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In the last few years, Australia has become one of a handful of countries to exploit its cable TV infrastructure: by offering cable Internet. Currently only provided by Optus and Big Pond, cable internet offers lightning quick access to the internet, with the bonus of being able to bundle your cable TV use into the bill. This is a guide to cable Internet speed, how it compares to other types of Internet use such as ADSL, and whether it's always as fast as they say.
Is cable as fast as they say?
Cable Internet has long been recognised as the fastest Internet available in Australia, indeed in much of the world. While the new form of ADSL, ADSL2+, is soon to be more commonplace, with download speeds of up to 24 Mbps (or MBit/s), cable can theoretically run up to 50 Mbps - whether the ISP does or not is another question.
The Hybrid Fibre Cables that were rolled out a decade ago therefore present a great opportunity for high speed Internet, but political wrangling amongst Telstra and the rest have meant they are not fully exploited.
Telstra/Big Pond and Optus both own separate cable networks capable of higher speeds, with Telstra's at 17 Mbps and Optus's at 9.9 Mbps. They will offer download speeds of around 10 Mbps at prices which compete very well with ADSL and wireless, not to mention satellite internet, which can be prohibitively expensive to receive at high speed.
Downsides to cable
- Just like DSL, cable can be slowed down by high traffic. Bandwidth on a single coaxial cable line is shared amongst you and your neighbours. If everyone is online at the same time (which occurs at peak hours), cable speeds are significantly lower than what you have been quoted. Service glitches may also occur, slowing down your usage.
- Bundling. You may want the high speed at a reasonable cost that cable offers, but you might be pressured into getting cable TV as well. You can get it unbundled, but it won't work out to be quite as good value.
In short, cable offers very fast Internet at good rates. If you live in an urban area supplied with cable, it can be a great idea, especially if you want to bundle TV, or use a lot of bandwidth heavy services (including those that require upload capacity) such as VoIP (Voice over Internet Phone) services. Just beware of the downsides, which could mean your connection isn't as fast as you'd hoped.
