Internet is gold

This is what you should remember when in Australia - internet is very very very expensive.

In the short 3 weeks that we've been here, we've spent loads on getting ourselves online:

• $99 for a 9GB Vodafone Prepaid mobile broadband. Half of it I used when I was here in May, and the other half we spent in the first 3 days
• $49 for a 4GB reload on the Prepaid mobile broadband. Took Ethan 2 days to use this up on Youtube
• $34 for a top-up of my mobile phone which gives us about 2GB of data (500MB free + 1.5GB spent on remaining balance)
• $34 for a 6GB GoTalk prepaid sim which somehow didn't last for more then 2 days either
• $39 for a 10GB Vodafone month-to-month mobile broadband internet contract 
• $179 for a contract with TPG for an ADSL2+ w/ Home Phone and unlimited data. 

That's a total of  $434 just so Ethan can watch his Youtube videos and Lani and I can post on facebook. Tough!

TPG has been slow in connecting our home (they say it takes 10-20 days to setup an ADSL2+), so we are still on the Vodafone month-to-month MBB, and we are literally hanging by the thread. There's only about 2GB left on it and I don't know what to do next if TPG doesn't finish their setup on time. The unlimited data plan from TPG costs only $59/mo so we'd definitely save some once that's up.

Oh, did I mention that our company pays 3c/MB of data in excess of the 80GB allowance? Doesn't seem much you'd think. But in actual amounts, the bill goes to about $12,000/month! Gold, right?