Thread: An Email From Telstra & the Reply

Dumb question???

At home I have cable TV service. (TV signals come out of the cable and not through the air.) Cable TV has been successful here because it started serving rural areas that were beyond the range of adaquate through the air signals. As cable only network stations were created, the cable TV service was installed in urban areas.

The cable TV network offers broadband Internet service. I have been using broadband over cable TV for at least 10 years. Before I retired, I worked for a major communications company here. I had been under the impression that the US networks were among the most under featured ones in the world. I had been told that the US telephony and data networks were the second best preserved telephony museum in the world.

I'm very surprised of the difficulties that you are having getting reasonable, decent and reliable Internet services. The question is, Can't you get internet service through your cable TV company?

Rrich, yes both cable companies, Telstra and Optus, provide internet services. The problem is that cable tends to be only available in the big cities, where most houses have TWO cables going past them, usually one underground (Telstra) and one overhead (Optus).

This situation was created by brain-dead government policies.

In country areas we have a service called Austar which comes in through a small satellite dish. This is also internet enabled, but gives only 1-way broadband, you still need your telephone for uploads, it is also quite expensive.

Then we have an array of satellite providers, both one-way and two-way, again quite expensive and typically a 256Mb service, cost about $A3000 to install. Until recently this installation was reimbursed by the Governments' Broadband Connect Scheme, but that money has now run out.

We also have quite e few wireless broadband providers, where an ISP puts up a wireless transmitter to service a fairly localised area, again reasonably slow (256 typically) and expensive, $49.95/month for 500Mb.

So as you can see we don't have a "real" broadband network, most ISPs go for a max 1.5Mb connection, 512 typical. Some city exchanges now have ADSL2, with a limit of 24Mb speed, but that typically only works up to 2.5-3k from the exchange.

Our largest telco, Telstra, is run by a Mexican American who really doesn't give 2 hoots for anything but spin. He is pushing their G3 network, which is basically a mobile phone tower type network and so expensive that "normal" people cannot afford to send an email, let alone download a movie.

Some of what has been said in this thread reminds me of the runaround mum got when she rang "dial before you dig" when she wanted to replace her front fence on her (small) rural property.

Dial before you dig said that Aurora (the local power company) and Telstra would contact her within 48 hours (The mandated response time) with their plans of the underground services in the area. Aurora did, as promised. Telstra meanwhile, only supplied their maps 5 days later, after numerous phonecalls.

The Telstra plan showed the fibre optic cable running under the middle of the road, which at that point would have left mum free to dig! The plan also stated that if she had any concerns, she could get a (free) visit from a Telstra (or perhaps telstra subcontractor) engineer to actually locate the cables.

Knowing the plan to be incorrect (we knew that the fibre optic cable which runs to at least 5 towns past mum, actually ran through her property), she rang Telstra on the supplied number to request them to locate the cable, to which they said they would not be able to do for a fortnight.

They changed their tune when she said that the excavator would be coming in at 10AM the following morning, She KNOWS that the Optical Fibre runs through inside her boundary, She had fulfilled her legal obligation by contacting Dial before You Dig, and received the plans (albeit already two days later than their obligation), and that the excavator would be digging a nice long trench and would be sure to find the optic fibre. 7 am the next morning a telstra contractor was on site, locating the cables.

It's just yet another case of how telstra don't care about the little guy. Mum needed her front fence, she had already pulled the old one down, expecting the cable plans to have arrived before the fence was down, and had stock in other paddocks due to not having a fence. The attitude was simply "Don't Care".

There has since been more to this saga, but I'll refrain from comment as it may end up in a massive lawsuit yet (Involves a person with "Medical Priority" and connection, billing and other MASSIVE stuffups).

Incidently, for those who aren't aware, if you have a genuine "life threatening medical condition", if you fill out the relevant paperwork you will get granted "Medical Priority" status, whereby any line faults etc are required to be fixed within (I think) 48 Hours.

Cheers, Dean