Optus Cable - How has your experience been?

Forskin on 28/03/2016 - 08:09
Last edited 29/03/2016 - 10:56

Hi all,
Recently the phone line running to my house has broken (No ADSL2), while we wait for Telstra to come and fix the line I've been looking at alternatives.

I signed up for one month optus cable service to test congestion in my area, if all is good then I will sign a 24m contract for a decreased price. Technician should be coming this week to install.

I have read on forums cable being useless during peak times on optus, however these posts were from 1+ year ago.

Is anyone on optus cable now? How are your ping and download speeds during peak times?

Thanks !

Thanks for all the replies! Optus has called and a technician will be coming this Friday morning. It seems the majority of you get decent speeds, hopefully I'm in the same boat.

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Comments

  • bambooculm on 28/03/2016 - 09:07

    Optus cable is pathetic during peak times in my street, not just for me but about 12 others. I have complained so many times that I am currently getting a $20.00 a month credit. The NBN will not reach my street until second half of 2017, and it will use the existing Optus cable, as Telstra cable is not available in my street. An Optus tech told me that there are already problems with congestion during peak periods on Optus NBN in some areas. See the genuine peak Optus cable speeds at my house below. My laptop is connected directly to a fast wifi router with an ethernet cable, and plugging it into the ethernet port of the modem does not make it any faster.
    http://netgauge.ookla.com/share/413114966.png
    http://netgauge.ookla.com/share/413712589.png

    • Forskin on 28/03/2016 - 10:48

      Sorry commented twice, delete

    • Forskin on 28/03/2016 - 10:48

      That was my worst fear, hence why I did not lock my self in a 24m contract immediately. If congestion is an issue I can just cancel and wait for Telstra to fix my ADSL line. Hoping for the best though. Thanks for your reply!

    • PlasticSpaceman on 29/03/2016 - 10:19

      Wow. That speed sucks. A year is a long time to wait (so for you it might be better looking at ADSL2+ if it's available), but it is likely however that when it gets cut over to NBN the congestion will be less as they should ensure that any loads are better distributed. Later down the track the plan is to move to DOCSIS 3.1 which could provide speeds of 'up to' 10Gbps down and 1Gpbs up (although again, because of it being shared it is unlikely to be that fast all the time for everyone).

  • mitchellp on 28/03/2016 - 09:40

    I've been on optus cable for many years.
    It cuts out approx once a day which makes it impossible to play some online games.

  • Baysew on 28/03/2016 - 10:28
    +1

    Is anyone on optus cable now?

    Mostly possums.

    Also have Telstra cable.

    Its's a real possum super highway.

  • bambooculm on 28/03/2016 - 10:58

    I am on Optus cable now at off-peak times, my current speed is below:
    http://netgauge.ookla.com/share/423443901.png
    46.75 Mbps Your off-peak speed may be better than mine, at least for a few months. Good luck!

  • slow on 28/03/2016 - 11:24
    +1

    Been on it for over 10 years and only ever had one outage. Also, don't notice any performance degradation during peak times. I guess it depends where you are - I have been very lucky. Love my Optus cable

    • [Deactivated] on 28/03/2016 - 12:09

      Same here, decade without issue.

  • [Deactivated] on 28/03/2016 - 12:09
    +1

    Been on Optus cable about 12 months Brisbane southside. Only one outage for short time. No degradation in streaming peak times. New Chromecast 2 dongle loads streamed vids super fast. Must be lucky; probably not many connections in my area.

  • garetz on 28/03/2016 - 14:38

    I was one of the first people in australia to get optus cable, in 1994-95, the exchange was right outside my house at the time. I had it for over 12 years, was good the first 3 years, then got congested. Optus oversell every chance they get. Its good for data thoroughfare and latency varies. However i wouldnt use it for games if you want stability 24/7. For that reason i had to get a 2nd connection of adsl for gaming, while for everything else i used optus cable.

  • endotherm on 28/03/2016 - 15:04

    Mine's not bad http://netgauge.ookla.com/share/423526276.png but it really depends on how much congestion there is on your node and the time of day.

  • coco1458 on 28/03/2016 - 19:40

    I generally average 80-100Mbps at most times, sometimes coming down to 70Mbps during Peak but it hasn't been too much of an issue other than a few months ago when it became overly congested due to Optus overselling.
    Didn't bother me too much as they compensated me with $30 off my bill each month. Now back at full speed, hasn't missed a beat. Although anyone using a CG300v2, that thing is a piece of rubbish and I'd recommend just bridging it to a router.

  • mrmachine on 29/03/2016 - 08:01

    moet of the time, Optus cable is much faster ( 90+ Mbps throughput) than adsl (15 Mbps - I ran internode side by side with Optus cable for 2 months to test). Latency is about 20% higher. At the very worst congestion, Optus cable did slow to a crawl (3mbps). That was when Netflix first came out. These days, I don't notice any congestion (but maybe I'm not paying attention anymore). Usually, Heavy congestion at peak times results results in speeds that are equal to the best possible speed of adsl2. So overall, it's definitely a win. I pay 90 per month for unlimited data on Optus cable with free fetch tv (which is useless) and unlimited national/mobile calls. Overall I am $30 a month better off and have faster service with Optus cable than internode.

    • PlasticSpaceman on 29/03/2016 - 10:31

      …agree that the Fetch TV thing was useless - at least when first plugged in. You could barely change channels, let alone do anything else. Left it running for a few days and it updated itself a number of times. Now, it actually seems to work ok. Every now and then when turning it on the screen is black, but changing channels seems to fix it. Otherwise it is now almost as good as my old Topfield, plus it has all the bonus cable channels etc. For the price (it was 'free' with the $90 bundle - which I mainly got for the unlimited data) it's ok.

  • golfer dad on 29/03/2016 - 08:29

    I've have Optus cable for more than 10 years and no problems. From 7pm onwards, the whole family (3 ipads & 2 laptop and often the iphones too)is surfing on the net and it doesn't feel slow although my kids are under 15 so they are not playing hard core on-line multi player games. However, Optus mobile reception in our area (inner South of Melb) is weak. But everyone could have quite different experiences depending on their location and # of users in their area. The only way to find out if it is good in your place is to try it out and compare it to your Telstra experience. Share your finding once your 1 month is done.

  • PlasticSpaceman on 29/03/2016 - 09:45
    +2

    I've been on Optus Cable since '98 - it was first made available as "Optus@Home" in '99. When I got it, I was getting maybe 10 to 12 Mbps downloads at all times. Over the years as more people got onto my node (it's shared infrastructure, unlike ADSL which is switched) the speed would vary - in particular when they changed from unlimited and people downloaded their remaining data at the end of the month.

    With the change to DOCSIS3 download speed improved to around the 30Mbps mark (I don't have the 'speed pack' that in theory can enable 100Mbps) and it normally is around that mark. At times however it can drop perhaps to the 10Mbps mark. Worst I've seen is maybe around the 2Mbps mark, but that's pretty rare.

    Now, the thing to be aware of is it depends a lot upon how many other people are on your node. The other thing to be aware of is Optus support is friendly and they try to help, but they are invariably useless. Support is usually along the reboot everything, remove all the cables and plug them back in mode. Which means, if you're unlucky and have some issues then you might fall into a pit of despair. Most people I suspect are fine though. In the 18 years or so of connection here, I have had two major issues - both caused by cable modem problems - and both took months to sort out, and resulted in me getting compensation from them via the CSG (as I have both 'phone and internet from them). But other than those two bumps, they've been good.

    So it sounds like you've done the right thing. Test them out first. If the speed is good for you in your location, then I'd go for it.

    Big +1 for the suggestion already mentioned to put the provided cable modem into bridge mode and use a separate router for wifi/dhcp/firewall etc. I have been told that they currently only have a Netgear, and it is - well - crap. Both times I had technical issues the cable modem was a Netgear. Go figure. Never had issues when using the other modems I have had from them over the years (Motorola, Cisco etc).

  • murrystores on 29/03/2016 - 10:18

    Have been with Optus for over 10 years now. No real problems except for the casual system down, but otherwise no real problems
    With no speed pack added

    http://netgauge.ookla.com/share/424152252.png

  • Tatari on 29/03/2016 - 12:11
    +1

    On the 100mbit plan, it's nice when everyone is at work/school but goes to crap during peak time. The only time I seem to get full speeds is at 3AM. For reference this is near the Liverpool NSW area.

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