🚀 go-pugleaf

I've recently surveyed all the Sydney ISPs I could find to work
out which would be the best to sign up with.  I thought the
results might be interesting to others also investigating Sydney
ISPs, hence this post.

Firstly, a few explanatory notes:
(1) This was done purely to suit my own requirements, YMMV
(2) Any "charge-by-the-amount-downloaded" scheme is out
(3) The prices for Dialix and OzEmail are old (Jan '95), but
    I considered them representative enough to rule them both
    out of consideration.
(4) Most ISPs have more than one pricing scheme, I've only
    considered the best one (IMO of course!).
(5) I don't guarantee this is a complete list, but it's all
    the ISPs I could find.
(6) This contains my opinions, if you don't like them, stiff.


Matra		$15 pm for 15 hours, $1 ph extra, no setup fee,
		free software, "family" ISP - no sex/religion/
		politics newsgroups, no disk quota?
		info@matra.com.au

Ipacific	$29.95 pm for 30 hours peak time (8am-12am), free
		use off-peak, $4 ph extra peak time, $30 setup fee, 
		free software and support, no shell accounts, 10Mb
		disk quota (doesn't count incoming mailbox).
		sales@ipacific.net.au

ACAY		$40 pm for 40 hours, $2 ph extra, $20 setup fee,
		no shell accounts, no guest logins, software on 
		disk for $3.  info@acay.com.au

APANA		$115 pa, $50 setup fee, unlimited time
		info@apana.org.au

Zeta (Kralizec)	$15 pm for 10 hours (SLIP/PPP), extra $1.50 ph,
		$20 setup fee, free software.  info@zeta.org.au

Unsuitable:
===========

Zip		$25 pm unlimited time, $50 setup fee, 2 hrs max 
		usage in one session on afternoons/evenings, 2Mb 
		disk space, only one person per account.

Real(?)		No reply

Next		Only seem to do commercial/corporate stuff.

Microplex	$4 ph (SLIP/PPP), $25 setup fee, software for $59

Geko		$10 pm for 2 hours, $5 ph extra, $25 setup fee,
		free software

Magnadata	$40 pm (SLIP/PPP), 20Mb download pm, $2/Mb extra,
		free support

Dialix		1c/minute + 1c/Kb of non-dialix traffic

OzEmail		$10 ph until 9pm, $5 ph after, $25 setup fee

-----------
Although price is important, service is just as (if not more)
important.  Zip, although having a good price, lands in my
"unsuitable" category because for 2 nights running I couldn't
login to their guest account.  First night (Wednesday around 9:45
- 10pm), I had 6 attempts on both their numbers and got the busy
signal every time.  Second night (Thursday, round the same time),
I got in (on the second attempt) but just got "host unreachable"
errors (couldn't log in to host "zipper").  So I gave up on them.
Around the same times, I got into both Matra and Zeta first time
(the others don't seem to have guest accounts).

Also, I have ignored "First Link" as I have received unsolicited
commercial junk email in the past from Andrew Foster - the guy
who runs it.  I believe in capital punishment for people who
"junk email".

Dave.
-- 
_______________________________________________________________________
|                             .                                       |
| Rev. David Fitch        _--_|\  "I am minuspeptic, frasmotic, even  |
| davidf@syd.csa.com.au  /      \  compunctuous to have caused you    |
| Ph  : +61 2 9901 1413  \_.--._/  such perricabobulations."          |
| Fax : +61 2 9901 1616        v   E. Blackadder to Dr Samuel Johnson |
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