New Zealand: Internet Dark Ages
31 May 2005Even before the I started using Safari 2.0, I was using RSS feeds to read the news and blogs. About a year ago, I started looking for New Zealand news feeds to add to my news category. I found none. One year on, and there are still none. New Zealand is living in an internet dark age.
Living without RSS feeds is okay though, I can deal with that. But when I move back I am not looking forward to the prospect of having to live with dial-up internet again. I haven’t even touched a modem cable in 4 years – since I left New Zealand. After doing a quick bit of googling, I can’t find any decent broadband deals in New Zealand. Everything is capped, and super expensive.
For example:
Xtra Broadband Adventure plan
“Up to 50x faster” than shitty dial-up (around the 2GB mark)
10GB capped traffic allowance (once you hit this you go back to dial-up speed)
NZ$69.95 per month
TelstraClear HighSpeed4 Flat Rate plan
2Mbps upstream
10GB capped traffic allowance (once you hit this you go back to dial-up speed)
NZ$68.95 per month
Xtra JetStream Venture Flat Rate plan
256kbs upstream (LOL!)
Unlimited traffic
NZ$99.95 per month
ICONZ DSL 4 plan
2Mbps upstream
10GB capped traffic allowance
NZ$64.95 per month
bliink (ihug) 2Mb lite plan
2Mbps upstream
10GB capped traffic allowance
NZ$59.95 per month
Those are the most pathetic excuses for broadband plans I have ever heard of. I thought New Zealand was trying to be “international”, but that is god damn backwards! I don’t know if they still do it, but some New Zealand ISPs used to separate out national and international traffic. ?!?!!! The internet is global, and there are only about 5 websites in the whole damn country! What the fuck is that all about?
For reference, in Houston, I was paying US$29.95 a month for unlimited 2Mbps DSL. In Manchester, I pay £37 a month for unlimited 1.5Mbps cable, which is being bumped up to 3Mbps for free in the coming months.
I guess this is why I only know about 2 people who have broadband back home.
P.S. Dear ISPs listed above – you are truly pathetic!
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Comments
The national and international used to get separated out because national traffic was much much much much much cheaper to provide than international. Like, national traffic is just about free.
Internationl traffic, on the other hand, is fairly expensive since it costs so damn much to run cables to NZ.
At home we use Telescum’s $69.95 “Adventure” plan which is capped at 10GB – but the cap doesn’t kick until about 17GB. Still sucks and is too expensive – especially when you’ve gotta have a $40/month phone line connected to get it…
I sent emails to all of the above ISPs basically asking to explain why the New Zealand broadband situation is so shit. I got an email from Xtra saying, THIS IS WHAT THE NZ PEOPLE WANT (no fucking lie!), and a brilliant from from ICONZ explaining the problem – which is basically that Telecom own too much of the hardware and force ISPs to have higher prices to cover what they have to pay Telecom to offer the service.
I think when I return to NZ I am going to have become a lobbyist for telecommunications deregulation.
tell me about it. it’s fucking depressing. i am on dialup for the first time in three years, because i live by myself now & there is just no fucking way i can afford to drop $70/month to use the internet properly. i will never be able to download music again at this rate. kill me now.
Here’s a laugh – At our small business we use telescum jetstream. We recently discovered a slightly better option where the adsl traffic is routed through a diffenet ISP. Think it’s called UBS or something. Anyway to change over to this other ISP we have to pay a churn charge of $NZ140! Apparently telescum charge it to the new ISP which we have to pay. No shit! telescum get you every way they can. How’s that for competitive?
Hrmm. What RSS feeds are you missing? How about http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/rss?pageId=0
I pay about $40 for cable from Paradise, + $10 for cable modem rental. It’s 2mb down/ 512k up, but I have a 1gb cap. I never reach it though and it doesn’t include national traffic as far as I can tell, which is probably why I never reach it. It seems ok.
By the way, I’m going to be in London for 5 days at the beginning of July. You should come say hi.
Sweet! Stuff.co.nz added (I thought I’d seen it before, but I couldn’t find it and they didn’t reply to my email).
London! I’ll come down!
Hello.
Telescum is truly shit.
I am on the 2mb connection about to go over my 10gig crap.
When I was in USA in 2003 we had 4mb/sec cable with no cap $30us/m
I am going back permanantly in October… fuck you telecom.
OK, smarty pants.
Most ISP’s can buy 1Mbps (yes 1) of International bandwidth linking NZ to the US for between $600 to $700* dollars per month. And that doesn’t even include getting it from the cable station to anywhere remotely useful. Add on top of that getting that bandwidth to your doorstep, plus all the costs involved in providing a service to punters.
Show me a plan to do that and still offer it to the punter at $30 a month and not lose your shirt and I’ll be impressed.
Who gives a fuck about how cheap it is in the US and UK.
a) There are more than 10 Million people there.
b) Other Countries pay to connect to them – not the other way around – do you see American ISP’s paying to get to NZ???
c) It’s really hard to change this dynamic.
Personally I appreciate your intent, but comparing NZ to the Continental US is non helpful. And the UK is no different.
*price to ISP’s who are not Telecom. And this is from an independent American Telco (i.e not Telecom or TelstraClear). This is no shit.
Actually, I give a fuck how cheap it is, also compared to other countries.
How can New Zealand be expected to embrace the digital age if it falls behind in Western standards in things such as the ability to connect to the internet? How can New Zealand companies compete with international companies like Amazon and various stores that offer their services online? The online store is something of a luxury in New Zealand, and this will not change without changes to the most basic part of the internet – your connection to it.
Also, the study that the New Zealand government commissioned in regards to deregulation was conducted by a company called Azimuth. They basically said deregulation wasn’t necessary. Guess who one of, if not the, biggest client of theirs is? Telecom.
yeah, but once you get past the Telecom hate – how do you solve the problem?
The problem is that as a nation we’re information consumers, not producers/providers. So the data flow is suck not push. As long as we suck, the economics will suck.
The fact that we’re at the bottom of the Pacific absolutely dominates the equation.
What we need to do is invent a reason for the world to connect to us. Not the other way around.
Messing around with the “Telecom is evil” argument is a waste of time. Even if we managed to make them less evil, we’d still be at the edge of the south pacific, and we’d still be sucking information. So things would still suck.
hey, so anyway, I sense your heart is in the right place, and I’ll stop rarking things up.
Fact of the matter is that you’re right. We are more expensive than the rest of the world.
But that’s a small price to pay for the beauty of our country. Fact of the matter is, if it was cheap, we’d be near the states, and that’d make us Mexico. Bugger that for a joke :-)
I am with you on this on animoller. The broadband plans here really are below standard. Population size has nothing to do with it. In fact comparisons to other countries are everything to do with it. All telecom need to do is offer a price that reflects their product. Data caps are bad enough, but the PRICES ARE TOO HIGH!.The internet has been established for long enough. This is not cutting edge stuff, its not rocket science, just roll out a better product Telecom. Slow speeds and overcharging is for Eastern block countries and the third world. I am on dial up for 16 $ a month and will stay there until the prices come down ( I had a 2 meg connection back in the uk for $50 a month).Being an electronic engineer, and having worked in telecomms for some time now, they do have plenty of good engineers and have the infrastructure to do this. It is similar to British Telecom some years back in the UK, and when NTL cabletel came in the co-ax gave them a kick up the arse. SORT IT OUT TELECOM, stop ripping off kiwi’s who deserve better!
we are at the bottom of the world ,but without cheap access to broad band video on demand and other new opertunities will not exist in new zealand rememder our broadband is shit and so are the wages
if i had NZ broadband, and was downloading constantely for an entire month, after hitting the standard 10gb cap, and dropping back down to modem speed. I wonder what the max data i could get downloaded in the month.
HEre in the uk, i reckon i how connection pulls down abotu 150-200Gb a month. I’m sure that that isn’t even possible in nz. bah.. i’m soooo never going back there until they sort this out.