Lightning Broadband

[Truman42]

After 3 years stuck on ADSL1 in Lyndhurst with around 6.5Mbps down and .5Mbps up (And I know thats quite good compared to others) Ive finally connected up with lightning broadband which use a combination of fibre and wireless. They have speeds up to 100Mbps up/down for around $120 a month but I chose the 50 Mbps up/down for $95 a month which is what I was paying Telstra, and they also have 25Mbps up and down for $75.00 a month. And all plans are unlimited data. They do a free site survey to tell you what they can provide which depends on how far away you are from the tower.

www.lightningbroadband.com.au

And here is a news story that appeared on channel nine news a few weeks ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtyJU5Xj3Xk

And a thread on whirlpool

https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=2515567

No affiliation etc etc but they are installing their towers in a growing number of areas. Currently live at..... Hallam, Hampton Park, Lynbrook, Lyndhurst
Pending Completion we will be live in the next 60 – 70 Days at the following locations.
St Kilda, Richmond
Upcoming Builds as follows.
Hawthorn, Doncaster, Casey Central, Marriot Waters and possibly Croydon
Basically they install an antenna on your roof (Ubiquiti nano beam AC) and point it to their main tower or a relay they may have in the area. Mine is pointing to the tower at Lynbrook 2 kms away but they just installed a new tower here in Lyndhurst which I am getting switched over to on Wednesday. Their contention ratios are low because they don't overload their sectors and have a set number of customers per sector.

Anyway as I said not affilaiated and you don't have to mention Truman told you or anything like that, but if you are sick of slow and congested adsl then take a look at their website. These guys are giving the NBN a run for their money with much faster speeds and in areas that have had poor adsl and congestion for a long time.

If you go to the website and register your interest they use this to determine where to put a tower up next. And yes they are spreading interstate eventually.

 

[GrumpyPaul]

It was interesting until I got to the installation bit...the $499+ installation fee is a bit on the exxy side

 

[fraser_john]

It was interesting until I got to the installation bit...the $499+ installation fee is a bit on the exxy side

Faaarrrrrrk $499? For real? JHC.

 

[Dave70]

How many Mbps do you need to stream something like Netflix in full HD?

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

25Mb should do it, as long as you keep the pesky kids off their iPads :lol:

 

[Dave70]

Thats easy. They cant reach the top of the buffet and hutch.
But my wife will use a chair..

 

[Truman42]

The installation doesn't cost that much. I think that's based on if you require a full mast for your antenna. If your TV antenna is in the right spot they can install the antenna on top of that. But others will need a longer mast installed. My install cost $299 but i had to pay an extra $90 for a longer mast.
i will probably go with the 25Mbps plan at $75 a month eventually so saving me $20 a month on what I was paying with Telstra...But I have a faster connection and unlimited data.

its not for everybody but if your stuck on a congested over subscribed line where your only getting 1-2 mbps then its an option if you dont have NBN yet and not likely too.

I can stream Netflix no problem using my 6.5Mbps connection in HD however the problem is it slows down everyone else in the house and if someone tries to watch a Youtube or FB clip my connection drops to low quality or buffers.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Internet Connection Speed Recommendations

Below are the Internet download speed recommendations per stream for playing movies and TV shows through Netflix.

• 0.5 Megabits per second - Required broadband connection speed
• 1.5 Megabits per second - Recommended broadband connection speed
• 3.0 Megabits per second - Recommended for SD quality
• 5.0 Megabits per second - Recommended for HD quality
• 25 Megabits per second - Recommended for Ultra HD quality

 

[Dave70]

The installation doesn't cost that much. I think that's based on if you require a full mast for your antenna. If your TV antenna is in the right spot they can install the antenna on top of that. But others will need a longer mast installed. My install cost $299 but i had to pay an extra $90 for a longer mast.
i will probably go with the 25Mbps plan at $75 a month eventually so saving me $20 a month on what I was paying with Telstra...But I have a faster connection and unlimited data.

its not for everybody but if your stuck on a congested over subscribed line where your only getting 1-2 mbps then its an option if you dont have NBN yet and not likely too.

I can stream Netflix no problem using my 6.5Mbps connection in HD however the problem is it slows down everyone else in the house and if someone tries to watch a Youtube or FB clip my connection drops to low quality or buffers.

How do you go in dodgy weather? Its got to be pretty bad for the fox connection to drop out where we are, but when I flick over to free to air even when its slightly wet outside all I get is a a bunch of huge jerky pixels.

 

[Mardoo]

And here I am stoked to have moved from a 0.16 Mbps service to a 12 Mbps one...

 

[fraser_john]

We moved to a new built house in an estate that got fibre to the house rolled out, I had a 100Mbps plan, unlimited data for $89/month through AusBBS. Fine for the first 9 months till they realised that on average I was using over 1TB of data on average LOL, my plan went to $149/mo after that. Quickly cut back to 25Mbps but it was still $79/mo.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

How do you go in dodgy weather? Its got to be pretty bad for the fox connection to drop out where we are, but when I flick over to free to air even when its slightly wet outside all I get is a a bunch of huge jerky pixels.

We have many customers on NBN fixed wireless and it doesnt suffer any issues due to bad weather.

Cant speak for lightenings performance as I dont know what spectrum and equipment they use

 

[DU99]

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/5281627305

From Optus broadband ..

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/5281627305

From Optus broadband ..

That is a huge ping time.......

 

[Truman42]

Here is a speed test i just did but keep in mind this is via wireless to my iMac, whilst my son watches netflix in HD at the same time on the Apple TV.





It hasn't really rained here since I had this installed last week. But a few other locals have told me that in a huge summer down pour it slows a bit maybe 5-10mbps slower but other than that its fine.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Be interesting to see how they go at peak congestion times

 

[Truman42]

Be interesting to see how they go at peak congestion times

Heres a post from Daniel at Lightning over on Whirlpool which answers that question.

Just to clarify a bit further,
We use 1Gbit Active Fibre services for all our fibre backhaul links,
Each fibre can be easily upgraded to 10Gbit or 100Gbit if needed into the future

We currently see a MAX peak of 320Mbit in Lynbrook at the busiest time during the previous school holiday's which is nowhere near filling our backhaul capacity.
Whilst we do have a hard limit of 20 Customer's per sector, if and when we need to add more sectors, we certainly have the means and ability to achieve this without too much inconvenience to current service

 

[Bribie G]

How many Mbps do you need to stream something like Netflix in full HD?

I have good old Telstra ADSL 2 with a terabyte a month for around $100 per month bundle. I generally watch Netflix with 4 Mbps upwards but even here in the Misty Mountains I usually get 12 Mbps and can watch Netflix HD just fine and download a 1080p movie from the places we don't talk about in around 20 minutes.

edit: I may be out of date here, but fixed wireless from towers is great if you are an early adopter (for a while) or are in an area that isn't going to experience much population growth, but if the tower is in an area where more and more people are connecting and sharing the bandwidth, the speed goes down and down which is the reason that even the Fraudband is done on fixed line rather than wireless.