Well I may not have Horst's knowledge but I share his sentiments re B4H - iiNet/Ozemail has served me well for nearly seven years and continue to do so. I have no intention of changing my ISP just because they are not on the B4H list. And btw I run two VOIP lines + a POTS line and my fax off the back of my ADSL2+ at work, do daily scheduled backups to my ADSL2+ home network and watch videos, TV, listen to the radio,etc etc. on my lovely high speed connection. My home phone also runs on VOIP meaining that I can use my POTS number for faxes and second calls. Did I mention that I don't pay extra for the VOIP number at each location? (Although I did have to get the second VOIP line at work via ENGIN)
AFAIK my system is pretty damn secure too - Peter Machell did a good job on setting my system up and the beauty of it all is that he does this from Brisbane and I'm in Canberra. I would hate to think what I would have had to put up with if I had to depend on Telstra - it was bad enough getting them to connect my physical phoneline to my building - took nearly four months. iiNet had me up and running within 24h after Telstra finally got their act together. T Dr FM Janse van Rensburg BSc MBChB FRACGP FACRRM General Practitioner http://members.ozemail.com.au/~tvren/ Skype: thinus-v-r -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew Sent: Friday, 1 December 2006 12:08 AM To: 'General Practice Computing Group Talk' Subject: RE: [GPCG_TALK] ADSL2+ Broadband for health <snip> >"paid for by the HIC". And where do you think the HIC has got the money from??? >From willing Aust tax payers like me I guess, or do they sell smack on >the streets in Canberra on the side :) > Doesn't make me happy feeding overcharging opportunists with sour > earned taxpayers money So you're inferring that no patients at your medical centre (where I'm sure you don't ever bulk bill) claim back from the HIC the fee's paid to you ? Onthenet and the other B4H ISP's have to submit endless paperwork every quarter to the HIC about every B4H connection they have. They also have to have in place testing equipment to simulate a typical B4H customer so that whenever the HIC desires it can check the quality and speed of the connection is up to standard. > So lets add it up, > Roughly $120 month for business grade ADSL1 (up to 8mbps) or ADSL2, > fixed IP, the best service of any ISP in Oz For which they effectively > pay about ~$30 a month in year 1. > - "best service of any ISP in OZ" - any chance to substantiate this claim? 1. How many times has your ISP called you to say, "we had a network outage last night, it was our fault so is it ok for us to go into our shared clients premises and reset the ADSL modem and firewall to get them back online" @ 8.05am ? 2. Support staff that take ownership of an issue and see it through to completion even if it is Telstra's problem. 3. You get to know them by first name (over the phone and in person) not because there are so many problems but because you have so many customers with them who stay with them. 4. Loan modems always avaliable even if you are using business grade stuff like Cisco's. 5. A fix it first and worry about the cost later attitude. 6. SMS messages to notify of outages before my customer notices the outage and calls me. > - define "business grade" 1. fixed IP 2. no contention ratio in dslam (try and find another ISP in Aust who does this www.broadbandchoice.com.au) 3. smallish download caps to deter bandwidth hogs and ensure quality of service 4. Priority business support desk 5. After hours pager -support desk 6. No bullshit support staff, something Telstra should try but never will. 7. Real people you can contract to come onsite if needed to solve problems 8. A real office where you can have a conference with the system admins about designing a solution. 9. Optional failsafe(automatic) modem or ISDN services 10. They own the Dslams in the exchanges so they control them themselves. >- ADSL2 only obtainable by minority Oh have you just realised this is the current state of ADSL in Australia ? Not just the gold coast. > Compared to Horst > -had to install it himself, > -had to buy his own ADSL modem >who says so? You are making assumptions Yes I am (maybe he did a ram-raid and stole it) No ok you possibly modified a steel cased 14.4K Maestro modem you found at a garage sale to do ADSL2 :) :) > -Had to buy (ok he probably built it out of recycled mobile phone > processors) his own firewall. >The ISP provided Netcomm modem would have had a built in firewall, but I needed a load balancing router for multiple >>>connections, so yes, I bought one. Oh you did buy one unlike my B4H clients who gotthem for free, thanks Mister Hooker, I mean Mister HIC. > -who is paying $70 a month, >for 60GB of traffic! Whoopee friggen do. And my car is faster than yours. Does that me better than you ? > And in their second year of B4H with Onthenet the monthly charges are > completely covered by HIC so they pay $0.00 a month. > And being a 'normal' medical centre they have no need to download > ISO's of Linux or huge movies so the miserable download caps mean > no-one else on the ISP's network is hogging the bandwidth when they > want to use the Internet to quickly bill a patient at the front desk > or appease a patient during a consult by showing them something on the web. > If those medical centres had a clue in IT they would use their Internet connection for unattended offsite backups. They are actually very cluey doctors first, reasonably cluey business people second and thirdly cluey enough to rely on my IT. knowledge to guide them. And offsite backups via the web is something we have been keeping an eye on since about 2003, but patient security and privacy issues remain a stumbling block. > But wait, they can't - waaaay too expensive under B4H plans. Not sure ,Onthenet doesn't really charge for outbound traffic, and the offsite backups would only go as far as the Onthenet secure server room, thereby skirting the tiny B4H caps. >They also might do VoIP - ah, bugger, bandwith use so expensive, only does for a few Skype calls with friends :-((((( Why bother with Voip when they have such a good phone system from Commander (shameless plug) and such cheap call rates on high quality isdn lines. Some use VoiP at home though. >>And if they get sick of world wide waiting for high quality dermatological images trickling through their "broadband", >they would probably find that under their plans it would be cheaper to fly to Heidelberg and copy the data onto an >> >external hard disk rather than simply mirroring ther image servers locally via the net. And so forth. >They probably haven't discovered CME podcasts either I suppose, or enjoying masterful free Art movies from the French >academy of Arts ... No they don't, to most of the above but...at one 12 doctor surgery via their tiny miserable B4H ADSL they; Watch NBA and NBL live, download endless commercial movie trailers, hammer Google earth, listen to the aussies play cricket, check the weather forecasts and the weather radar before Wednesday afternoon yachting, buy concert tickets, order DVD's, have an enormous Intranet, connect from home to check urgent patient pathology at put their minds at rest, book skiing holidays, check flight times at Coolangatta airport, search for and buy cars, download free software, clear their web mail from nearby universities, use VPN's to connect to the sister surgeries, buy music, check their salaries have been deposited via online banking, Research for the best mobile phone deals, Buy new stethoscopes, Research the latest treatments at harrisons online, Check the latest travel medicine, Oh and I think sometimes the girls at the front reception squeeze in a few HIC Online billings :) > Who's mad here again ? > Maybe mad is the wrong word. Ignorant perhaps? Luddite? Naive? Arrogant springs to mind when reading your posts Horst, or is it that you need to put yourself in a normal GP's shoes for a while. You have to remember not every GP once worked for a large IT firm. Funny thing is though, even though I saw you once at a conference many years ago but have never really met you, I would like to meet you one day because you do have flashes of brilliance every now and then on this list and you really make me think about Medical IT issues :) Best wishes, Andrew C. Gold Coast. (disclaimer; yes I am a registered onthenet dealer and I guess an Onthenet zealot. I have no financial interest in Commander and no Telstra shares :) _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk __________ NOD32 1892 (20061130) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.com _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
