Recently, I had moved into my new home and faced a dilemma that it only had a phone socket in the lounge room. This meant I had to buy extended phone wires, and connect it to my PC situated in the 2nd bedroom / study. I also have a laptop, with an inbuilt wireless card. So I was investigating the options for wireless broadband in Melbourne, and a few came to mind and they are: Unwired, Virgin Broadband, Optus and Vodafone. There are plenty of alternatives, but generally wireless internet is very expensive in Australia. Broadband Choice or Broadband Guide are good places to start if you want to search for options.

I signed up to Broadband at Home for the 2GIG $60 p/m plan, but canceled it after 7 days. See why below!

The Speed
I did not have much issue with the speed. For the most part it was as fast as I needed. If you are serial downloader, or online video streamer then this may not be for you. The maximum speed achieved is 512kbps. Rarely do you achieve this speed. I live in an area where the coverage is not full speed, none the less it was plenty for emailing, general browsing, and the occasional streaming of video.

The telephone
The technology is quite innovative. You do not need any phone lines, nor a even a line connection at home. Your phone connects to the your free modem/router and you hear a dial tone. I believe the calls are routed through their mobile network. The quality was excellent. I used it to call customer support, and some friends interstate and no one picked that I was using the wireless broadband for my calls. I was quite impressed. The free calls is a great deal if you use your home line for local, and national calls. But read the fine print, because you will be charged for 1300, 13 calls, but not for 1800 calls.

Of course, you can surf the net and use the telephone at the same time.

Customer service
When I signed up I specifically asked if Skype would be an issue because of its peer to peer technology, and I was told it would not be an issue. Unfortunately it is an issue. When Skype is on, the speed is throttled by Virgin, which is really annoying. If it wasn’t for this anomaly, I would still be with Virgin. I also had major problems with MSN, and Yahoo. If you scour some web forums, you will find some people do not have these issues, but according to Virgin Customer Support - you will have issues. But, they have a 30 day satisfaction guarantee so take advantage, and try out the service.

If you want support through telephone, be prepared to wait a long while. I called them a few times, and although the person on the other end was quite helpful it took a good 20-30 minutes before a human was heard.

Inside tips
* Go to a Virgin Store, and try out the service. They should have a wireless broadband test area set up. But use it with caution, as often they have full coverage in the areas they have stores, and your home may not have this coverage.
* Take advantage of their 30 day satisfaction guarantee. You will have to pay for any additional calls which do not come under the “free local and national calls” blanket.
* If you have an Virgin mobile, and all of your family / friends are with them then you can take advantage of the free calls to Virgin Mobile too. You will be saving Telstra line rental, and connection fee which is minimum of $19.95 X 12 months + $59 line connection fee for existing lines.
* If you plan to use Skype, Limewire, MSN, Yahoo for chatting/downloading or calling friends then check with Virgin to make sure you will not be throttled.
* If you’re patient, wait for the mobile broadband service which is a bit different to the Broadband at Home plan.

Suggestions
* Take off the throttling of the speeds for peer to peer. You throttle the speeds after the data limit has been reached anyway.

Rating - 7.5 / 10 (great service)
Overall, I am very excited about this offer from Virgin. There are many people who use the internet for general browsing and this is ideal for them. With the mobile broadband option coming soon, this will be great competition to Vodafone, Optus and Unwired (if they also offer free local / national calls). But the throttling issue will unsettle some customers.