I made the biggest, most frustrating decision when I changed over my ISP to optus. The whole drama would seriously need 100's of lines of text to even begin to describe what happened. From having to take 2 days off work to let a "service technician" in to connect. I then spent over 13hrs in total on hold with still no answers. I then had a customer service rep call me at my office to tell me that i was a valued customer (over $5000pa) and he was going to sort out a special package for all of my services. Guess what 6 weeks, still waiting for my SPECIAl offer. I will never recommend optus.

We recently changed internet service to Optus as the package offered was ideal. We even changed our home phone #. Then the technical problems started. We were without internet for a couple of weeks and spent endless hours on hold (the catchy Optus music isn't so catchy after an hour) trying to speak to a human being. A month later all fixed, and the bill didn't take long to arrive either.

I've been with Optusnet for several years now and as a cable internet user I find this service to be outstanding. Internet speeds are adequate for my needs and download large files is all too easy. However, for 12 GB of downloads per month I'm paying a bit more than I'd like to.

Lately I have been disappointed with the quality of Optus' customer service, particularly when calling them. It is wildly disparate depending on which area of the organisation you are contacting. The small business section (which manages my mobile accounts) is great and you can speak to someone almost immediately, but the consumer division, especially Internet, is woeful. The first five times I called and battled through the voice recognition software, it hung up on me. The next time, I was on hold for over an hour. All this to change my payment details, which can't be done online. Not good enough. I'll be moving ISPs as soon as my contract is up.

Approximate cost: $Varies