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I was over at the Whirpool.net.au forums - Which specialise in discussion and review of the various broadband providers in Australia, and came across this post which I think is pure genius. This will only make sense to people in Australia who use Telstra or any other brand of broadband and are sick of getting jibbed out of a propper service. As the quoted post explains, Australia gets next to nothing when compared to other countries in regards to telecomunications services.

Enjoy:

How to Remove Telstra's 10 GB Cap (from your account)

To do this, we need as many people to follow this post as possible, and you need to read it in full and understand its consequences. This is all legal - you just need to be patient. I cannot guarantee any of the information to be accurate, but it is a fair estimate, and from what people are saying; the following would be a solution to our problem:

First of all lets look at why Telstra caps people. The main reason is that data being transferred off the Internet costs money. Telstra owns the fibre backbone from Australia to other parts of the world (mainly the US). But really it doesn't cost them any money, as Telstra partly owns the company that charges Big Pond for its bandwidth... sounds a bit like a scam really, doesn't it?

Now although Telstra gets it's bandwidth for next to nothing, they think that the end user should pay 15c/MB over their limit. We could look at their 20 GB Plan for $99.95 which has this surcharge feature, but really majority of their customers can only afford $60 for their "Unlimited" Plan, which after 10 GB (or 10,000 Ziggy Bytes) is reduced to virtually dialup speed. Besides the fact that Cable is about 200x dialup speed, ADSL 256 ($59.95) is 6x, ADSL 512 ($69.95) is 12x and the ADSL 1536/256 ($99.95) is 36x; dialup speed. Now although 64 kbps is actually 8 KB/s after data packet batter it ends up being around the 5 KB/s (dialup) speed.

It's fair to say that this is deceitful as well as expensive, and compared to what we pay for DSL / Cable Internet and Coaxial Pay TV to what the equivalent in the United States would be. In the US, AUD$100 would buy an absolutely totally uncapped, unshaped, quality digital HFC (Hybrid Fibre Coax - like what we already have here) Cable line with 100 Mbit Cable modem (up to about 8 MB/s), you would also have Foxtel Digital Platinum (but have about 200-3000 channels, many which are instant video on demand), and you would probably have a Voice Over IP Phone with free local/national calls. Also, Telstra has butchered DSL technology and called it Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), meaning that although a phone line isn't required for DSL, Telstra forced us to pay at least $20 or so to have a voice line, on top of your ADSL internet connection. This analogue voice section on the ADSL line is also potentially wasting your bandwidth.

What do we wish to achieve? Well no body should pay more than $60 for totally uncapped, unshaped broadband Internet. This means that cable should be at least 10Mbit (like their old modems), and do about 1.25 MB/s - which is what it already does (after data packet batter it ends up being around the 950 KB/s mark). In Europe their 100 Mbit cable modems always get around 8-10 MB/s, Telstra has been suppling 100 Mbit cable modems for a while now, but I don't think they actually get more than 10 Mbit (or 10,240 kbps). At the $100 mark people should get True Video on Demand Pay TV, as well as cable Internet. If you don't have cable, you should be able to demand Telstra to install it, regardless of where you live in Australia, and pay no more than $200 or so - just like the PSTN network.

Now if Telstra was still fully Government owned, we would probably already have all this now... but anyway, let's work on the 10 GB limit as it is a ridiculous concept!

Consider that Telstra has probably outsourced its Technical Support (I heard a statistic that over half of their staff is outsourced). Every call that goes to that out sourced company probably costs Telstra about $5 to $25, as Technical Support is very time consuming, and going by the Call Centre Industry, it would be fair to assume that a call centre company would probably charge Telstra $15 per call they take (regardless of 30 seconds to 30 minutes). This would also explain why Telstra's $5.95 for 2 hours/month dial up customers are charged $15.95 per call!

So if you have the Unlimited Download plan and call Telstra's outsourced Tech Support 5 times in one month, they had to pay them 5 x $15 = $75. Considering your unlimited download plan costs you $60 per month. On that particular month Telstra made a loss of $15 thanks to you.

See where this is heading?

Now use your unlimited download plan freely as you need. When you do get capped call Tech Support and complain that the Internet is not working (because 8KB/s is next to useless). If you complain hard enough they may remove the capping, allowing you to do your uni assignment, play games, process banking, browse the web, get your all your share price updates immediately, or download that graphic design image off the company server, or whatever it is you do! Make it clear that the only reason you chose the unlimited download plan is that you were told that $60 was all you needed to pay, and you could still do ALL your work, and now that you have been capped the product (their CAPPED internet) no longer works (properly).

I want everyone here to call from the day they are capped, each day, until their capping is removed... or until the end of the month, when the cap is removed. We need to make it clear to Telstra that what they are doing is unfair, not good trade practice, and simply we don't want them doing it; in this day and age there should be absolutely no limit on download. Please mention that you anticipate downloading about 100 GB each month (or more... whatever amount you think is reasonable - several Terra Bytes maybe!). Of course you don't expect to pay more than $59.95 . If they mention paying 15c per MB, then ask what dark-ages they came from, and that a piece of network cable still costs $1 per metre, regardless if it transferred 5 MB per month or 32,400,000 MB (or about 30 Terra Bytes)... that's 100Mbit/s every second, for an entire 30 day month! The infrastructure is already there, and that they are simply being exorbitantly greedy.

Say you get capped on the 7th of the month; call and complain for about 5 minutes... if they don't budge tell them you will call every day for the rest of the month until capping and/or shaping is removed. The next day, if you are still capped, call and mention it for about 30 seconds. Every fifth call, only make a 5 to 10 minute fuss about it. Feel free to call every hour if you wish! Technical support is available 24/7.

This will cause major issues for the out sourced company if they are unable to answer calls for people genuinely calling for tech support. That's why you should make the calls quick, as they probably get the same money per call, regardless of length. The consultant and the company will be happy your call will be quick, however, make sure you really get the point across every fifth call. Eventually, Telstra will monitor this, and that it is REALLY pissing off its customers, and will do something about it. So it is very important that we mention we want at least:
* 100+ GB per month
* Totally uncapped AND unshaped broadband Internet
* Uploads should NOT be counted
* 128 kbps upload is insufficient and should be 512 kbps or simply removed or set by user
* STOP the propagation of Spam and have free firewall, Spam filter, and virus scanner. Telstra allowing Spam to reach you and/or profiting from it is just as bad as the Spammers themselves and possibly illegal!
* Computer literacy; 1 MB does not equal 1,000,000 bytes, and 10 GB is 10240 MB or 10,485,760 KB or 10,737,418,240 bytes. Also, properly train their staff, about 50% think there is no difference between kilo-bits-per-second and kilo-Bytes-per-second... virtually all of them say... "when you hit your download limit, your speed may be reduced to 64 Kilo Bytes per second". That's fairly amazing considering that the 256 ADSL plan usually gets 27 KB/s at best. At this point they should remove the cap permanently OR you may wish to threaten legal action, or demand free cancelling of your contract, or contacting the Internet Industry Ombudsman or the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, just over this misinformation.
* $60 per month at maximum infrastructure speed: 10 or 100 Mbit for Cable and 7 Mbit for DSL
* Anything else you think of (please let us all know what your 'pitch of complaints' are)

So for a 30 day month like April, if you call each day, eventually Telstra will 'monitor your call' or many of ours, and they will be forced to make a move. That move will be based on the complaints that are received. Also, it has the effect of kicking them where it really hurts.

30 days - 7 (day you got capped) = 23, plus the first call where the cap wasn't removed = 24 calls

24 calls at $15 per call = $360 bill from outsourced company

$360 take away cost of plan (most people this will be $60), equals a loss of $300 to Telstra, in providing you with capped Internet.

At the end of the month, on the last day after you make your final call I WANT YOU ALL to reply to this post and say what you experience was and leave 3 lines at the end of your post, and on the last line write TELSTRA LOSS OF $xxx , but only do that when you submit your Telstra end of month debt post early May.

You could put a quick snappy remark after the dollar value, if you wish... like... "because they're data nazi's" (a bit like the 'soup nazi' from Seinfield)

After all the entries are in... like by the end of the 3rd day of the following month. We will try to total it all up (hopefully someone can make a script - So only do the "TELSTRA LOSS OF $xxx" once), and find just really how much enforcing the cap is costing their business!

I set the target at $1m, that's about 3,350 people calling once a day from one week into the month. Obviously those that call 10x per day will really help us reach our goal of letting Telstra know how displeased we are with their cap. Eventually, they will have to do something... hey... we never thought they would do unlimited... and they introduced it... thanks to people voicing their requirements... we just need to swing the balance of power back to us.

Just so you know the phone number for Tech Support is 133 933, however, I believe there are some 1800s for Tech Support that avoid the queues... I will try to go through my notes and find them for us... that way we'll make it free to call as many times as you like, and we can get more calls through... I just hope I'm right with our cost estimates, but either way Telstra will know a considerable percentage of their users are upset.

The only FreeCall(tm) Number I was able to find was Bigpond Broadband Activations (which do next to everything), they might be able to assist, however, ensure you get transferred to Technical Support.
* Activations: 1800 816 655.

Lets hope Telstra's days of limit capping or shaping are numbered... this is for the best; for all Australians!

-Xtrapol8

Late,