If you’re thinking of getting a broadband internet connection, please don’t fall for the cheap options that are currently being promoted in the lifestyle magazines.

They are pretty useless if you actually want to USE the internet, and could end up costing you hundreds of dollars in excess charges every month unless you are VERY careful.

For example, take a current promotion by Telstra which talks about half price access at $14.97 per month.

This plan gives you the slowest broadband connection available, and a download limit of 200 megabytes. If you’re lucky, that’s enough to perform your Windows and anti virus updates for the month.
The advert copy then goes on about all the things you can do on this plan - like download movies, pictures, and music.

Well that’s fine if they are on Telstra’s “unmetered” list, which does not form part of your miniscule monthly bandwidth quota.
But you’d be up for a lot of money if you wanted to download say, a movie that was not on this list.
A normal movie is around 700 megabytes in size. (The advert doesn’t mention this)
And it would take you about 7 hours to download (or this. )
Their plan allows you 200 megabytes of download per month (or this)

Therefore, if you downloaded a movie you would have used 500 megabytes more than your monthly limit.

But don’t worry - they’ll only charge you 15 cents for each megabyte that you go over the limit, so your extra charges would be about $75.00.

And this would only increase as you used the account for normal things like using the internet, checking your mail, and updating windows and your anti virus programs.
You could easily be up for an extra couple of hundred dollars.
But - ISP’s love offering these cheap, low bandwidth plans. The excess fees are a great little earner for them.
In my opinion offering 200 megabytes on a broadband plan is just plain irresponsible.

These cheap plans are on the lowest broadband speed available - 256 kbps (kbps means kilo bits per second. This is the maximum speed that data can travel from the internet into your computer)
Here’s a comparison of common internet speeds, and the approximate times that it would take to download that 700 megabyte movie.

Dialup - 56 kbps - 28 hours to download 700 mb movie

ADSL - 256 kbps - 7 hours to download 700 mb movie

ADSL - 512kbps - 3.5 hours to download 700 mb movie

ADSL - 1500 kbps - just over an hour to download 700 mb movie

ADSL2 - (24000 kbps) - 4 minutes to download 700 mb movie

If you are going to get broadband, I’d suggest a plan that gives you at least 1500 kbps connection speed and 5 gigabytes of transfer per month. (or maybe 20 gigabytes if you have game loving teenagers in the house)
ADSL 2 is available in some areas, at a similar price to normal ADSL. So if you are lucky enough to have this option, grab it. (In Tasmania, ADSL 2 is available in the Hobart CBD area through Netspace)

Go to www.broadbandchoice.com.au to compare the plans that are available. you can get a great plan with plenty of speed and download capacity for between $A60-$80 per month.
I use Internode, and thoroughly recommend them to you.

So - if you are still tempted to get a cheap plan - be very careful.