An NBN Question...

[ricktas]

I am now up to appointment 22 trying to get the NBN connected and guess what.?.?.?. They have overnight cancelled that connection appointment as well. I know of no other business that manages to cancel 22 booked appointments and thinks it is still offering its customers any form of customer service. If this was a Doctor, Bank, hairdresser, they would have lost the customer ages ago. My opinion is that the entire workforce of the NBN from the top down needs a decent review and anyone contributing to their ridiculous inefficiency should be sacked. They should also put a stop to the multiple layers of sub contractors. If a company bids for an NBN job, then they should only be allowed to subcontract it (once). Speaking to a worker in my street the other day, he has 5 levels of subcontractor companies above him. He stated it was not unusual to get a job request to install someones NBN after the date on the job sheet, cause the request went from the ISP the the NBN, and then down through all the contracting companies, and finally it was allocated to him. He said sometimes the job request date was over 3 weeks prior to when he got the job tasked to him.

About to call my ISP today and tell them that I give up and will keep my ADSL service for now.

[ameerat42]

--And you'd probably be better off, for a while at least, until you finally have to
get the NBN

[merlin1]

I guess they are still looking for Tassie.

Ross.

[Mark L]

I guess they are still looking for Tassie.

Was one of the first places NBN rollout was started I think?
Sale is where?

[ricktas]

Was one of the first places NBN rollout was started I think?
Sale is where?

Yes. my mum's town was the first place in Australia to get the NBN. A lot of Tasmania was done before any other state even started. But once they did start the other states, the rate of installation for the rest of Tas has trickled to a slow drip.

[Hawthy]

Connected to the NBN as of about an hour ago. Getting around 23 Mbps using Wi-Fi so pretty happy.

[ricktas]

Well i was supposed to get the NBN today...and guess what.. NUP! NADA ZILCH.

But they have managed to disconnect my ADSL service. So now I have no internet..except using my mobile phone data. And my ISP has raised a ticket with the NBN to question what is happening.

I seriously question to competence of these mobs. If they could find a harder way to do a job, I am sure they would implement it just to test it out and see if it really was harder, and then after a three month trial, they would pay each other on the back for a job well done, in testing how hard they could make something.

[ameerat42]

Maybe it'll be there "tomorrow"

[Boo53]

"Rick

In the early days one would expect to have some teething problems, after all we are the first place on earth to try this sort of thing (insert your own snide sarcastic emoticon).

But after all this time .... really ...!!!!

[Hawthy]

Well...don't get too excited about the NBN. My download speed went from an ADSL average speed of 6 Mbps to about 23 Mbps yesterday when we connected but has since plummeted to 3 Mbps tonight. On the upside, upload rates went from a pathetic 0.22 Mbps to around 5 Mbps, which has remained unchanged. So, I suppose the message is that it will improve upload speeds but download speeds depend on who else is downloading? [citation required]?

Just for fun, I checked download/upload speed for my iPhone via the 4G network. It was 29.51 Mbps down and 13.46 Mbps upload. Makes me wonder why we are investing in a "fast" broadband cable network when we can get faster speeds via our mobile network? Any thoughts, tech-heads?

[Craig Zilko]

Well...don't get too excited about the NBN. My download speed went from an ADSL average speed of 6 Mbps to about 23 Mbps yesterday when we connected but has since plummeted to 3 Mbps tonight. On the upside, upload rates went from a pathetic 0.22 Mbps to around 5 Mbps, which has remained unchanged. So, I suppose the message is that it will improve upload speeds but download speeds depend on who else is downloading? [citation required]?

Just for fun, I checked download/upload speed for my iPhone via the 4G network. It was 29.51 Mbps down and 13.46 Mbps upload. Makes me wonder why we are investing in a "fast" broadband cable network when we can get faster speeds via our mobile network? Any thoughts, tech-heads?

Research codependency on NBN I think it is, apparently NBNCo can turn it on/off at will to resolve issues in an NBN/ADSL area. I hear all this from my tech savvy sister who has a real love/hate relationship with NBN FTTN


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Tannin]

Nothing we don't already know here, but a useful reminder:

NBN congestion woes won't go away just because providers increase spending : http://www.theage.com.au/technology/...29-gy6vos.html

[deathrox]

G'day Am,
Worse was in store: then bottom-dweller TPG bought Iinet. I have crossd them off my Christmas list.

Disclosure: I hold shares in two telcos, Telstra and Amasym.

Well I agree with most of what you were saying. Except your slights on TPG. I had used TPG exclusively, untill I moved out here to the back of woopwoop, the best possible ADSL2+ speeds and amazing data-allowances.

Owning their own network allows them to have excellent speed. If you are on ADSL then you will be using one of only 3 networks, no matter who your provider is, TELSTRA, OPTUS or ....... TPG!

The first 2 have rubbish plans and Optus have dodgy speeds. I managed a guest house in Brisbane for a few years, whe I got there the boss had one Optus ADSL link for the whole place so I talked him into a second link. I naturally connected it to TPG. Speeds test showed the Optus link to be 4-5/1 mb/s the TPG link was a consustant 12/1 mb/s. Contacting Optus did no good at all.

TPG's network is excellent, I've been using them for around 20 years or so.

[ameerat42]

Interesting! I don't want to toot anytelco's trumpet, but "over the years" I've come to the
opposite conclusion

Perhaps they're all the same.

[phild]

I work in the communications sector (PBX install and VOIP telephony) and deal with NBN issues every day.

Often problems like Rick's inability to action an installation are caused by record anomalies. We've had several cases where customers have been unable to get services on simply because NBN co has incomplete or incorrect address or cable/fibre details. It's not uncommon for a fibre connection reserved for address to be connected to the wrong property, when this happens the install bombs.

@ Rick, I suggest you contact the Federal Minister for Communications, that action will likely resolve your problem quickly. One of our customers tried unsuccessfully get connection to a multi tenant building for over 12 months, it took just one week after ministerial contact and the installation was complete.

There are a couple of misconceptions regarding NBN.

NBN co does all the work. Not correct, in fact NBN co does very little, most of the work is done by contractors. In our state at least, the guy who rocks up to do the initial pre install test is actually a Telstra employee. They also jumper the copper connection at the nodes. Fibre installs to the propery are mostly done by electrical contractors, basically any joe can pay their money to sign up to an NBN installer course and become an accredited installer. We often see a poor standard of work by installation contractors.

Telstra Air, an earlier poster mentioned the "desirability" of Telstra Air. Anyone who signs with Telstra has Telstra Air capability. What this does is allows you to use your data allowance on any of the Telstra Air hotspots in the country. Not overly generous as there are plenty of free wifi hotspots around the country.

What's not explained is that the prolific Telstra Air hotspots are rolled out using Telstra customer's own routers and bandwidth, that's right every Telstra customer has a Telstra Air hotspot configured on their router. It's buried in the fine print of your contract but never explained. Browse your Telstra router and check the settings, you'll see the Telstra Air wifi config.

In my day to day work I see lots of NBN problems, invariably they are with Telstra services.

ATA (the hardware that supplues the VOIP telephone connection) and router issues, call dropouts one way transmission. Service disconnections due to administrative errors and copper disconnect are common with customers being left with no service and no option for timely reconnection.

Regarding TPG/iiNet, most users I encounter are satisfied with the service, my own iinet connection has performed as expected.

Netflix streaming. There is some anecdotal evidence that general internet traffic is "shaped" to maintain bandwidth for video streaming. I did some testing which seems to bear out that theory. My service rarely drops below 20mb/s but, on the odd occasion, I have seen it as low as 12mb/s. I did some testing during a slow peak period, 12mb/s download and had no issues streaming video on multiple devices. While streaming the connection test speed returned to my nominal 24mb/s..

[ameerat42]

Interesting, Phil. There's 1 Q that came to mind as I read the word "VOIP".
There used to be phone/internet bundles that INCLUDED calls to 13xx numbers.
Now they are non-existent. You still get "Unlimited standard national calls", but they
want about 30c each for 13xx calls. Is this marketing, or (which I can't believe) is it
due to using the NBN?

[John King]

I helped my brother in Brisbane convert from ADSL2 to NBN a couple of days ago.

He has FTTN, and is about 800m route length from the node. He is getting around 23.56/4.64 Mbps, i.e. better than the Telstra advertised speed of 22/4 Mbps on the lowest tier Telstra offers. Drops a little bit between 7-11 pm (about -15% - nothing to even notice).

All went smoothly, considering my brother's technical acumen ... He is a happy camper. His ADSL2 speeds have varied from 2.78/0.5 to 5.8/0.5 Mbps over the last 12 months, mostly around 4/0.5. The NBN speeds make these look putrid, even on the lowest tier that Telstra offers.

[sanger]

Interesting, Phil. There's 1 Q that came to mind as I read the word "VOIP".
There used to be phone/internet bundles that INCLUDED calls to 13xx numbers.
Now they are non-existent. You still get "Unlimited standard national calls", but they
want about 30c each for 13xx calls. Is this marketing, or (which I can't believe) is it
due to using the NBN?

Yep that's the situation with our plan but never bothered questioning why....use the mobile for those numbers.

- - - Updated - - -

I helped my brother in Brisbane convert from ADSL2 to NBN a couple of days ago.

He has FTTN, and is about 800m route length from the node. He is getting around 23.56/4.64 Mbps, i.e. better than the Telstra advertised speed of 22/4 Mbps on the lowest tier Telstra offers. Drops a little bit between 7-11 pm (about -15% - nothing to even notice).

All went smoothly, considering my brother's technical acumen ... He is a happy camper. His ADSL2 speeds have varied from 2.78/0.5 to 5.8/0.5 Mbps over the last 12 months, mostly around 4/0.5. The NBN speeds make these look putrid, even on the lowest tier that Telstra offers.

Have had FTTN for 18 months and speeds are the same as those.
Multiple dropouts recently which took the NBN guy half a day to fix....problem with node.
Touch wood but all good since.

[John King]

My existing cable broadband is HFC. Wonderful download speed (115-116 Mbps), but the exchange end equipment can only manage about 2.55 Mbps upload speed. Poorly planned architecture in the early 1990s!

I am really looking forward to having 100/40 Mbps when we get connected to the NBN exchange end equipment towards the end of next year.

[ameerat42]

I care less about the speeds - 30/1.6 at present - than about the gouging phone charges.


That's why I'm waiting for the last possible moment, and then even trying some "negotiating".