WiMax has been a complete non-starter in Australia, especially considering that Telstra’s NextG network is pretty much the best HSPA network in the world. But that hasn’t stopped the Seven network from rolling out WiMax to Perth residents this month through a company called Vivid Wireless. The most surprising part is that the data limits are actually pretty competitive.
The plans start at $20 a month for 1GB of data, which is comparable to most of the HSPA wireless networks. But as you scale up the amount of data, the price becomes a lot more aligned with ADSL pricing – 40GB for $99 or 25GB for $75. If you exceed your monthly limit, you can purchase additional data, with 1GB costing $20 and 10GB costing $80.
Both uploads and downloads count towards your data limit, although being owned by the Seven network, Vivid Wireless does offer unmetered TiVo and Engin downloads. If you don’t want to spring the extra cash for extra data, you’ll be throttled to 64kbps.
While we’re discussing speeds, there’s no indication of how fast the network will actually be. The Vivid website claims they’ll update with “real world” speeds when they start collating data. That doesn’t help us now, though. There’s also no peak or off-peak times.
Any Perth Gizmodians had a play with this yet? I’m definitely interested in thoughts on the network’s performance…
Connor
Monday, March 22, 2010 at 4:30 PMI think its a bit steep in price to be honest. Although it is wireless it really needs to compete with ADSL prices…
brad
Monday, March 22, 2010 at 4:40 PMI wasnt that the speed would be very good. but being as it came with a 14 day trial. i decided to buy it. with speedtest.net i got ping between 55ms and 88ms -and avg 9.3MBps Down, 3.5MBps Up…
im convinced!
James
Monday, March 22, 2010 at 7:31 PMThis is pretty cool – pricing be damned. I just want to be able to connect wherever I am at high speed, so I can use things like Skype wherever I want. I’m convinced that the Telcos need get on this bandwagon, because when it arrives, people will stop paying gouge prices (30 bucks a month for a landline, plus exorbitant call rates domestically and internationally?) for something that could be basically free.
I already moved to naked DSL – no difference in quality, big difference in price. Now if I could just get my iPhone to do Skype over 3G…
leiroy
Sunday, April 11, 2010 at 12:09 PMHello James,
What area are you in? Don’t need to be specific just the suburb. I am in Stirling and there is coverage in the area. I am really interested in this as I am over 3km from the exchange and my ADSL2+ speeds are very disapointing. I would be very interested to know how things are going on the speed front as I am constantly frustrated with the crap speeds in Australia.
James
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 11:15 PMLeiroy,
I’m actually in Sydney (Northbridge) and I use iinet Naked DSL. I get very middle of the road speeds – but what I really want is high speed anywhere, including outside the home.
I currently tether to my iPhone for internet outside the house, but Vodafone can be patchy. It’s pretty good most places except (sadly) I get a terrible signal at my own residence.
Kieran Lee
Friday, May 14, 2010 at 6:06 PM“Now if I could just get my iPhone to do Skype over 3G…”
Try Mobile VOIP
Darcy
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 6:49 AMLooks pretty good. I have an ASDL2+ enabled exchange in my area but I am too far from the exchange to get any decent speeds. This product looks promising to me.
Peter Simpson
Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 12:24 AMGot it, but unfortunately I’m in a black spot so no coverage. The guys were great. Never spoke to anyone offshore and my refunds being processed as we speak.
Dave
Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 3:28 PMThe tower modem seems to be very reliable, I’ve been using it for my Xbox live gaming and latency is fine (my ADSL exchange is suffering from congestion). Cost wise I’m still keeping my ADSL as $50 for 50 GB is cheaper than the Vivid deals, however I’ve got a 5 GB vivid plan for $35 and use that for my web browsing (which is cheaper than what I was paying for a so called 8Mbps ADSL connection). Speed wise, 10 Mbps down and 2.5Mbps up, beats the 3Mbps cap on ADSL that I was getting and up speed is great for video conferencing with family.
Anonymous
Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 8:43 PMThat pricing is excellent, the absolute best wifi available in Perth. Compare with Three at the moment, $149/12GB!
Anonymous
Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 5:14 PMAfter looking at the plans, I’ve changed my mind. They are great for people looking to stay in a contract, but are only in-line with existing Three plans if you want to go prepaid.
So that sucks :( Also it seems they charge you extra when you go over on your contract, which is almost impossible to avoid. So boo to them.
Monty
Friday, April 2, 2010 at 4:58 PMThe data pricing for 24 month contract or without contract is the same.
Without a contract you have to pay for the modem / home gateway.
My speeds with Vivid are way better than my ADSL2+ non enabled – 3.75Klm from exchange…
Not sure if speeds may drop as more people subscribe.
Chris
Saturday, April 3, 2010 at 2:49 PMI’m going to get vivid just because its cheeper and faster on prepaid than any of the others. I don’t know about you guys but signing a 24 month contract with any broadband mob is like asking them to give you a crap service for 2 years. I’d never sign one. at the rate technology changes 12 month contracts are too long.
emett
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 7:00 PMMy home gate way arrived to day. I am in an area that has excelent coverage. However my speeds are not at all fast sure http://www.spedtest.net tells me I’m getting 9.5Mb/s download. When every other speed test tells me I’m getting no where near those speeds i.e. 1.4Mb/s fromwww.ozspeedtest.com
line speed with a download speed of 186 KB/s
This is no fast than the optus 3g dongel i had before.
With my iphone connected I’ve tried to surf a few webpages and they are so slow slower by miles than the 3g sim the phone has in it.
As for my xbox, i live in a small unit and the xbox wireless adapter cant find the weak signal the home gate way is putting out.
I’ve tried ethernet and in the spot my gateway needs to be for this its not getting a correct signal.
The gate way signal can be measured by RSSI which is signal strengh and CINR which is signal quality. RSSI needs to be with in -40 to -85
where CINR needs to be 10 to 30.
every room in my house i’ve tested the gateway and can’t get the CINR below 32. this is where they think my problem lies.
They are thankfully very easy to deal with on the phone and are also getting back to me on what can be done. I may end up terminating the contract.I just did this with optus on thursday as they have no 64 bit drivers for their dongels!!
Just a warning that even tho you mayappear to be in a perfect location this may not be the ISP for you.
Sha
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 12:53 PMI want to try it purely because I don’t want to use a landline and with their Gateway modem you can link your PS3, Wii, laptops etc all at once. I’ve tried to connect to Naked ADSL in my area with another carrier and I have to wait till one MIGHT become available. Vividwireless prices are good and you only pay $75 if you go on contract to pay off the Gateway. Otherwise you can buy it out right at $299 or something – quite steep price – but then you can use it for all of the above and save at least $20 off the $75 price (maybe even more) The only reason I haven’t bought it yet is because I have to pay $299 outright for the Gateway and can’t afford that at the mo – also I hate the hassle of transferring over. But I am sure I will give it ago eventually.
george bean
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 12:39 AMNeither Vivid nor stores listed on its sites provide any way of contacting by email. Is that arrogance or stupidity – or sheer laziness. Imagine going to a local shop and finding a sign on the door that says “ring us if you want to buy”. Same thing.
What ever, its yet another example of the poor marketing the Seven network employs all too often.
Jorn
Friday, June 11, 2010 at 2:12 PMVivid Wireless Rolling Out WiMax To Perth Customers | Gizmodo Australia adler@gigemail.net
john yung
Saturday, July 24, 2010 at 2:50 AMi am using it right now, its cheaper than the iinet 150G plan, phone services is good, no problem.
stephen
Saturday, July 24, 2010 at 2:50 AMJust processsed refund. USB modem does not work at Hollywood Hospital according to tech dept. this is despite sales people telling me no problems. steer clear of these guys
John
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 6:20 PMVivid have since introduced a $75 unlimited plan. A bloke at work is on it and he queried what they meant by ‘unlimited’ and they told him ‘we won’t even look at you until you’ve downloaded 1TB in any given month’. Speeds have been reported as high as 36mbps and average 9.5mbps
Baal
Monday, September 13, 2010 at 2:39 PMI changed to Vivid after getting totally fed up with $119pm 10Gb limit with Telstra that was slower than dial up at peak times and average at other times. The vivid 4G on a $75pm unlimited is a superb deal and the speed is phenomenal. I run T-Box, T-Hub and Tivo thru it and can download Blockbuster or Bigpond movies in around 20minutes. I have two daughters thrashing facebook and Habbo all night and I can still stream a movie to my iPad if I like. I would deffinately recommend Vivid to anyone within the coverage area.
Tamby
Thursday, October 7, 2010 at 12:05 AMHi Baal
I was wondering how you run T-Hub and T-Box through vividwireless? Can anyone do this or is it because you were with Telstra before you changed to vivid?
Thanks, T
Che
Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 10:16 PMI took a bit of a gamble and ordered this as a bit of a guinea pig (dont know anyone using this in Sydney). I get good coverage at my house in Balmain that is faster than what I was getting with Internode ADSL. It is $75p/m for unlimited data which is plain awesome and more than makes up for the fact that it is quite bad when roaming.
Ralf Buettner
Monday, March 7, 2011 at 12:56 PMI ordered their home gateway at my house in Randwick. Latency was at least 50ms and download speed ranged between 2Mps and 10Mbps, but unfortunately not consistent plus I experienced constant drop outs using VoIP. So I canceled the service after 3 days and unfortunately they don’t warrant their money back guarantee. Not happy..