Fast Internet!!!

One has to be very careful when seeing PRs about broadband packages that you look at not just price and speed but also data caps (and also minimum guaranteed speed which can be as low as 24 kb/s).

Take this PR from Telstra-Clear announcing you can get a 2 Mb/s speed for both download and upload for just $61.90 a month, including your phone line rental.

Sounds great. But then think about the 200 MB data limit.

Now if one is say using bit torrent at full speed and doing both download and upload at capacity that is 4Mb/sec which is 0.5MB/sec.

So at full speed you’ll be able to keep using the Internet for oh 400 seconds!!! Yes after 400 seconds of use your monthly package is all used up.

To be fair to Telstra-Clear some of their other packages have higher data caps such as 10 GB limit but that is over $100 a month.