Whirlpool

I am fed up with Unwired - I've told them to cancel my contract after suffering through months of slow connections, signal dropouts and flashing lights.

It's no better than dialup.

I'm lucky to get download speeds in the double figures - maybe 20kbs - despite being on a 512kbs plan.

When using P2P software like bittorrent, I'll get maybe 4kbs download - and this on a "just as fast as normal broadband" connection.

The connection drops out every 10 or so minutes, then reconnects immediately.

And don't you love the unwired tech support answer? "Have you tried moving the modem?" That's got to go down with "have you tried turning your system off and on again" as one of the most stupid comments ever. Of course I've tried moving the modem. So far it's been in every room of the house.

And as for the lights on the modem, well, I've only ever seen one green light - one - on my unwired modem, and that was on the 26th floor of a building in Bondi Junction. I'm lucky to get a red light in my Inner west home.

I've read on this forum that some unwired customers have taken to buying third-party antennas to point at unwired towers. Frankly, I don't think I should have to resort to that - I just want the advertised service.

I went to unwired because I hated having to pay Telstra to use a substandard ADSL service. But now I've had to go cap in hand back to Telstra and I'm getting cable.

Funnily enough, when I told Unwired I wanted my money back, I had a call straight back from tech support to tell me my complaints had been "upgraded to level two". Well, hello!!! Too late guys. Maybe you should have done that straight away instead of telling me to move my modem.

I'd love to see if anyone else has similar problems.

Why did'nt you get the 14 - 30 day MBG, I'm sure you could have determined in 14 days if the service was going to suite you and your usage? eg: p2p, heavy downloading. If you want to download 300gig a month, why not get a flatrate DSL plan.

Umm, why go back to your old provider?

There are lots and lots of ADSL ISP's these days.

Also, try an iBurst ISP (with the money back guarantee) and see if that improves your reception. They use a different frequency band and that can sometimes work better in the same places as unwired isn't working so well (like my place).

And then if you can't get money back on unwired modem, sell it on ebay...

Do you have wabbit ears on your TV ? What do you do if your TV reception is crook ?
In some cases it just isn't possible to get a good signal.

I put it down to ... you don't hate optus and telstra as much as I do.
I am prepared to go to great lengths to punish them for their crimes against common sense. They're not interested in winning customers, they just pick up the old disgruntled customers that have come crawling back. Just like banks, what are you going to do... go to another bank ???

You'll come back because the other bank will treat you worse than we did, and when you do come back, we'll treat you even worse just to make sure you really want to use us.
Now That's a loyal customer. They'll stick with you no matter how bad you treat them !! :-)

I set up Unwired in REDFERN, with the desire to use VoIP (ENGIN) phone.

I have to say that I am disatisfied, as I find that even with the computer turned off, the voice disappears for seconds at a time. It just has to be signal fade or congestion or similar. We have a solid green light.

I guess that the difference between browsing and VoIP is that you can fool the Browser, as it will wait for the data. VoIP tells you instantly, that something is very wrong. There appears to be no problem with browsing - you just don't perceive the delay/dropout.

My only issue was not wishing to pay telstra ANYTHING. I Can't have ADSL without a phone line and Don't really need a wire-phone because we are rarely in the rented place, and friends tend to call the mobile anyway.
The concept of the VoIP phone for sit-down calls was attractive, but clearly UNWIRED cannot provide a guaranteed signal, despite our being told - "It should work just fine".

Does anyone know if Unwired have "launched" their priority packet service yet?

Has anyone tried setting the TOS bit in IP packets to see what happens?

This is what you need to ensure VOIP packets get priority over data packets.

I have a different spin on this. I have a near perfect signal strength therefore there was no easy way explanation for the problems I was experiencing and they could not blame it on my location etc. Full credit to the tech support guy for trying however after around 20 emails ultimately nothing was solved. One of, though not the only problem, was that it was swapping base stations as I was getting extremely good reception from 2. It was suggested that I relocate my modem to actually make the signal worse and potentially lock it into one station as apparently there is no way this can be done by Unwired...

Currently it's an extremely flawed service, I can't download without dropping out and no one seems to know why.

man i hear you on this, on an orange signal i get over 900kbps, when my signal goes to green (as it does) my speed crawls (300 - 100 kbps), it must be swapping towers? the other tower is retarded ?, this has only been happening to me the last 2 months, tech support unable to help. but i cant get cable blah blah.

Yeah dodgy unwired service here too, though not as bad as yours i think. Very soon, hopefully in 2 weeks i can get ADSL if telstra doesnt stuff around 'again'. iiNet all the way for ADSL!

Unwired is no good these days, iBurst will bring wireless to an above standard level!

After 6 months with Veritel Unwired I'm very close to cancelling my service. I've just put up with 3 weeks of hell. According to the veritel usage meter I've had 800 sessions this month and been connected for 2280 hours.. or 108 hours a day.

I've been trying to download the itunes update for three days but evertime i try to download it I get disconnected before it completes.

Over the past 6 months I've put up with dropouts, but they've never been this bad or for so long.

Well, I had the same problem as you did, if you don't mind losing some portablity get them to lock your modem into a single tower. That worked for me, I used to get red signal now its green all the time, the only difference is that my modem reads only the closest tower and doesn't bounce around looking for other signals. Hope this helps.

Veritel/Unwired mail server intermittently over the last week .... again.

Arghh.

They *really* need to fix that thing, yet the service page shows no email issues for a long time.

During the week it was a mix of the route lost from time to time and other times it 'appears' working fine but emails I know have been sent, including a few tests, just haven't made it yet.

Q on Veritel unwired writes...

They *really* need to fix that thing, yet the service page shows no email issues for a long time.

Q,
Im with veritel, and not had any of the problems you talk about.
Speed test always within acceptabe limits, only drop-out of late is with there "24hr" session time (thats a minor pain), and email has always been fine !!!

For others, forget "engine", its a rip-off, use Skype.

With all these servies, veritel is now as reliabe as my old ADSL connection with other more "reputable" suppliers.

I DID find that spyware/adaware was causing ALLOT of my earlier problems, but have removed the all (formatted the HDD), and "All's Welll"

Found Veritel support (via email) is more than hepfull, and when I have had to contact by phone, they answer quicker than the 2.5hrs I used to wait for with my ADSL connection.

Best of luck that your next ISP meets your expectations.

Veritel Unwired mail still down [fully the whole weekend and patchy during the week prior] and also for others I know, so it's an area wide issue that you are lucky to escape.

if the veritel server is that dodgy, why not use hotmail or a yahoo account?

How many little bars of signal strength and quality are you getting?
What suburb?

FYI.. Veritel unwired mail finally started trickling through this afternoon, but it looks like some of Friday [PM], all Saturday and a fair bit of Sunday mail has been lost. Monday mail sent after midday seems to have arrived straight away.

Second time this has happened in the last month. Not good.

If you have problems with multiple base stations... then I'm going to suggest another stupid idea like the pizza box antenna.

I'll call this one ... Woast your Wabbit !

Wrap your wabbit in aluminium foil. Put some holes in the foil where the vents are top and bottom to allow air to flow through and keep the wabbit cool. Don't cover the ear antenna. Then take the wabbit and point it at the BTS.

Chances are the other BTS's are off on the side internal antennas, so detuning and shielding them with foil should stop the wabbit switching to them.
If the wabbit does try and switch to use them, the high vswr should convince the wabbit to use a better antenna. (the ear) which is not covered with foil.

I'd like to know if people are still having the two towers problem now the firmware has been upgraded ??

likewise... dialup is at least predicatable - a 1Mb file will take a long time; but you would think that on a 512 plan with unwired, i wouldnt have to paint the entire house, mow the lawn and make several cups of tea whilst waiting for a file.

as for online gaming ...forget it. Unwired admit on their FAQ that latency is an issue. their topology is wireless all the way to their core fibre network, which apears to be hundreds of thousands of miles away.

no rants about their money back gaurantee please, yes i can choose and will do so.

their tech support is useless; i think they have 2 schoolkids who know 3 basic sentences
" move your modem"
" reboot your modem"
"thats the speed you should expect"

their 'contact us' page doesnt include a support option. You can contract them about plans, products, feedback - but not support. Forget phoning them; the last time i tried (could not get to internet outside of the unwired subnet) that i was on hold for 20 mins - only to be told that i had a problem with MY modem; even though i could browse THEIR website. If I could draw them a piciture about network topology that i though they could understand then i would; but i threw out my crayons a few years ago.

I've NEVER had performance anywhere near the 512kbit rate. Seeing 40-50kbps downloads are the holy grail for this service. I'm 2.5 Km's from a CBD tower with solid green and good SNR.

likewise i tried a bittorrent download like you - also getting 1,2 or 4 k download rate - the software saying "5 days remaining" on the download....nice, glad i've a fast internet service. what would i do without it?
be less stressed probably. (sarcasm pointed out here for the unwired staff)

here's today's result from the NZ Xtra B'band test site:

Download time: 18.787 seconds
Size of file: 500 Kilobytes
Estimated line speed: 217.2 (kilobits/second)
Estimated line speed: 26.6 (kilobytes/second)

if i could be confident that this result would be indicative, then maybe i might might just live with it.

yeah i also have to give Unwired the big THUMBS DOWN. Constant drop outs, slow slow slow download speeds, forget VOIP....tried that, hopeless ping times.....

When I see their adverts that say how simple it is, I often think about the time that their support guys asked me if I had a high bookshelf that I could try putting the wabbit on.

Very handy given the 1 metre long cable that comes with the modem.

Its a very new technology, they will get it right one day - so far that have not got it right.

My advice, pay the extra $30 per month exhaustion fees to Telstra for line rental and get ADSL. Thats what I will be doing when my contract runs out with Unwired.

I see UW as an alternative to ADSL no a replacement. If I wasn't on pair-gain (thanks a bunch Telstra) I'd choose ADSL.

Unfortunately, I don't even have an alternative wireless provider in my area. It's UW, dial-up or nothing.

Yeah, I have the 512Kb service, and get, at best, the equiv of a 200Kb service.

I've tuned and moved the thing all over the place, using the diagnostics tool.

I'm going to good old ADSL.

Goodbye Unwired.

I too have the 512k service... and although I considered (rethought very quickly) trying ADSL, I'd rather stick with UNW. Sure, my regular speed might be 450k rather than 512, depending on the time of day... but at the moment I've got a torrent going at 19k/s, and the Optus ADSL speed test still gave me a rating of 400+kbps.

Edit: Its now sitting steady at 51.2k/s

ADSL is fine if you've got a good line and the people that built your house didn't screw the phone wiring.

However, they did here... and ADSL won't work without expensive rewiring. Not worth the effort imho.

what if you hook the modem up at the boundary point where telstra come into your house, then just run the modem to the PC with some cat5 or use the wireless-router functionality on the modem if its got it?

Tex Zero writes...

I see UW as an alternative to ADSL no a replacement. If I wasn't on pair-gain (thanks a bunch Telstra) I'd choose ADSL.

Unfortunately, I don't even have an alternative wireless provider in my area. It's UW, dial-up or nothing.

I'm in the same shoes as you Tex. I can't get DSL or cable in my area, and iBurst was outta range, so it was Unwired or dial up... Now that my 12 mth contract with them is up, I feel like exploring other options but there really isn't any viable alternative for people like us. :(

I also joined unwired because my options were Unwired or dial up and I was lucky that my 12 month contract expired at almost exactly the same time Telstra upgraded my RIM giving me the option of ADSL.

I really wanted to stay with unwired or another wireless provider and cancel my fixed line rental but the the service from Unwired just wasn't good enough.

I'm now on ADSL and getting no drop outs while getting more (speed & allowance) for less money. I'm still paying for my landline but most out going calls are via VOIP.

Praco writes...

I set up Unwired in REDFERN, with the desire to use VoIP (ENGIN) phone.

This was discussed on this forum many many times. Unwired abandoned their phone loop which should speak volumes. The general consensus was that you might get lucky. However the new intel wireless is coming soon with 30 mill just pumped in to Unwired for the upgrade. It is meant to do much better with latency, the cause of your issue.

Orange mobile have just re-release local numbers on their network, see what u think if you do not want Hel$tra.

I'm having similar problems although mine aren't as severe.
No download dropouts but the speed is very inconsistent.
Tonight I may as well be on dialup.
I don't think the problems we are having have got anything to do with reception.
I am on the third floor and my nearest tower is about 600metres away.
It's more to do with the number of subscribers connected at one time.
Late at night say 2pm onwards my green bars are full but during the day I'm lucky to get 3 bars.
HAS ANYONE TRIED THE antenna? Does it make any difference?

I'd love to snap that little rabbit ear out its stupid head, set the whole thing on fire, and then pour acid all over it.

When I first signed up, it was getting decent signal (drop outs about 1 every 3 days for a short period of time) so I joined the contract.
Now 1 year later, the drops have progressivily gotton worse to about 4 times a day, and about 10mins each time!

The problem is I cant get ADSL and cable is just too expensive. Right now i'm planning to go buy an external antenna for it. I'll see how it goes. But I'm not holding my breath

I have Unwired thru Exetel.... have done for close to a year now.

Must say that I am most impressed with the service.... constant green light, regular 1mb download speeds..... Downloaded a 55mb file last night in 13mins.... SWEET!

It's All Good !!!

Location, location, location. I found locating an unwired modem strange at times putting it outside a window dosen't necessarily give you the best reception but putting it down on the floor with thick concrete, carpet, loud computer gives me good consistent speed.

I suppose the lesson is take advantage of the free fourteen day or your money back test don't live with it as it may not get better in the short term. Make sure it works to your liking because it has being very good for me in Glebe without antenna upgrades.

I have been with veritel unwired for about a year. I have moved with the service now three times (inner west) and I'm very happy.

For me the key was using a wireless router. I can have my PC's where I want and the modem where it gets a good signal. Currently the unwired modem sits on a window ledge in my spare room and the 802g router is close by. I have a constant green light and all is good.

It drops out about once a week but all I have to do is reset my router and I'm back on line. Actually it could be an issue with my router but considering the money I'm saving with no telstra line I'm very happy.

I'm sorry to hear that so many people are not happy.

I must wonder where the intel/WiMax/unwired thing will go. I think the possibilities are quite exciting.

Yea I am also having problems but its got todo with our new home being 50m-70m (they are building up...) below the ones on the next street, we are on the bottom of a hill... and being on the boarder line of coverage... and every now and my modem goes flashing... lots of fun packet loss... but overall if I get a stable connection its great for browsing, which basicly all I do...

Hello there,

I was thinking of going to use unwire because telstra service wasn't good. but after reading your comment now I dont know what to do.

which one you are using now? any recommendation?

sydney888, use iburst instead, much better than unwired.

Even I'm starting to get a little sick of dropouts. In the past week the dropouts have made the service almost unusable and I have a solid orange signal.

chriswalsh writes...

I'd love to snap that little rabbit ear out its stupid head, set the whole thing on fire, and then pour acid all over it.

LOL, I'm in hysterics!

3.5ghz and they still can't get it right. Unwired looks to be dying sooner rather than later.

Cancel your service in the dozens please. It may rethink them into selling up and moving on so they never bother me with there noisy interference for my Cband satellite service.

I have been with Unwired for six months and the service is getting slower to the point that dial up is quicker, I am on the 512 plan, drop outs at night are getting worse also, constant phone calls have not helped either. Time to change providers I think.

I totally agree with you!!!

I've constantly had the same problems, and i'm sick of them telling me move your modem every single time or "yes i see you have rung several times with the same problem"

unfornately i am unable to get cable yet.
As soon as i am able to get cable terminating my contract with Unwired. $55 a month for cr@p speeds.

I'm glad i'm not the only one experiencing really bad speeds!!! That does sort of make me feel alittle better...!

randomlogic writes...

Location, location, location. I found locating an unwired modem strange at times putting it outside a window dosen't necessarily give you the best reception but putting it down on the floor with thick concrete, carpet, loud computer gives me good consistent speed.

What you have done seems to defy logic, but when you consider the poor signal dropouts are also caused by the webbit modem wasting so much time jumping between towers to get what appears to be the best signal at that moment in time, coupled with the time lag for the modem to lock onto the tower well enough to grab some data from the NET, it all makes sense.

Imagine (car) an automatic gearbox and a small road incline, it has to hunt around to find the best gear. If there are too many choices overlapping the car doesn't go anyware. Maybe it almost stalls and has to go into neutral for a bit. The unwired webbit takes up to 15 seconds to compose itself after the modem is bumped. So whats the diff between a webbit moving relative to the closest tower(s) and the overlapping signals from more than one tower seducing the webbit.

But if you stick the thing in manual, you will find a slow and stable gear. There are a few ways to influence the webbit to lock onto one tower, Aluminium Foil with airholes (see Navini Diagnostics Rock thread), Pizza Box Shield (see boosting unwired signal), or phone Unwired Tech Support and ask them to put the Standard Reply 1-2-3 sheet down and lock your webbit to a specific tower that shows available capacity during the times that you want to go online.

or shoot ur wabbit with a wifle :/

post to me and ill shoot it for u and send it to unwired.

**EDIT** i promise to only use .22RF subsonics,i dont think a wabbit would survive a 30-06 and stay in 1 piece :)

wiking writes...

or shoot ur wabbit with a wifle :/

post to me and ill shoot it for u and send it to unwired.

Ha Ha Ha, am I using the wrong name? i used to call them Unwired Modems, noticed that they are referred to by 'webbit' or should it be 'wabbit' ?

Unwired are at it again, slow downloads. I am sure they are playing with the service as it is all over the place, Navina Diagnostics indicate a very good signal and quality so nothing has changed my end. Time for Unwired to wake up or face a sudden loss of customers, we were all willing to give them a go, but problems with speed seem never ending.

edaj1,

Try moving your modem 2cm to the left. If that doesn't work it's your fault. (Just trying to save you a call to Unwired Tech support).

Yeah we got a connection for mum because it was the simplest way to get broadband, ie just buy it from the shops and register online, which you have to give them credit for. However the signal does drop out and is quite unreliable, so it looks like we'll have to go for fixed broadband instead, and just bear installation and line costs. Anyone else here thinking of switching off soon or have switched off recently? or do you think the service will improve? I do remember reading that congestion problems had been addressed but we havent seen any improvement since we got it in November.

Not Happy

Sounds like you have been through it all before too, when I ring I tell them to forget the modem, fix your end of it type of thing, they don't know what to say when they think you may actually know what you are talking about.

i am considering giving unw the flick soon as i'm paying for a 256k connection, but only getting dialup speeds.

this has been going on for atleast 6 months - and getting worse mind you.

the other night, i was downloading through download accelerator and getting
1-3ksec.

tonight, i've had the odd burst up to 15k/sec

still shocking though

derrrrl, all ssslllloww

yeah me too

always really slow, just above dial up, paying for much more.

online shoot em up's a joke, ping regularly jumps from 150-250 to 999 all the time. 50% of the time i get a 15 sec delay before pages start downloading, not just obscure pages but like google, and 50% of the time the last little bit of the page takes 15 sec to download, all very dialup.

when i have cash i'm gonna try adsl2. but because my house is old, the phone lines' main connection is in a bedroom and my garage is when the studio is, so i gootta get an airport base station blah blah.

for all my 'talking' with tech support, nothing has got any better. hey i know it's not me, the solution is vapourware

sometimes it would be better if i was dumb . . . . .

spoke to exetel today, have to be at home at some stage, call them, and get them to get an unw tech to do a trace or something on my modem to see what the hell is going wrong...but the guy from exetel advised me that in most cases this won't fix anything from my end, it'll just tell unw how crap their network is...

I note that on page 3 of the Unwired Newsletter they are asking for feedback
so one should log in and tell them honestly what they think of unwired.
newsletter@unwired.com.au as I said , be honest. They need to know that the majority of people are unhappy.

I doubt it will make any difference. If Unwired were genuinely interested in boosting their subscriber base they would start delivering a quality product. This means stop ripping their customers off and start providing the advertised download speeds.

Unfortunately I can't see this happening. They are too busy trying to expand instead of concentrating on their core market.

I wouldn't wish this re-hashed dialup rubbish on my worst enemy.

If all unhappy customers of Unwired replied to their "Feedback Questioneir" in the latest newsletter then they have to get the message, that they are totally unreliable and rip off artists. Let them Know.

I have been with Unwired since the start (August 2004) and enough was enough for me recently, after constantly poor, unreliable service with slow speeds, I left and signed up to TPG ADSL and I couldn't be happier... My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner.

Unwired market their product as simple to set up and use but they don't tell you how frustrating it can be to have to move your modem constantly to try and get close to the advertised speeds of the plan you are on.. I also contacted Unwired support with little help, unfortunately Unwired's problems are bigger than just moving the modem to a different position..

My advice to anyone who is having problems with Unwired and have access to an ADSL service - leave, you won't regret it, I certainly didn't..

Avg 42% loss over a 48 hour period...

--- www.yahoo.akadns.net ping statistics ---
67966 packets transmitted, 39183 received, +1 duplicates, +12 errors, 42% packet loss, time 68424110ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 259.868/423.153/3581.532/172.706 ms, pipe 4

...gotta be happy with that! Is Trash's thread on power supply's another faint hope for improvement?

westiedude writes...

My advice to anyone who is having problems with Unwired and have access to an ADSL service - leave, you won't regret it, I certainly didn't..

Here here!

My contract has just finished with Unwired and I am getting out, putting it down to a learning experience.

Anyone who CAN get ADSL or Cable BUT chooses to get Unwired really needs their heads read!

This is a dreadful service - speeds similar to dial up but at least with dial up you know what you are getting. At at least you can get a connection. With Unwired its different every day. There are days when I just cant get any signal what so ever.

I hope someone with enough money takes Unwired to court one day on the basis of blatant false and misleading advertising.

Yeah, its as easy as 1,2,3 - Good bye Unwired !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!­ !!!!!!!!

-----------------------
Speed Results
Download: 12 Kilobytes/s
Upload: 10.8 Kilobytes/s
QOS: 3%
RTT: 138 ms
MaxPause: 3550 ms
Test location: Canberra
-----------------------

I'm on the 512kbps plan, so those speeds are pretty poor. I live in Randwick, about 10 km from the CBD, so it makes me sad. The speed isn't the worst bit, though, it's the instability. It just drops without warning at least a few times an hour.

I like the idea, and I'm willing to give it a bit more of a go, but it isn't ideal, that's for sure.