Then someone told me he was moving to a company called MyRepublic to try them out. So I did some checking on Google and found that they offered speeds 'up to' 100/40 Mbps. No wild promises - just that they would supply the best speeds they could to my home, depending on the infrastructure available.
I expected perhaps around 50/20 or if I was really lucky, 75/30. I also read a lot of complaints from people about a terrible lack of customer service, written by dissatisfied customers. Not a great start, but I have been using the Internet since before we had it publicly available in Australia, so I'm fairy resilient. Based on my research I revised my expectations and decided that if I got consistent speeds as low as 35/5 Mbps, I would be better off, because as well as being at least twice the speeds I got now and also having unlimited downloads, at $59.99 a month the plan was $15 a month cheaper. As it turned out, the speed was more than four times better.
MyRepublic suggested it 'should' be about 20 days between my order date, and an active service. And checking my log, I see that I ordered and paid the first payment on the 9th December 2016.
And here, I got to experience the so called 'lack of customer service' that people complained about. I heard nothing from MyRepublic. In the mean time, and with no notice from MyRepublic, the NBN contractor arranged to finish installing my NTD, and a modem had arrived. Out of curiosity I plugged it in, expecting to hear more from MyRepublic directly.
One night about two weeks after I had ordered my plan, and about a week after the modem arrived I glanced at the modem and noticed that a red LED had changed to green. So I disconnected my ADSL modem and tried my shiny new Technicolor NBN modem. I was online! So I ran a speed test and got 95Mbps download speed and about 35Mbps upload. This was far better than I had hoped for and pretty close to the 100/40 I had signed on for. I knew once I fired up my VPN it would drop significantly, but I was pleased.
However, other than an email on the 9th acknowledging my order, I had still heard nothing from MyRepublic. No notice that the modem was being sent, and not advice that i was connected.
That was until the 29th December (the 20 days they had estimated) when I got an email saying:
Dear Ross,
Congratulations, your MyRepublic broadband service is now active.
To connect your Wi-Fi Hub+ modem, follow the simple steps in the Quick Start Guide.
If you ordered a Home Phone service, you will receive a separate notification, telling you when it’s time to plug in your home phone.
So what about the lousy customer service everyone was complaining about?
Well, the reality seems to be that there is a small number of unhappy people and they are very vocal. The rest of us are not as noisy, because we are quietly sitting enjoying speeds the rest of Australia only dream of.
MyRepublic saw an opportunity to give Australians what nobody else would give them. The fastest speeds possible on the new NBN, for the price of an average ADSL2+ connection. Plus, they included UNLIMITED downloads.
But to do that, they had to cut a few corners. They seem to have decided that delivering on their promise of the best speeds they could provide, while keeping the price as low as possible, was more important than setting up a huge customer service centre.
And I think they have the correct priority. Here's why. I have had problems with the service provided by pretty well all my ISPs and RSPs over the years. And, being a technician with networking, hardware and software skills, as well as a knack for troubleshooting - I have developed some patience. I have a procedure for solving Internet problems. You might need help from a tech savvy friend, or your computer guy.
1) I check my hardware.
2) I check my network settings.
3) I wait to see if the problem resolves itself.
4) If the problem doesn't improve in 24 hours I contact customer support.
And here is the problem with MyRepublic. There is usually a LONG wait for phone support. The online chat for tech support doesn;t have as long a waiting time, but unless you have an alternate Internet connection - that is not an option. And the same applies to Facebook messaging.
However, on the few occasions when there has been a problem, MyRepublic customer support have been great. They are pretty well aware now that I don't ring up to whine. I tell them what is happening and what I have done to investigate the problem at my end. Then they usually send me a message on Facebook Messenger or online chat.
That works, because usually the Internet problem is not a lack of service, but rather a very slow service. Last November (2017) I had speeds as low as 3Mbps for a while. But while it was horribly slow, I could still message them. So instead of jumping up and down and crying in my beer, I simply sent daily updates so they would be informed while they tried to find the issue.
After about a week they contacted me and said there was a network upgrade happening in my region (Mackay, Qld) and they apologised, but assured me it would be fixed as soon as possible.
By the late November I had speeds around 85 Mbps without my VPN and speeds of about 55 Mbps with my VPN. That didn't change for a while, and I still don't know if there was a problem with my VPN service. But in the last days of November, I was back to around 90 Mbps even when running through my VPN.
Now, there is one more thing I often hear in various forums, particularly Whirlpool.net.au and that is the way MyRepublic has OOKLA Speedtest 'rigged' so it shows much higher download speeds than you can actually achieve using MyRepublic.
This is the 'MYTH' referred to in the post title. There will always be a small difference between the speed shown on various speed test sites. But there are ways to actually verify your 'REAL' download speed. For Linux users it is very easy. Open a terminal (the thing Windows users call a Dos Prompt) and use the wget program to download an 'iso' file of a Linux distribution like Mint or Ubuntu. These iso files are typically 1.5GB to 2GB in size. The terminal will show the download speed in MiB/second (we used to call it Megabytes per second), and at the end it will say how long it took to download.
If you miss the download speed, just divide the finished file size in MB by the number of seconds and you have the speed. Then enter the speed in MiB (MB) into a MiB to Mbps converter (you can find one using Google).
The result is your REAL download speed. Compare this to the speedtest result from Ookla or your preferred speedtest. Below I have an actual test I did earlier to illustrate the point. This download and the speedtest were done while my computer was accessing the Internet through my VPN (Total Sollutions LLC).
203MB downloaded in 19 seconds
Yep!! It's rigged!! The speed test 'might' be 0.44 Mbps faster that the REAL result - or could it just be a lag to do with the distance between Sydney NSW and Mackay, Central Qld?
Either way. I can't see anything to justify claims that MyRepublic 'rig' the speedtest results.
This test was done on a Gigabyte BRIX with a Celeron BACE3150 (1.6Ghz) Processor and 8GB RAM running Mint Linux KDE 17. Where it says Total Server Solutions LLC, shows it was running through my VPN in Sydney. If it was not running through the VPN, it would show MyRepublic, and the speed would usually be between 95Mbps and 98Mbps.
Just to show the consistency of my MyRepublic connection, here are my last speed test for 2017 and my first speed tests for 2018 over three days at different times of the day. about 2pm, about 3pm and about 8pm.
And here is a collection of individual downloads, again showing how consistently I get around 10 Megabytes or more per second.
Finally, if you have an issue with MyRepublic, why not take the time to realise they are trying to do what nobody else was willing to do. Give us cheap, affordable FAST broadband on the NBN.
Sure, there are some other companies offering similar pricing, and a few even do 'unlimited downloads'. But the pricing and unlimited downloads were pioneered by MyRepublic. Without them, we would probably still be paying $200 if we wanted 100/40 speeds and the downloads would be capped.
Be patient. When you do get through, don't rant and rave like a lunatic. Try explaining the problem and get a channel of communication going with your customer service rep. They WILL help, once they can find the problem. Often it is not something they can actually fix. Much of the infrastructure is outside their control. But if they know there is a problem, they need it fixed just as much and as soon as you do. They WANT YOU to be HAPPY.
So I wrote about this on Whirlpool.net.au forum and linked to this post. And someone wrote in reply to a comment:
Also the link you included from Ross, he only tested speeds in Australia, not speeds overseas.
Providers like Aussie Broadband, Mungi, Telecube and Leaptel provide good speeds in Australia as well as overseas.
Let's be frankly honest here, how many of us just use Australia based websites?
So I decided to add a speed test from Mackay, to my VPN in Sydney, to a Speedtest served in the USA.
NOTE - this IS running through a VPN as can be seen by the originating server
NOTE - this IS running through a VPN as can be seen by the originating server
'Total Server Solutions, LLC
137.59.252.154'
and it was done at 4pm. Even through the VPN and testing the USA, it is not bad for a 100/40 account. Upload is a bit dismal, but it is download speed we count on for viewing Netflix, Youtube and other content.
I could only dream of such internet speeds. Between ADSL2+ and NBN I guess I see a clear winner. Judging on your speed, is that FTTH?
ReplyDeleteHi Yano, Yes, I am lucky - I got FTTP / FTTH as was originally planned for the whole NBN. But my son is getting fairly similar speeds now on Fibre to the Kerb. Luckily I warned him it would probably take a while for the network to 'settle'. It's a bit like the old days when we drove our new cars carefully for a while to let everything wear in evenly. The Internet network, whether the old copper, or the new fibre, seems to take a few months to reach comfortable level depending on all the connections and such.
DeleteThere are lots of NBN providers who can offer speeds like this now, but MyRepublic was the first to do (up to) 100/40 Mbps at a price cheaper than my old ADSL connection, and cheaper than my 25/5 NBN connection. In fact if you check sites like Whistleout.com.au, you'll probably find they are still cheaper than most other providers.
They are a little slack with cutomer service sometimes according to a lot of customers, but I have found that if I am patient, they get everything done eventually. And they have always been good top deal with - probably because I don;t scream at them for little things they actually can't fix. Most network problems can only be actually fixed by NBNco. or the three or so big wholesale distributors. Resellers like MyRepublic simply sell the product, and try to get it to you at a price that makes them a little money - and keeps you happy.
If you followed the post carefully, you will see that I suggest using Actual Download Speeds of BIG files from a busy server for speed tests.
I find that gives me my REAL speeds - rather than using Speed Test sites.
And even when MyRepublic had a big outage at the end of January, for most of the time until it was fixed, my download speeds were still better than friends who had 25/5Mbps connections.
If you check the forums like Whirlpool, you will see a lot of people complaining about MyRepublic. Mostly the sort of people who want to exchange a kilo of bananas because one banana wasn't quite yellow enough.
What you usually won;t see is the thousands of us who love what MyRepublic has given us. We just sit quietly and enjoy our nice fast speeds at a bargain price.
A couple of things to remember if you are thinking about MyRepublic.
They are notoriously bad for leaving you hanging on the phone for a LOOOONG time. It's never happened to me, in fact, every time I called them they have either answered, or called me back. But according to lots of people with no patience - you might have long waits.
They hardly ever answer emails. In fact, as I wrote, they had my service up and running weeks before they told me it was connected.
They DO answer Private Messages on Facebook Messenger. Sometimes they answer the same day - sometimes they look into your problem first and answer a day or so later. But they have never yet failed to answer me.
They also DO answer the 'CHAT' function on the MyRepublic website. Sometimes not immediately, but usually within an hour or so (so far).
Personally, if I call and the phone is busy, I try CHAT on their website. Most of the time, your Internet will be working - but slow. So you can still message them.
And most of the time a Slow connection is something MyRepublic can;t fix anyway - so it's best to just let them know the problem, and they wil pass it up the line. They might ask you to run some simple tests to be sure the problem is not at your end - but they WILL do what they can.
usually, once the problem is sorted - usually bu Telstra or Optus or NBNco, your connection will slowly get back up to speed anyway.
But at least you would have told MyRepublic you had a problem and they would have passed that message upstream :-)