Currency, cell phones, and DSL, oh my!
This week we are doing some fun research. Jen is looking into storage facilities and some cheap ways to move funds overseas. I am looking into things like cell phones and DSL and bank accounts. Jen has found that most of the storage in San Francisco is very expensive and almost double the rates of suburbs. Initial quotes are around $85-100 per month for a small 4x5x8 in San Francisco.
Jen found a great currency exchange site called www.hifx.com which specializes in moving large amounts of overseas for much better rates than you can get from banks or other means. They basically have no fees, but charge you a slightly different rate than the published rate. That is their cut. I think it works out to 1%-3% total, but compaired to the other things we checked out it was much better. We can just tell them to place to a buy of a certain amount of NZD (New Zealand Dollars) and they buy it, put it into a special account and we then set up some wire instructions from our bank to pay for it, and another account to put it into (our New Zealand account).
While Jen was looking into currency exchange, I have been researching bank accounts. We have settled on the National Bank of New Zealand which offers a fee free account for international students. It has all the features we want and they can set it up overseas (although we need a visa first). They also have a campus branch which is nice. We have also looked into WestPac and a few of the other popular banks that have Internet sites.
For cell phones and Internet there seems to be a few choices, the big telco in New Zealand is one choice (I forget the name), but we are definitely not going to use them. It looks like the other big alternative cell phone company is VodaFone and they also have services in other countries. http://www.vodafone.co.nz We are going to try to find some service from them. I intially wanted to get phones before we went over there, but now we will probably drop by a store the first day we are there and get phones.
For Internet, we were shocked to not have a single price, all you can use plan. In the United States you pretty much pay a certain amount for a certain size connection. So for instance 6 megabits download and 756 kilobits upload would maybe run $80 USD per month (this is just a sample price). You can use as much as you want, but you peak out at the top download or upload speeds. In New Zealand EVERYTHING seems to be pay for what you use. This is nice in some ways, but the American mentality is often focused around pay a set amount and get unlimited usage. This even extends to things like free condiments when you buy a burger at a fast food restaurant. This is not the same in most countries. For instance one time in London I ordered some toast and I wanted jelly for it or an extra jelly and it cost me another 35 pence. For some reason that kind of thing pissed me off and seemed petty or extreme. For Internet in New Zealand there is one company tring to offer some semblance of unlimited bandwidth but with some restrictions. The company is Ihug and has a very cute site. http://www.ihug.co.nz
It looks like IHug may be owned or affiliated with VodaFone some how now. They have a plan where you can get unlimited usage, but if you use more than a certain amount of download in any three day period, they either charge you or more, or SLOW your bandwidth to a trickle (think 64kbps). This is to stop the apparent rampant use of peer to peer networking. Since importing stuff is so expensive to an island on the other side of the world, I imagine that many people illegally download a lot of movies and music. For almost all applications besides insane amount of peer to peer downloading, they seem to imply this plan is pretty much unlimited use with a small slow down for 3 days or so if you go overboard. I guess if you really like downloading internet porn you might be in trouble also.
Matthew
Jen found a great currency exchange site called www.hifx.com which specializes in moving large amounts of overseas for much better rates than you can get from banks or other means. They basically have no fees, but charge you a slightly different rate than the published rate. That is their cut. I think it works out to 1%-3% total, but compaired to the other things we checked out it was much better. We can just tell them to place to a buy of a certain amount of NZD (New Zealand Dollars) and they buy it, put it into a special account and we then set up some wire instructions from our bank to pay for it, and another account to put it into (our New Zealand account).
While Jen was looking into currency exchange, I have been researching bank accounts. We have settled on the National Bank of New Zealand which offers a fee free account for international students. It has all the features we want and they can set it up overseas (although we need a visa first). They also have a campus branch which is nice. We have also looked into WestPac and a few of the other popular banks that have Internet sites.
For cell phones and Internet there seems to be a few choices, the big telco in New Zealand is one choice (I forget the name), but we are definitely not going to use them. It looks like the other big alternative cell phone company is VodaFone and they also have services in other countries. http://www.vodafone.co.nz We are going to try to find some service from them. I intially wanted to get phones before we went over there, but now we will probably drop by a store the first day we are there and get phones.
For Internet, we were shocked to not have a single price, all you can use plan. In the United States you pretty much pay a certain amount for a certain size connection. So for instance 6 megabits download and 756 kilobits upload would maybe run $80 USD per month (this is just a sample price). You can use as much as you want, but you peak out at the top download or upload speeds. In New Zealand EVERYTHING seems to be pay for what you use. This is nice in some ways, but the American mentality is often focused around pay a set amount and get unlimited usage. This even extends to things like free condiments when you buy a burger at a fast food restaurant. This is not the same in most countries. For instance one time in London I ordered some toast and I wanted jelly for it or an extra jelly and it cost me another 35 pence. For some reason that kind of thing pissed me off and seemed petty or extreme. For Internet in New Zealand there is one company tring to offer some semblance of unlimited bandwidth but with some restrictions. The company is Ihug and has a very cute site. http://www.ihug.co.nz
It looks like IHug may be owned or affiliated with VodaFone some how now. They have a plan where you can get unlimited usage, but if you use more than a certain amount of download in any three day period, they either charge you or more, or SLOW your bandwidth to a trickle (think 64kbps). This is to stop the apparent rampant use of peer to peer networking. Since importing stuff is so expensive to an island on the other side of the world, I imagine that many people illegally download a lot of movies and music. For almost all applications besides insane amount of peer to peer downloading, they seem to imply this plan is pretty much unlimited use with a small slow down for 3 days or so if you go overboard. I guess if you really like downloading internet porn you might be in trouble also.
Matthew
Labels: cell phones, currency, dsl, new zealand, research, storage