[chrismorgan]

I use amaysim’s 50GB data pack, at $65 for 28 days, and on the Optus network. In the country town of Stawell (a few thousand people), I get roughly 23/12Mbps. I’m moving to Navarre soon (about a hundred people), and get about 45/15Mbps there.

For me, living by myself and working from home most days, it’s substantially better than ADSL2+, as it’s faster, more reliable, doesn’t lock me into any contract, allows me to use my internet supply from other places as well, all for the same price as ADSL2+ (which is admittedly generally $10–20 per month dearer in the country for a given service level, and at this price point would include 100GB instead of my 50GB, but I simply don’t need that).

This arrangement works well for me.

[brad0]

Hey Chris, I just moved from Ararat. I never would have expected to see another regional western Victorian on HN!

For reference, Stawell has a population of 6,000 while Ararat is about 8,000. The towns are approx 30 minutes drive distance away. The world is smaller than I thought.

In Ararat it’s almost better to go with 4G. While you get decent caps (1000G/m for AUD$90) the problem is that the internet drops out every time it rains.

I can’t imagine running a business that requires internet access in regional Australia, good on you for finding a way!

[chrismorgan]

I grew up in Melbourne, but preferred the idea of living in the country, so I made it so. (I’m employed by FastMail and head into the office every couple of weeks or so; I told them of my plan to move into the country before they hired me.) When I was first planning it, I had been considering NBN essential, but shortly before actually moving here it occurred to me that regular 4G was actually quite suitable—better than ADSL2+, a test rapidly revealed. My experience with about five months of depending on 4G in Stawell is that apart from a period of about five days where the supply was dodgy (mostly usable, but no more), the Internet supply is at least as reliable than I ever got from ADSL2+ in two locations in Melbourne—where running a ping all day typically has zero packet loss. And ADSL2+’s reliability was never superb.

Your 1TB/$90 and rain dropout refers to ADSL2+, does it not? I haven’t noticed any problems with rain and haven’t seen any caps anywhere near that high on 4G.

Well, now I’m buying in Navarre, which isn’t covered by NBN at this stage (hence it wasn’t in my initial dragnet) but does have an Optus 4G tower, and thus great internet supply.

[brad0]

You're right, I was using ADSL2+ and we were connected to a pillar where we were the only ones using it (50 pair). We reported a fault but rather than fix the problem properly they just hooked us up to another pair. The justification was "well you'll have NBN soon".

Gee, I can't wait...