Internode used to be a high quality home internet brand
Back when Simon ran it, sure. That's a looooong time ago though. iiNet also used to be a really good home internet provider. Like Internode, they were an ISP built by techies, for techies.
So far, I'm still happy with Aussie BB. But, they're listed now. That means they have shareholders to keep happy. That said, on my FTTP, they (very quickly) passed on the nbn price cut to me, which was nice.
@DeltaTangoLima@WaterWaiver I've been on internode but thinking I might move to Aussie Broadband. Last time i needed tech support from Internode after my connection was somehow disabled was an unpleasant weeklong saga
For online gaming, Superloop and their reseller Exetel are particularly good as they take the fastest route to Asia. You'll get significantly lower ping on Tokyo-based servers, which opens up more options if you play competitive PvP games or MMOs. Others like Aussie Broadband only take that route one way so you'll have higher ping overall.
Aussie are already headed down the toilet.
They changed his they billed me without asking and then denied it for 6 months.
TIO complaint ensued where my desired outcome was an apology and that they would notify others before changing billing parameters.
TIO eventually left it with Aussie to sort and they refused to help.
It was an unusual situation, their change to least cost routing incurred transaction fees on my (very) small business account, which lead to issues with my subscription accounting package on a basic plan that had limited line items it could reconcile (about 10 per month I think).
It's a specifically shitty situation, but my setup at the time was reasonable given my circumstances.
Had Aussie told me they were switching I could have changed to direct debit, but remember, it took 6 months to figure out it was them while they denied it the whole time.
I do tech support on an occasional basis when I'm well, and even dismissing my past history with Aussie I still find them going down hill with regards to inflated pricing and slowing support.
Their support is still above average, but at the prices they're adding it bloody should be.
It's a feature for payment processing.
Aussie began using it about 5 or so years ago.
I have nothing against it generally.
But what it did do is switch my payments from Visa debit to a type of cardless EFTPOS cash out type transaction that incurred a fee with my backward bank.
Had I known they intended to change how they charge I'd have taken the card off file with them and used another method.
Their support has some absolute dumbarses. I had fun and games when they somehow tangled my personal home account with me being an authorised rep on the client services that my workplace provided. Still no idea how the fuck they managed that. The only point of intersection is my name.
There isn't much to differentiate ISPs anymore. It used to be a huge benefit to have unmetered, low latency game servers, streaming radio mirrors, usenet feeds, IP phone services and ISP email. Internet offered a huge amount of extra value through the dialup, ISDN, ADSL1, ADSL2 era. They offered IPv6 early which was interesting to a techie early adopter and were rolling out ADSL2+ in some exchanges and wireless systems. I stuck with Internode for a long time because if your system just works there isn't a lot of incentive to chase other providers who are more or less the same. In the NBN era hey were a bit slow to deal with congestion a couple of times and I ended up moving to Superloop. I don't think they are anything special but that is kind of the point these days. The industry is commoditised and as long as their network and billing is competently run all the NBN resellers should be fairly comparable.