Amnet cops flak over slow broadband
2006-Oct-5, 10:00 pm
UPDATE | Amnet Chief Operating Officer Clive Stein has responded to criticism on Amnet's bandwidth issues, offering an apology to customers:
"As some of you may be aware, we have recently completed the migration of 3,200 customers from Telstra Wholesale to our own DSLAMs. These customers were offered a new 8Mbs plan (versus the previous 1.5Mbs) for an average of $10 per month less than what they were previously paying. With the five times increase in speed, demand for bandwidth has exceeded our capacity planning."
Stein explained that a number of outages from one of its upstream providers had made it difficult to estimate and respond to bandwidth demands. To counter the problem, Amnet will further increase its international bandwidth capacity by 25% next week.
"We apologise for any inconvenience caused and let me assure you that we are treating this issue with a sense of urgency", he said.
Perth based ISP Amnet is under fire from customers experiencing slow international speeds from their broadband connections.
User reports suggest the problem began late July, but customers were told that it was not an Amnet issue. Instead, staff suggested the problem was caused by phone line quality, external sites or the fact that it was a residential connection where speed was not guaranteed.
Amnet eventually acknowledged the issue over two months later, blaming "increased bandwidth demands". To resolve the problem, Amnet claimed it had "significantly upgraded" its upstream bandwidth. But it also said it had implemented quality of service (QoS) controls on its network to "provide all Amnet users with a better Internet experience overall – whether web browsing, downloading files or playing games."
QoS allows an ISP to give preference to certain types of traffic (e.g. web and email) to the detriment of others (e.g. P2P and video streaming). But customers wanted to know why QoS was required if Amnet had upgraded its links.
Amnet responded by saying that it would not allow "certain types of traffic" to degrade its network. But users challenged this position, saying that other broadband ISPs do not use QoS in that way. "They simply have enough bandwidth for all their clients", one quipped.
Amnet said that it would continue to "fine tune the service and provision more bandwidth when necessary to ensure that all users receive a positive experience."
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