Optus and the Fail Whale...

As someone who likes to take the interwebs with him wherever he goes, i am forced into using mobile broadband. While the cost-to-gigabyte ratio is absolutely woefull on pre-paid (around $20 per GB), i tend to find that post-paid contracts can be alright, provided you get some included discounts and find the plan that best suits you. Used wisely, my current monthly allowance can be as much as 32Gb for about $50 a month, which is *much* better than pre-paid. However this only works if i do all my downloading during off-peak hours, if i download during peak hours, the allowance is half of that amount. Fixed line broadband is much better value, although the trouble with this is you can't take it with you and your laptop for a geek gaming session or to be used as a wifi-hotspot. While mobile phones and tablets have built in wifi hotspots these days (predominately android based systems), geeks who like to game are corralled into using mobile broadband to remain, well, mobile.

So why the Optus hate? Why the fail whale for Optus? After all, as a consumer i was quite happy to accept a limited amount of gigabytes for downloading, risk the instability of a mobile service. Granted it was primarily because i have access to an alternative fixed-line interweb with a more generous allowance (with a different telco), however, being mobile or fixed line should not have that much of an impact on the service. The fact of the matter is that it's an Optus service fault that has caused me to rage-quit a closed-beta for the night, simply because this is the third time i have had to reset the mobile broadband during this single gaming session. The fact that i am participating in a closed-beta has *nothing* to do any disconnects from the game, seeming the regular interwebs all flat-line at the same time as well. While i understand that mobile broadband can be a fickle beast, after all a technology that can be affected by external interference is a technology that will sometime "burp" or "fart" badly, hopefully  self-recovering itself promptly. It depends on how sensitive the games-server is to this sort of hiccup which deturmines whether or not you get booted from your game.

Still, i guess i shouldn't be surprised that my "alleged" HSDPA service (which struggles to get over 1.5Mbs d/load during network load) can "peak" at around 3Mbs in my city-centric location (when the network isnt congested or is off-peak). The fact that my mobile phone can cycle from HSDPA to 3G and then to G without me even moving the phone likely indicates more network problems than just disconnects and/or "burps", however,  i can counter that by saying that at on other occasions i can go hours and hours without a single interruption. In my opinion, i should only ever have to connect the mobile broadband once per session, any network collisions or errors should auto-correct and not disconnect. Perhaps it is time i consider a move - after all if the mobile broadband network is as congested and as unreliable as it is now - how bad is it going to be for a fixed line?

This sort of thing affects all types of broadband - even the fixed line interwebs with that other telco burps and disconnects randomly as well. although to be fair, nowhere near as much and when it does it manages to correct its error automatically. From the sounds of things, this happens no matter where you live, as friends have also report such experiences while gaming/interwebbing. However, it is the frequency of these disconnects, the fact that the mobile broadband doesn't "auto-correct" and requires a manual reset and the fact that i still have issues unresolved by customer support (a credit wasn't applied to my account) along with unresolved errors involving usage meters and "walled garden" false-positives (which still remains unanswered by the techies) - All of these issues have made me angry enough to post this long-winded rant. Still, i guess if i cannot find satisfactory answers from Optus soon, this post will make great evidence for the telco ombudsman when i "escalate" my own formal complaint :P

the original fail whale (HHGTTG) : and fyi - optus "burped" again during image u/load - although didn't need a reset that time :)