Sydney Relocation: Choosing a Internet Service Provider

Researching on the internet service provider was something that I neglected when we first arrived in Sydney. During the first two weeks when we stayed at the serviced apartment sponsored by Mr Taro's apartment, I was busy with apartment hunting, furniture and appliances hunting and assumed that selecting a decent internet service provider would be easy. 

My initial plan was to choose between Telstra and Optus. Upon further research, I was shocked by the amount of service providers available in Sydney. It was overwhelming initially due to majority of bad reviews for almost all of the service providers. 

I find that the websites helped me alot in my research:
1) Google Whirlpool forum and you can find loads of information on the different service providers as well as providers who work best in your suburb. If you are staying in City area, it probably would not matter that much though. 
2) http://www.eziconnect.com.au/ is a free service which assists you with your home phone and broadband connection. They would call you and go through various options depending on your needs but it is still best to do some homework beforehand. 
3) http://www.productreview.com.au/c/internet-service-providers.html is my favourite website. Unfortunately in this case, I find that majority of the reviews are really negative. So much so that I was wondering if the internet works at all in Sydney. 
4) http://broadbandguide.com.au/new-south-wales/naked-broadband/plans is a great website which compares the various plans available. 

The most important factor would be to check the proximity of location of the ports and your apartment/house for the service provider that you are interested in. If you are staying in Sydney city, it would not matter but if it's a suburb, it would be an important consideration.  

In the end, Mr Taro and I were down to Internode and Belong (which belongs to Telstra). Belong is actually recommended by Eziconnect and you only need to pay $10 for modem fee. No installation and set up fees required which Internode charges. 

Unfortunately, Belong called/emailed us to inform that there was no DSL ports available at our area in Pyrmont! Though it took me a few emails to get the refund of $10 for modem cost from Belong, they were pretty prompt and friendly in their email replies. We w ere not inclined to sign up with Internode as this means another week or more of waiting with no internet.

Though there were mixed reviews for Vividwireless, we went ahead with it as we could terminate the contract at any time. The delivery of the modem was really quick and took only 2 days after our online signup. The upload speed can be pretty slow at night and download speed is not excellent as well. So far, the internet speed is decent (crappy during rain and at night). For the price we are paying, I am definitely not happy with it. BUT we will live with it. We paid $79 for the modem. 

Just to share, my referral code for Vividwireless is 16329  (http://vw4g.co/16329) and we will both be entitled to one month free data credit when you sign up for a vividwireless account (: 

It is recommended to confirm on your ideal internet service provider as soon as possible once your rented apartment is confirmed as the setup of internet connection takes around a week or more and we depended on our 3G phones for the first week. 

Interesting #1 and #2- Life in sydney

Interesting #1
Two weeks back, we went to top up petrol for our recently purchased second hand car at Shell. I instantly noticed that people are doing DIY petrol top up and there are no petrol pump attendants at the petrol station! Call us noobs, but we are used to full service petrol stations in Singapore and we just kind of...What's going on?! Lol.

I quickly hurried out of the car and went to the guy in front who laughed and said "First time in Australia?". He was very kind to demonstrate the process which was pretty easy. Apparently, non self-service petrol kiosks are very common in Australia and well, we learnt something new that day!

I guess it got to do with the higher wages of Aussie workers which explains why the kiosks are majority non self-service.

Interesting #2
Our rented apartment has fire alarm detectors in each room and an intercom. A few days back...the fire alarm went off and it was the second time it occurred. The first time it happened was when we moved in only for a few days and it was 1.30am when it happened. It scared the wits out of me (I'm not sure about Mr. Taro) cos it was really loud and went on for 5-8 minutes.

Anyway, Mr Taro and I were mentioning that it must be a false fire alarm again. 10 minutes later, there was a knock on our door and there were firemen outside our unit! I was shocked beyond words lol because I caused the fire alarm with my shower earlier on. It turns out that the fire alarm detector was faulty which was rectified the next day, so fingers crossed it doesn't happen again!