because there are hundreds of plans and tens of isps.
So, still no internet at home…
