Regular readers will know the saga I have been dealing with as a result of living in a marginal seat which had FttN thrust upon us very early in the Coalition’s tenure.
In March 2016, a porting mistake by our telco at work saw us lose all telecommunications. Due to there being a cease sales order in our area (meaning it was NBN ready so any new connections must be to the NBN), it was impossible for the fault to be rectified so we signed up for the NBN but it took them two months to connect it during which time we were without EFTPOS, fax and security causing us significant financial loss. After literally hundreds of hours on the phone to the Ombudsman, Telstra eventually offered us a small compensation which I accepted – sometimes you have to cut your losses and move on.
At home, we decided to sign up for the NBN early so we didn’t go through the same problems, and we were connected via FttN in June 2016 with a plan that offered 100/40 Mbps.
We have never achieved speeds approaching what we are paying for and experienced daily dropouts which also take out the phone landline. As we live in a mobile blackspot, this leaves us totally incommunicado.
Once again, Telstra has offered a very small amount of compensation, admitting that it cannot deliver the speeds we have been paying for but still completely misrepresenting the possible attainable speeds.
“you are paying for speeds of up to 100 Mbps download and 40 Mbps upload, when in fact, the fastest speeds you can actually receive are 94.582 Mbps download and 33.628 Mbps upload.”
A speed test carried out at 1:30pm today showed 19.7/15.3 Mbps.
Once again, after many hours on the phone, Telstra have finally admitted that the REAL speed we can achieve is, at best, 35/16 Mbps.
“Why the discrepancy?” I asked.
“Co-existence” they eventually, after many phone calls, replied.
“What’s that?”
“It means your speeds are slower.”
“I know that. I am asking why.”
The man in India seemed unable or unwilling to explain so I went to online forums to find out.
“Co-existence is the interference of different types of DSL technology applied on the same copper cable. It will be solved when all ADSL connections have transferred over to NBN which should be no later than 18 months after NBN was first available in the area.”
In my next phone call with the man in India, I pointed out that it was over 18 months since we signed up so why was this still an issue. In his most apologetic way, he told me that NBN said the problem will not be fixed this year (2018).
So my assumption is, and don’t quote me because getting truthful information from this crowd is impossible, that they have abandoned deadlines for people to sign up so those of us who did will face slow unreliable services for the foreseeable future.
In April last year, the ACCC issued a press release.
“The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has welcomed the Federal Government’s announcement today that it will fund a new broadband performance monitoring program to provide Australian consumers with accurate and independent information about broadband speeds.
After appointing a qualified testing provider, the ACCC will commence the program in May 2017, and will provide comparative information for consumers during the second half of the year.”
Great idea except they still haven’t started.
On November 30 last year, the SMH reported that “the ACCC had not yet appointed a broadband monitoring program provider, nor had it commenced the program or released comparative provider information for consumers.”
A visit to the ACCC website shows them asking for volunteer households to join the monitoring program, which will cost $7 million, with applications closing on 31 January 2018.
Meanwhile, a monthly ranking by the Speedtest Global Index placed Australia at number 55 for fixed broadband speeds in the world for December 2017, with an average download speed of 25.88 Megabits per second (Mbps).
In first place was Singapore with a lightning-quick download speed of 161.21 Mbps. The global average was 40.71 Mbps.
I have now formed the opinion that the government really don’t want the proof of what an absolute failure they have made of what could and should have been a crucial nation-building enterprise.
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