Vodem stick officially appears online on Vodafone

Vodem stick officially appears online on Vodafone
You can finally find it - the Vodafone Vodem Stick is here.

With 7.2mbps HSDPA (where available) and 900MHz 3G coverage support included, it's a miniature device but more advanced than the Vodem.

Pricing for it seems to vary across pages though:

• $199/$99 for 1GB/3GB plan (respectively) on 24mths
• $99/FREE for 1GB/3GB plan (respectively) on 24mths

China Netcom falls prey to DNS cache poisoning
One of China's largest ISPs falls victim to internet's vulnerability

Apple iTunes shows how New Zealand ISPs are not providing Internet Service
Apple has released its iTunes Movies service in New Zealand last week, and this has shown us how badly the ISPs are performing.



First we have the problem with "data caps". Most people I know are on 10GB or 20GB plans, which means that they either pay a premium for any excess traffic during the billing period, or have their connection throttled down to dial-up speeds. yes, dial-up speeds!

Take for example this comment from someone with Vodafone:

Going to take me about 3 hrs. Its 2 Gb which will be over my d/l cap for day !! ( Ihug) so Ive stopped for today and continue tomorrow to complete

Two gigabytes a day? Two days to download the movie?

I am using TelstraClear cable-modem service and downloaded a 1 GB movie in 20 minutes. But not even TelstraClear is free of problems as we can see in the same discussion:

... [I] bought groundhog day just to test the waters and the download speed was soooo slow, 3 hours nearly! 

Three hours on a 10 Mbps cable-modem connection?

I hope the launch of Apple iTunes will show ISPs three things:

1. Not every heavy downloaded is a pirate downloading copyright material being illegaly distributed;

2. There's demand for a service with a bigger monthly data allowance, and

3. Their concept of "fast" is off.

Vendors demo fast mobile broadband of the future
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Home phone comparisons - now updated (... and again)
I screwed up some things for last time, so...

• call caps now included
• calls are now at 30min intervals (please see comment at end of post)
• TelstraClear's other free calling plans/products are included (see info below)

Also, I have included Vodafone home phone plus national plan, just as a comparison for a $40 home phone product which is dotted in the graphs to completely differentiate it from everyone else as I don't think it's a fair comparison, but it still shows that huge savings can be made from a comparably priced phone service.

TelstraClear with it's average calling plans were pretty expensive, so I've included Talk 24/7 and also the dial in Z-talk too, as they're still free, they still count towards the "standard" home phone service.


Do note that the minutes below a graph are a total of all calls, inclusive of local calls, as I've used a call volume table presented by Telecom which includes local to distribute minutes. This means each component (national, international, mobile) will be a portion of the minutes shown.

Everything is averaged as per the last post.

Compared plans:

	Company			Plan
1	Compass Communications			Homeline (Wellington 04 calling region, Christchurch city and most suburbs)
2	Compass Communications			Homeline (in all other areas)
3	Orcon			Homeline
4	Slingshot			Homeline
5	Snap Internet			Snap Voice - Christchurch/Wellington
6	Snap Internet			Snap Voice - Rest of NZ
7	Telecom New Zealand			Homeline (Wellington 04 calling region, Christchurch city and most suburbs)
8	Telecom New Zealand			Homeline (in all other areas)
9	Telecom New Zealand			Anytime (Auckland city, Wellington 04 calling region, Christchurch city and most suburbs)
10	Telecom New Zealand			Anytime (in all other areas)
11	Telecom New Zealand			Anytime Plus (Auckland city, Wellington 04 calling region, Christchurch city and most suburbs)
12	Telecom New Zealand			Anytime Plus (in all other areas)
13	TelstraClear			Homeplan Phoneline Basic
14	TelstraClear			Homeplan Phoneline
15	TelstraClear			InHome Phoneline
16	Vodafone New Zealand			Home phone (in some regions)
17	Vodafone New Zealand			Home phone
18	Vodafone New Zealand			Home phone Red
19	Vodafone New Zealand			Home phone plus (local plan)
20	Vodafone New Zealand			Home phone plus (national plan)
21	TelstraClear			Homeplan Phoneline Basic + Talk 24/7
22	TelstraClear			Homeplan Phoneline Basic (using Ztalk dial in service)
23	TelstraClear			Homeplan Phoneline + Talk 24/7
24	TelstraClear			Homeplan Phoneline (using Ztalk dial in service)
25	TelstraClear			InHome Phoneline + Talk 24/7
26	TelstraClear			InHome Phoneline (using Ztalk dial in service)

Standard home phone services graph, up to 1800 minutes:



From cheapest to most expensive at 1800 minutes:

1. 20
2. 24
3. 23
4. 26
5. 25
6. 4
7. 1
8. 19
9. 11
10. 2
11. 12
12. 16
13. 5
14. 18
15. 17
16. 6
17. 22
18. 3
19. 21
20. 9
21. 10
22. 7
23. 8
24. 14
25. 15
26. 13

Standard home phone services graph, up to 12000 minutes:



From cheapest to most expensive at 12000 minutes:

1. 20
2. 4
3. 11
4. 12
5. 1
6. 2
7. 24
8. 26
9. 19
10. 23
11. 16
12. 18
13. 25
14. 17
15. 5
16. 22
17. 6
18. 3
19. 21
20. 9
21. 10
22. 7
23. 8
24. 14
25. 15
26. 13

(Sorry for the bad colours - all of them are auto-selected by Office)

I hope my new graphs solve the viewing problem.

I have used colours to represent company (except TelstraClear, which is both light blue and blue) and different dot/dash styles offered by Office.


I have used a call of length 30 minutes for each call. Is that good or not? (I'm not sure what the average call length is) - I can easily just change this and instantly make new graphs.

The Trouble with Orcon

I note that many people are reading my blog about Orcon and the trouble I have had since I signed up, so I feel obliged to give you an update.

Things have improved to some degree, I frequently have days where my connection only drops out 1 or 2 times, but I am still experiencing dropouts, disconnections this week:

• Saturday 16
• Sunday 31
• Monday 27

I also noted that people have found me when searching about the 2 for 1 movie tickets for a year that were promised as part of the connection deal. Well I signed up 4 months ago and still haven’t seen them. If they do arrive, I hope they will still be valid for 12 months and not the remainder of the year. But at this stage I’m not holding my breath on ever seeing them.

I don’t know if it is because of the interleaving, but our Caller ID doesn’t work on the phone about 50% of the time, which is annoying.

My wife wants me to go back to Telecom and thinks I’m an idiot for putting up with Orcon’s poor service. As a footnote, Orcon did come up with a $100 credit for my troubles. Funny thing is that a couple of weeks ago, even though my payment is made automatically by direct credit from my American Express Card, and I had the $100 credit, I got an email saying that my account was overdue and asking me to do something about it urgently. I was tempted to send one back saying that their service was overdue and could they give me a reliable connection urgently.

So, the bottom line? Still having plenty of disconnections, no 2 for 1 movie tickets as promised, intermittent caller id and no satisfaction. Should I be calling Fair Go?