Cable Internet users angry again
Summary Description Big Pond Advance customers are disgusted by poor performance, especially in gaming, but Telstra is denying any problems.
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Roullas Top10 Simon Vandore

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Editorial InformationArticle Location
Article Topic Special Report
Story Order
Story Group 000730
Post Date 28/07/2000 08:13 AM Status Posted Entered by Simon Vandore on 27/07/2000 01:12 AM


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Content
Introduction
Complaints from users of Telstra's Big Pond Advance (BPA) cable Internet service have been flooding into Newswire, but the company denies there is a problem.

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The unhappy customers are mostly from Brisbane. Many are online gamers, who are often the first users to complain when network performance is poor as they rely on fast response times for smooth gameplay. But apart from a 'load-balancing problem' over the last few days, a Telstra public affairs spokesperson said he was aware of no issues affecting cable Internet users.
The Telstra spokesperson explained that a load-balancing problem meant that too much traffic could end up passing through one part of the network, overloading it. He said this problem is now completely fixed.
Customers of Big Pond Advance, which was launched in mid-1998, pay about $70 per month for broadband access to the Internet over Foxtel cable. Many are locked into 18-month contracts with Telstra, which also involve the purchase of a cable modem. However, the unhappy users report ping times of between 200ms and 600ms to Telstra's own routers, in situations where a much cheaper dialup modem account might generate results of under 150ms (the lower ping times are better). Some attached connectivity test results in support of their claims.
"It is amazing how much money we're paying a month, to get one of the worst-quality connections I have ever had," said one Victorian user, Lee Cook. "The staff of BPA have been friendly, but as far as being helpful, I may as well have asked my catatonic neighbour . . . High speed for what? A snail?"
"If this is what BPA calls fixed, then I think they had better change the details on their page," he said, quoting Big Pond's official site which claims that "Once you experience the speed, you will never want to go back to dial up."
"This is supposed to be high-speed Internet," wrote an irate Brisbane customer, Vaughan Williams. "The one and only reason I signed up for cable Internet was that Telstra said it was much better than a dialup account. I cannot get any answers from them."
"The service in just the last few days has degraded even further, yet Telstra is still connecting people to the cable network," Williams added. "Telstra is upgrading Sydney so the infrastructure is in place for the Olympics, as they would look like a joke to the rest of the world if they had to put up with the service we recieve in Brisbane."
Andrew Gerrand, who said he'd used Big Pond Advance for about two years, said he had recently noticed packet loss of up to 50% during peak usage times.
"I suspect that this is due to the much higher number of users since the flat-rate plan was introduced, and that they were ill-prepared to cater for so many," Gerrand said.
"Online gaming is nothing short of impossible during peak times," commented one of the gamers, describing the service as an 'atrocity'. Meanwhile, some newer customers reported they had to wait three weeks for a modem after signing up for the service, as import supplies had run dry.
Simon Wright, owner of long-running Australian cable Internet users' site, Whirlpool, said both BPA and its rival Optus @Home had suffered mysterious periods of poor ping performance for many months.
"Whatever is causing this, it's clear both cable networks have serious problems somewhere along the line," Wright said. "Unfortunately as blind consumers we have no real way of determining the source of the problem . . . But the evidence speaks."
Whirlpool displays average ping times to Australian and US destinations for both BPA and Optus @Home on its home page. Wright said there is also a long-running issue with packet loss between BPA's Sydney and Melbourne points of presence, which had drastic consequences for users of Telstra's Wireplay online gaming service (to which free access is provided as an incentive to join BPA), as Wireplay's servers are hosted in Melbourne.
Earlier this week, Wireplay customer service informed users via its message board that BPC would be undergoing router upgrades in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, in that order. It appears that Brisbane users, regarded on the message boards as being most in need of an upgrade, then started emailing journalists.
This is not the first time BPA users have mounted a media campaign against the service. In December last year, following hundreds of complaints and the closure in protest of Wright's Whirlpool site, Telstra backed down on its plans to charge for traffic on its internal network that had previously been free. Again, this had affected gamers who had become accustomed to using the service as a huge LAN (local area network) for speedy online gameplay without incurring extra bandwidth costs.
Many said they would switch to Optus @Home when it launched at the start of this year, but were disappointed when that service was not available in their area, and not offered to multiple dwelling buildings (blocks of flats and semi-detached residences). The next option for these broadband users may be ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) connections, soon to be available from a number of providers in metropolitan areas. However, ADSL users must be within about a 4km radius from their local telephone exchange.
Meanwhile, both BPA and Optus @Home have announced additions to their 'acceptable use' policies, placing caps on the amount of data a customer may transfer over a set period of time, leading to more protests from customers who claim the limits are too severe.
Yesterday afternoon, BPA users were still reporting problems. However, just before this story went live, some Wireplay users from Queensland reported that an email had arrived, promising to bring forward the Brisbane router upgrades to August 3. Further emails to Telstra from Newswire yesterday went unanswered.


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Bulletin SummarySpecial Report: Cable Internet users angry again
Complaints from users of Telstra's Big Pond Advance (BPA) cable Internet service have been flooding into Newswire, but the company denies there is a problem. The unhappy customers are mostly from Brisbane. Many are online gamers, who are often the first users to complain when network performance is poor as they rely on fast response times for smooth gameplay. But apart from a 'load-balancing problem' over the last few days, a Telstra public affairs spokesperson said he was aware of no issues affecting cable Internet users.

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Special Report: Cable Internet users angry again

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