New Zealand and its expensive but great interwebs, vs Oz

Internet speed here is GREAT, I’m getting an almost constant 4G signal throughout Auckland so far, which means almost instant response to any of my mapping and research needs on the go, and also my WIFI hotspot thingy pumps out the sugar like nothing else.

Holy shit! Just checked on speedtest.net – I did a TON of testing of the Adelaide networks a few months ago and averaged 1-5mbps, with frequent cutouts and dial-up-like response. Of course this is comparing apples with cameltoes but the Adelaide stuff was on 3G and this Auckland stuff is 4G and all that, but still – a steady 40/mbps rate for both up and download is superb:

But it’s super expensive. Compared to Oz at least.

Quick breakdown is basically data in NZ costs $20-40/gb and most (prepaid) phone plans only come with 500mb to start with, which is about enough to watch 3 cat videos. In Australia on my Virgin Mobile plan I had 9gb/month via my oMate watch-phone (my only contact source) for $89. But the speed was usually not quite good enough to watch a video without buffering, and the connection was rather abysmal considering I was in the CBD – I would often spend 2-4 hours a day with intermittent connectivity. They could call the plan “unlimited” because, well, anything is unlimited if you can’t get much of it. #firstworldwhining

However in relativistic terms, baulking at paying $20 for a gig of data seems ridiculous after being quite fine at justifying a few glasses of $13 pinot noir, so I’m not going to obsess about the costs of getting online anymore, and focus more on drinking cheaper.

Or maybe less.

(probably cheaper)