I've been with maxnet www.maxnet.co.nz for years, they have alwways been very very good. The main reason I started, was their family filter but since then I have always been so happy with outstanding service. I recommend them big time!!!!!!!

Ray

I'm with Orcon. What used to be a great ISP has degenerated badly in the last few months. It's now characterised by very poor speeds, and even poorer service.

I'm with paradise. The speed is painfully slow in comparison that what users get overseas. Service is medicore. Overall not all that happy with my ISP

I'm sure that TelstraClear could be done for fraudulent advertising for using the words "customer" and "service" in the same sentence. There are only so many hours of piano muzak in a day. This has been the case for a long time and the only thing staff seem to be trained in is lying about the reasons why. I'm NOT HAPPY.

Hi:

A couple of things -

1.) I'm currently on Orcon's Broadband. I've been with them since 'the beginning' when they first started on the scene and nobody knew about them. They've come to represent the underdogs to me. However like the above comments regarding TelstraClear, the part that lets them down is their service. Dont' get me wrong though, when you do get through they're exceptional useful and helpful and I've never had a huge stuff up. But even in off-peak/no-trouble-on-the-network times you'd be looking at close to 20 minutes on a queue. But they've given me exactly what I've paid for and I've found them quite good.

2.) Your article mentions a TelstraClear Cable plan called 'High Speed 40G' for 44.95? Could you please tell us where to find this? I'm guessing it's in a package with a phoneline etc. I've searched TelstraClear's site high and low and although I can find 'High Speed 20G' there's no 40G option, much less one at 44.95, package or no package.

Many thanks,
Hannah

We have 2 full speed plans into our Computer sales/servicing shop. One for the workshop (Orcon) & the other used for Internet cafe use (our local ISP). Even though the phone lines are physically identical & go through the same exchange the Orcon connection is by far the quickest, both up and down.
When customers ask who to use we point them at Orcon

Now I may be a tad sarcastic Xtra customer but I am not a happy broadband camper and whilst I have to fight all the males in the house to use the internet what I dont expect to fight is slow download speeds and "timeouts" all the time. Xtra is our nemisis and if me and my boys had our way we would be getting the Silver Surfer to kick some Xtra Ass.

It is unacceptable and makes gaming a demeaning experience with the slow ping rate.

What NZ needs is choice and a free competitive market, this should be driven by central government with all of the hardware laid down so that we can be an upto date and technological savy society. Forget about TG3 and other mobile phone speeds lets get basic internet working at speeds Hal would be proud of!!

My previous ISP was Xtra and have recently joined Xnet (World Exchange). The service I got from Xtra was pretty good but the reason I left them was that their plans didn't offer enough flexibilty. I found that Xnet offered a good base rate ($33.95) and charge 0.1c/MB for full speed down and 128k up. I added $8.05 to the base rate or $42 in total with it capped at 7.86GB. If I use less than that you are only charged for what you use (plus the base charge).With Xtra you can either have a 5GB plan at $49.95/mnth or 10GB (which I had) for $59/mnth - nothing in between and invariably used much less than 10GB but still got charged for the full amount. So far I am getting faster dnload speeds (4.5Mbps - 5.2Mbps) and got excellent service when I changed ISP's.

XTRA TELECOM

X trememly slow
T IRED hardware
R EALLY piss me off
A AAAAGGGHHHHHHH

T ERESSA (who)
E GOCENTRIC
L UDICROUS SPEEDS
E LEPHANTS move quicker
C USTOMER FRIENDLY (joke)
O MY BROADBAND SUXXXX!!!
M ARKETING CONFUSION (wot)!

I'm content (not happy) with my Xtra Braoadband plan at the moment. As with most other customers, exchange overloading that slows me down to almost dial up speeds means that I try and restrict my useage times to when I know I have the best chance of a speedy connection. I hate receiving emails from family and friends in Europe who pay a lot less and have consistently high connection speeds. They can't believe the restrictions and costs we have to put up with. I was an early adopter of broadband and was extremely happy in the begininng, now I laugh when I see the adverts (qualified with fine print) suggesting downloads speeds that I can only dream about.

I'm an unhappy slingshot customer.

In April I changed from dialup to broadband on a "try broadband at your dialup price for three months offer."

The "free" modem arrived after a couple of days - but it was incorrectly configured. It took 4 calls over 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon to resolve the problem. The first support person should have been able to resolve the problem. The waiting time for a real person is too long with Slingshot's 0800 number.

The modem was supposed to be free - nowhere in any fine print on Slingshot's website does it say that "Free" means you pay the freight. Despite what they say there sales person didn't say it either. Eventually I got a credit for the freight - by being a very grumpy customer.

The next problem is ongoing. Each time I have been invoiced they've forgotten about their offer & I've had to ask for another credit for the difference between dialup & broadband price.

The broadband connection, in rural Canterbury, is great. It is a shame that Slingshot's service & tech. support sucks so badly.

Okay, I know your article was about the larger full speed plans but not even a passing mention to the Xtra Go Express plan which is full up and full down with a 2Gb cap. Okay not everyone would be happy with that low cap but it suits me fine. As does any question of being able to get hold of the help desk without the message I got last time I tried to ring Telstra for my sister (average wait time is 80 mins+). Lets face it every one has an "off day" but she said that's a standard wait period in her experience. I've been with Xtra since I first started - first on dialup then on BB when it finally arrived where I am. I prefer a help desk that is available 24/7 and have actually had almost instant acess (depending on when I ring). One thing I have found out is that if you chose the wrong option on the 0800 number you will end up in the "broadband billing" team - and these are not the technical help members so get a little lost if you fling a technical question at them. Having said that they can sometines supply a non tech reason for a problem and help get it sorted quicker.
And just another tack on the end - how come Telecom is expected to upgrade the country's Broadband system single handedly just so all the other ISP's can get access without the millions of dollars to get it up and running. Maybe if ALL the ISP's put in the pot to get the country wired then we'd all get quicker BB - well - quicker :-)

Everyone is forgetting that the present broadband problems really kicked in after telstraClear forced telecom to offer unconstricted broadband. Until then, even though those on 256 and 2mb plans were slower, the connection had guts, unlike now. TelestraClear's part in this fiasco should not be ignored or forgotten. I personally am delighted that their PDQ plans got affected and turned to custard,just like everyone elses. I don't blame telecom for not wanting to spend Billions on upgrading their network just so that the opposition companies can piggyback basically for free and reap the benefit of Telecom's investment.
I am with Xtra and have been since the early 'Jetstream" days. i am presently on the "Go large' plan and will resist all efforts to get me off. It really is, pretty damn good these days now that so many user's have jumped ship. I kinda think that many may be regreting their hasty moves!

Your survey is timely considering my most recent experiences with Telstra Clear.
The service is in Wellington, 10GB of traffic per month with 2MB up and down speeds for $39.95. The up and down speeds are always within a few kbps whenever I’ve tested it. The service is good and reliable, but it’s their support when things go wrong that lets Telstra Clear down.
On May 16, after requesting a name change on the account, internet services we cut by the ISP to the household. It took a total of 10 hours on hold and speaking with call centre staff testing and re-testing before they’d admit the fault was actually theirs. The total time before restoration of the service was 7 days.
That’s 10 hours on hold (between 2 people) and 7 days with no service!! They are yet to admit just what they did, nor have offered a compensation package. Their call centre system let them down on numerous occasions by cutting me off. And, ‘booking in return calls’ was ineffective as you never received return calls. A number of requests to the on-line help area (really hard to do when you have no internet by the way!) were not fruitful either. In fact, the thread started on May 23 which basically asked for a ‘fix by the end of the day’ or my account will be closed has still not been acknowledged.
It would seem Telstra Clear’s Customer Service Centre is a multiple armed beast with nothing connecting any of those arms together.
For me, all things lead to the requested name change on the account, which is still yet to be carried out by the way! It would be courteous of them to at least admit the fault, and that there is no way it could happen again. This kind of time wasting could bring the nation to its knees if a small percentage of it had to spend as much time as I have trying to get it resolved.
I now believe that the term ‘Customer Service Centre’ is an oxymoron.

I'm using TelstraClear/Paradise PDQ, and as far as speeds go it's generally pretty good. I get around 6 Mb/s downstream and 600 kb/s upstream within NZ, so everything zips along nice and quickly. Lots of foreign sites (such as Microsoft) also perform quickly, however some other sites crawl along at less than 1 Mb/s. I don't know whether this is TelstraClear's problem or simply the network into NZ.

I do have a few reliability issues, the free modem (a Dynalink RTA1320) crashes several times per week so I went back to my old modem (also a Dynalink, an RTA020) which is more reliable but still crashes about once a fortnight. Dynalink's support is nonexistent; I've emailed them twice and received the "we will reply within 24 hours" auto-response, but in both cases I never heard back.

In addition to modem problems, sometimes the DSL line will just drop completely, sometimes for a few hours at a time. Again, I don't know whether this is an ISP issue or an exchange issue (I'm on the Whakatane exchange).

I'm happy with the pricing, it's good to be able to download as much as I like without being subject to speed caps.

I have been with XTRA since the freebies (Freenet/ZFree) disappeared and can honestly say I have never had any issues with them or the service they offer. I get around 4.3Mb/s down and 124kb/s pretty much all the time. It hurts if I go over my (10GB) limit and get dropped back to 64kb/s but even then, they don't always throttle it.

I'm with KOL. The main reason being that I had dial-up with them, and didn't want to change email addresses AGAIN. $40 a month for 10 gig, uncapped speeds down, and 128k up. $10 for another 5 gig after that. I live out in the wops, and still get about 3800kbps down on a good night, and about 160k up?? Go figure.... anyway.. its not too much slower on a bad night. To get $10 off the plan, you have to get their tolls, which SUCK. However this was remedied by getting a kia ora phone card... 5c a minute anywhere in NZ. I can handle that. I'm pleased with KOL, their helpdesk is friendly and generally speaks english =)... the only ISP i would rate higher in NZ would be Orcon. KOL is a small offspring of Orcon anyway.

I'm on Xnet's max down/max up (Flood) plan. The speed is great most of the time (over 6Mbps down/700Kbps up on NZ speedtests), although my exchange has started to become congested recently with speeds occasionally dropping to about a third of what they normally are between 6 and 10pm.

The help desk is extremely.....helpful. Any problems/questions are dealt with efficiently.

Other benefits include not having to pay extra for using a different tolls provider, no fixed term contract and free backup dial up account for when you aren't using/can't use your broadband connection.

WHERE can you get TelstraClear's 40G High Speed plan for $44.00??? URL please!

I have been with XTRA since they started supplying Broadband.

The speed is so variable and their response to concerns almost non-extistant. Customer service does not come into consideration.

I am getting fed up with them telling me that the issue is my Cisco 827 Router; it is not. The other solution they give is to change plans for an extra 60% per month to get the 12GB monthly download traffic we use.

I am now actively looking for alternatives.

I haven't tried any full speed plans, but I can safely say that I've been very happy with my 256/128k connection with Xnet (www.xnet.co.nz) for the past two years or so. Excellent service, consistent speeds, a monthly contract and no extra $10 for them not being you toll provider are what have kept me with them.

Besides this we have a Wired Country 2M/256k at work. It is also very reliable with no dropouts at all and speeds always remain above 100KB/sec

I'm currently with Xnet.

I went to them after leaving Quicksilver as they were a better deal bandwidth wise.
For $10 I got twice the bandwidth than QSI.

I'm on a FS/128 plan.

Speed wise, I seem to get a minimum of around 50 kbps, which is adequate for me.

I've seen my bandwidth jump to around 400 kbps at around 10pm-ish. Quite unusual for that time of the night,

One of the other reasons I switched is because I actually speak to a person who is actually alive and is not someone with a falsetto accent. Their helpdesk is chatty and friendly.

Though on the downside, I seem to be having frequent random disconnection issues after around 6pm or so which I still have not gotten around to asking Xnet about.

Shame on you! Nowhere on your list did I see anything about Xnet!
A Max/Max plan with 15GB can be had for $65.31. And as they charge per megabyte (0.1c/MB), if you don't reach your cap, you don't get charged for the data that you don't use.
And if you reach your cap, you can either buy more data (by the MB at 0.1c/MB which equates to $1.02/GB) or stay slowed down.
You also don't have to have your tolls with them to get those prices either. There is no contract and therefore no disconnection fee.
The only thing is that you have to buy your own adsl modem (unless you already have one of course).
As for speeds, they are very good and CONSTANT (at least for me they are). My speeds never drop below 1.5mbit/s even during peak times, and usually are in the 3-4mbit/s range.

PS: the 15GB was just an example, you can actually choose any cap you may want, be it 500MB or 40+GB with anything in between. Or you can forgo a cap altogether and just get charged per MB that you use...

I have TelstraClear cable and it's brilliant in performance, but quite bad in reliability. I get about 9 mbits, and sometimes I will actually see over 1MB/sec downloads, or have two torrents running at 500KB/sec each. Great latency too although I don't play online games. But I have an hour or two of down time every week it seems and during this, it's impossible to get through to customer support. For me it's worth it, as it's a monster of a connection for a reasonable price ($99.95/month). Well - reasonable for 40 gigs at 10mbit/2mbit.

I'm more-or-less happy with my 2mb/128k package with Xtra, at $60 per month. I could upgrade for another $20 per month to increase my upload speed to 512k but due to my location it won't improve my download speed.

There is no point an ISP offering XYZ speed plans if they cannot actually give you the speed your line is capable of at least semi-consistantly.

I'm with Ihug on an older 2 Mb/s plan that gives me 10 gigs peak and 10 gigs off peak. That data allowance suits me as I can use up to the full peak allowance (Linux distros et al) at times.

However, while around 6 am in the morning I can get consistant download speeds of up to 3048 kbps (381 KB/sec transfer rate) as soon as you hit the busy times I only get a 1/4 of that at the very best. It is not uncommon to spend most of the evening staying under 300 kbps (37 KB/s) while only viewing web pages! It has been like this since the unbundling of the local loop. Was going great guns before that.

I don't mind the 2 Mb/s download package as it gives me a reasonable data allowance for the $'s spent. No point having faster speeds with only a small data cap. But I would like to get what I am paying for.