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Unfortunately the number of ISPs willing to offer a flat-rate DSL connection here in New Zealand is dwindling and the recent woes experienced by Snap Internet shows why.

Some Snap Internet customers became so frustrated when their DSL speeds became even slower than a dial-up connection that they began this discussion on the usenet newsgroup nz.comp.

To get the good oil on why a supposedly 128Kbps connection was providing such lousy performance I contacted Andrew Smyth from Snap.

Andrew explained that the current problem has been caused by the growth in "heavy users" who were attracted to Snap Internet's flat-rate JetStart service.

Snap Internet is one of the few ISPs willing to offer an "all you can eat" DSL connection these days so it's only natural that those who consider the 5GB or 10GB cap imposed by other ISPs to be too onerous will be attracted.

Readers Say (updated irregularly) Mickeysoft using unlicensed... - Simon a fair and simple solution... - Robert Snap... - Ray hotmail... - Martin A cap for on peak... - Tim Heavy ADSL Users... - Wally kiwi in seoul... - Tim more on seoul... - Tim Have Your Say

The result is: too many users, not enough bandwidth -- and a major degradation in service for everyone, even those who are only "light users".

Given the obviously adverse impact that this is having on Snap's business I asked Andrew whether any ISP could offer flat-rate DSL in New Zealand under Telecom's current pricing structures.

He admitted it wasn't and added "Our losses on DSL were manageable until recently but the problem we found was while a lot of companies are offering it the heavy users are spread around and therefore manageable but each ISP that stopped offering flatrate pushed those customers onto an ever smaller group of ISPs until the load became too much basically creating a vicious circle"

When I suggested that perhaps it would make sense to give the "heavy users" their own bandwidth pool so that their excesses didn't impact those who were more modest in their online use Andrew told me "We have considered the different bandwidth pool for heavy users and while its simple its not very nice."

Andrew says that Snap's alternative to such a system will be to implement an "off-peak" system whereby heavy users will be encouraged to do most of their data transfer at times when fewer users are online (1am through 8am).

A 4GB cap will apply to all international data transferred outside the "off-peak" period.

I guess this old saying applies even to high-speed Internet connections:

Choose only two: Fast, Cheap, Reliable.

Your Tax Dollars At Work
You may recall that recently I reported how the NZ government lined a cybersquatter's pockets to the tune of $1m in order to secure the domain name newzealand.com.

Well before that, they spent $18,734.54 on some rather evil skulduggery that saw the domain name newzealand.biz unfairly wrestled from its legitimate holder.

So what have taxpayers gotten for their $18,734.54?

Well they've gotten this. (Screendump)

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