[LINK] Oh dear (X2)

[stephen loosley]

Hello all,

Good on you Linkers.. so many sensible comments, thoughts, opinions etc
have been expressed, via link and privately, and each one of these replies
will be forwarded on to Stephen Lane who posted the original help request.   
If you have further advice for Stephen, perhaps you might email him directly.

Meanwhile, today he has posted a follow-up which might also be of interest.
--
From: "Stephen Lane" <mrlaneis@bigpond.com> 
Subject: Cable Modem Classic 
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 15:42:02 +1000 

Hello  <Note: Telstra logs snipped for mailing-list brevity purposes> 

I guess I will make this my last posting on this issue, although it is far
from over for me. I have received a breakdown from Telstra Advance, one
of the most beautifully ludicrous documents to pass by my email client :-) 

I include excerpts below and I have done this mainly because a few people
(well meaning, I know) have sent me emails about basic browser management
processes etc and I just want to let people know that (a) I basically know
what I am doing (well... except that I got a Telstra Cable service) and (b)
so people avoid making the same 'mistake'.

In a nutshell:

a) It appears Telstra have confused the data traffic between my conventional
modem and their cable, starting from the day off installation. I will need
to wait for my Big Pond breakdown before confirming how frequently this
occurred, however the data transmission records for the cable begins approx
1.5 hours before the cable modem was even connected.

b) If you connect a cable never sit down and read a page. The data below
shows what happens if you do. Approx .5 mg (43461 kilobytes) used between
looking at a single page of wired and deciding to visit ASH. At that rate
Telstra should advertise a maximum of 200 pages per month rather than 100 mb
per month

<log details snipped>

  c) Actually, you won't really get a whole 200 pages a month as it appears
that it also uses approx .5 mb to simply connect. Make that 100 pages a
month (and no email). However, that is when it is going well. On one
occasion it appeared to use 10mb to connect and open a page! (Annotation in
brackets are mine) See below for the connection process: <log snipped>

I rang Help to confirm the connection data usage about an hour ago, but was
told 'nobody could answer technical questions' and that I should email
support.  I am also charged for data sent as well as received, although that
is not entirely unheard of. I could go on (and on) but in a nutshell:

Their records appear to be wildly inaccurate.
It also appears to costs me more to connect (by data usage) than if I
dialled up using a conventional modem (Cable costs $50 for 100mb / .5 mb =
200 connections. A phone call is 15 cents x 200 = $30).   Their Help sucks.

Optus (I wish I knew this before) are bringing cable in in March. $69.95 per
month, no usage limit (either in hours or mb) and $200 for connection. This
works out considerably cheaper but it would appear it is too late for me.
The Telstra Ombudsman said there way no way out of the contract. I am a
heavy user of the net, nonetheless, using 88 mb in two days indicates an
outrageous approach to calculating data usage. Their records charge for
every single 'bit' that moves, including those tiny 'bits' like the data
that comes from them to me to say 'Ok...you are connected'.

My browser does not have settings 'on' for checking pages behind the scenes
(i.e.: it is switched off) so the data was neither the result of my browser
going crazy nor of file downloads (aside from pages and email). The data
usage results from Telstra methods of calculating transmission, combined
with inaccuracy.

Regards
Stephen Lane
email: mrlaneis@bigpond.com

--
Happy trails ..
Stephen Loosley
www.stephen.hm