Hello, and welcome to the most recent installment of my rants. This one is particularly close to my heart: Internet connectivity.
Since you are reading this blog, I’m going to assume you are already astute, upwardly mobile and blindingly handsome/beautiful but just in case you didn’t already know – I work from home a fair amount of the time, so high speed Internet access is like oxygen, it’s my lifeline.
Now, on to the rant. When we signed the lease on McParadise(tm) in sunny (!) Brisbane there was a box on the form which allowed you to freely engage the services of one of those companies who hook up all your utilities – pay tv, gas, electric, Internet etc.
They rang me and asked me all the relevant questions. Then they said, oh we’re aligned with Optus, so it’s Optus for your home phone. OK I said. Why not, I’ll just hook my own Internet up as a always do (since the major players like Optus and Bigpond are far from being reasonably priced).
Wrong. Here’s why. It turns out most ADSL providers can’t provide you with ADSL if you have an Optus home phone line.
Then, it turned out that Optus couldn’t supply DSL to me either because I was wired through a Telstra exchange (does that even make sense?).
Their single option for me was the sub standard Optus cable with it’s horrendous pricing model ($99/month for 30 GB are you kidding me!).
I went through four straight customer service representatives to learn that my two options were:
a) Get a second phone line installed by Telstra then Optus could supply me with DSL (what!?) or
b) Get the monopolised, sub standard Optus cable
– from the advice of an Optus sales representative – I’m not joking.
So I went with option c)
– Cancelled Optus home phone service (even with the outrageous ‘break contract fee’ it works out cheaper over twelve months to get ADSL2+ for $30 less per month and 50 GBs!)
– Contacted Telstra to get a new home service
– Contact a proven ADSL2+ provider to get Internet
All told, I’ve been without home Internet for over three weeks during this ordeal – which is still not over.
There was a fault on the line after Telstra connected (Wednesday) which was resolved within a day.
There’s still no dial tone on the line, but a Telstra technician is coming out tomorrow morning to fix it. That’s pretty good service. ADSL2+ has already been installed on the line. Plug ‘n’ play, YEAH!
