I personally witnessed a demonstration of the Next-G Internet speed prior to it's "official" release and it was spectacular.  It was the fastest thing I had ever seen - with a test download speed of 900kb / second.  I was amazed and ready to jump on the Next-G bandwagon, but in reality with real customers signed up the service isn't anywhere near as good as was promised in our area.

The Narooma region has always been left behind when it comes to technology.  The Telstra Mobile Phone coverage is terrible and according to Telstra, in their own words - "mobile service is considered to be a roadside service only and if you get signal inside your house it's a bonus"'.  Well, it would appear that Next-G is the same.

There are a number of angry customers who have coughed up big bucks for a service that just doesn't deliver the speed or reliability that was promised.  

First of all there network settings are all wrong.  During the course of my computer repair business I visited a customer who had spent hours on the phone with Bigpond Support trying to get Next-G to download at a reasonable speed.  I witnessed the download, from a Telstra Server which isn't a good test, start at 130Kb / second and gradually drop down to 3kb / second.  That's dial up speed you know!  So, I put my thinking cap on and made some changes to the way TCP/IP worked and managed to get 230Kb / second from start to finish.  That's all well and good when you have a strong signal but move around a little bit and it soon drops out.

Next-G is expensive, a 20 hour per month service sets you back what it costs for a faster standard ADSL service.  But if it doesn't provide you with a consistantly good connection what is the point of having it.

A number of my customers who have this service are considering going to another provider because they just don't feel that they are being listened to.  What will happen in a few years time is anyones guess, no doubt the service will improve.  Like anything new there are bound to bumps in the road.  But what if they decide to go with something else?  What if Next-G goes the same route as CDMA?  Where does that leave us in regional areas where choices are limited?

My advice, don't bother with Next-G - talk to other providers and see what they can offer you.  I understand that Next-G is wireless and Australia wide but it wont be long before others are offering the same service at a much better price.   If you compare ADSL costs right now you can see that there are better alternatives.  An unlimited download limit with Bigpond and a Static IP Address will cost you $99.00 per month, where as a similar service with Optus costs $69.00.  Unlimited isn't really unlimited because Bigpond will slow your speed to standard dialup speeds once you reach 12 Gigabytes where as Optus slow you down when you reach 60 Gigabytes.  Why they call it unlimited is beyond me.