What is Cable Broadband?

When cable TV entered the Australian market, some cheered, some yawned and others haven't left the couch since. If you've never had anything good to say about the wonders of pay TV, you can at least now be happy that those cables running up and down the street of most of Australia's metropolitan areas can now serve another purpose: cable Internet. Read on to find out how you can get cable broadband.

What's Cable Internet And Can I Get It?

If you live anywhere that cable TV has been installed in the last decade, then you can potentially use the fibre optic cables to receive cable Internet in your home. Internet users are now able to take advantage any unused bandwidth on the cable TV company's network to set up a service. A cable generally runs down your street and, if you choose to connect, a second cable is then run from the main line to your home. If you happen to already have cable TV installed, you won't need to get a professional installer to run this cable to your house – and that may mean savings on your set up fees. To find out if you are eligible, contact either BigPond or Optus (they are the only two cable Internet providers at this stage).

Not surprisingly, there's not a lot of difference between the deals offered by BigPond and Optus. At the bottom end of the scale, both have a $29.95 per month deal ($19.95 with Optus if bundled). However, Optus's deal is slightly faster (10000/128kb versus 8000/128kb) and their cheapest set-up price is considerably lower at $99 compared with $189*. At the other end of the scale, although for value Optus's “Power Plan” (10,000/256kb, 20GB, at $79.95 a month ($69.95 if bundled) with a $99 set up) beats BigPond's Standard 20GB plan (8000/256kb, 20GB, upstream counted and $99.95 a month with a $189 set up fee), BigPond offers faster plans than Optus. Their “Extreme” plans feature download speeds of 17,000kbs, starting at $99.95, while Optus's maximum speed plans only reach 10,000kb. Either way, both are still super fast.  

(If all those numbers confused you, check out our Broadband Jargon Buster to get a better grip on the terminology.)

Great Things About Cable Internet

• Reception / Quality Issues. Both ADSL and wireless users can experience degraded quality and reduced speeds if they are a long way from the Internet service provider (ISP). The quality issue is something cable surfers don’t need to worry about.

• Speed. Cable Internet generally has a more constant top speed than the maximums available with wireless.

• Telephone Line. Like other types of broadband, your ability to make phone calls is not interfered with – in this case because your phone line has no relationship what-so-ever to your Internet. (With ADSL the service comes in on a phone line but a splitter separates the two services so you can still make calls. Dial-up takes the phone line out – you can’t use the Net and make a call at the same time.)

Not-So-Great Things About Cable Internet

• Modem. You will need to buy a special cable modem to send and receive information via a fibre-optic cable.

• Network Clogging. The more people there are sharing the bandwidth, the slower your experience will be. As with ADSL, quoted speeds are best described as “theoretical maximums”.

• Installation. If you haven't already connected to cable TV, you may need a professional to do the installation.

• Limits. Many packages place limits on downloads and BigPond is particularly keen on counting uploads.

* prices subject to change. Please check with the provider.