Goodonya, Telstra... ADSL2+, but with 600MB cap and 15/MB overage

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Goodonya, Telstra... ADSL2+, but with 600MB cap and 15/MB overage

juha

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#10284 14-Nov-2006 12:12

Mr Hackett said customers who subscribed to the 20Mbps service under the light-usage prices could ring up $30,000 in excess downloads, which carried a fee of 15c per megabyte.

Juha

avats

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#52535 15-Nov-2006 23:35

Hi Juha,
I have recently relocated to Melbourne from Welly with work. Great city and weather and all that, but my biggest gripe here is with the boradband availability. Cable is available to a rare few people. ADSL is the best deal available. I got connected with Telstra after being here a few weeks. And what a nightmare it has been.
First of all, there is no number like 123 in NZ that connects you to a common sales desk which will take care of all your needs. No Siree! you need to call each division separately to get connected. Whilst Telstra talks about bundling, it hasn't the faintest idea of what it means. I couldn't find out the final pricing of my phone/adsl/tv bundle until it was provisioned and connected. @#$%^& I mean ...... how the hell is one supposed to do any comparison shopping. No you can't.

Also everything is either on 2 year contract or you pay exorbitant up front installation costs. I opted for 2 years contracts as breaking them is cheaper than paying for the installation costs. It must be Aussie who is running their pricing section.

Now for the ADSL - for A$99.95 I am getting 1.5Mbps (peak speed) with 12Gb cap.
In real life I get far less than 1Mbps. And discussing this with Aussies is a waste of time, who think I am a broken record (with continual ranting about the narrowband speeds here).

One positive part of the Telco scene was "Engin" Voip service provider. For A$29.95 I get a number, cheap untimed local and national calls and very cheap international calls. Optus and Telstra are extremely dear from international call perspective. Or at least that is how it feels when you compare their rates to ZTalk or 0161 calls from TCL and Telecom.
Once I had engin I tried disconnecting the Telstra phone, but NO, can't be done.
I thought Aus already had naked DSL and I could buy the ADLS line by itself. Nah! I need the phone line to have ADSL.

Anyways I have always thought that Kiwis have been a bit hard on Telecom and don't realise how good thay have got. After going through this experience I desperately needed to tell some one about how absolutely fantastic Telecom is. Honest, I love Telecom. It is probably one of the better run Telcos. They are far ahead of Telstra in every way including the attitude towards competition.

I just don't understand why Telstra has taken this attitude of seeing the market out without any attempt at taking the fight to their competitors. Optus and others are actually no different. ADSL2+ is not available to us in our suburb in Melbourne. Where is the competition? Even the wireless operators such as Unwired etc are nowhere close to operators like Whoosh.

I miss NZ and I miss the options and choices I had there. Aussie Telcos Suck!

bradstewart

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#52545 16-Nov-2006 00:00

Hi Welcome to geekzone

Its nice to see somebody with something positive to say about Telecom. We are a bit sick of the whinging really.

You may want to create a new thread in the broadband forum for that post. Its so good it deserves its own thread.

Might make a few people realise they don't have it that bad.

juha

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#52569 16-Nov-2006 07:38

Ah, but he's "whining about Telstra" instead... :)

No, seriously, it's always useful to hear about the experience elsewhere. Australia especially so, because NZ tends to compare itself to the Aussies all the time. It's also interesting to contrast what you write with communications minister Helen Coonan's statement that Australia has almost four million broadband subscribers now, and the second fastest uptake of thirty OECD countries.

This despite the hoops Telstra makes the customers jump through...

Juha

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
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#52582 16-Nov-2006 09:59

But it's good to show to New Zealand people complaining about Telecom New Zealand that some of the services offered here are better than the "Australian LLU Paradise" they talk about.

TinyTim

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#52595 16-Nov-2006 10:48

avats: Once I had engin I tried disconnecting the Telstra phone, but NO, can't be done.
I thought Aus already had naked DSL and I could buy the ADLS line by itself. Nah! I need the phone line to have ADSL.

No, their unbundling is line sharing only - only the broadband part is unbundled. NZ Government has specified full unbundling (POTS part + broadband part) and naked DSL (broadband with no POTS), but my understanding is the former is unlikely because the new operator/ISP would just provide VoIP.

cyril7

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#52630 16-Nov-2006 12:02

No, their unbundling is line sharing only - only the broadband part is unbundled. NZ Government has specified full unbundling (POTS part + broadband part) and naked DSL (broadband with no POTS), but my understanding is the former is unlikely because the new operator/ISP would just provide VoIP.

Who would want to invest in a pots switch today, its the 21st centry for gods sake.

Cyril

gtoons

12 posts

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#52904 18-Nov-2006 01:25

Mate, its probably too late for you now but here's a fantastic site to help choose an ISP in oz:

http://www.broadbandchoice.com.au

It has all ISPs with comparison tables, prices, forums & the like. I just got back from Melbs a month ago after 2 years there & this site proved invaluable. Wish we had a similar site like this here in NZ.

G

[Moderator edit (bradstewart): Hyperlinked]

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE. Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

avats

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#52909 18-Nov-2006 02:59

Thanks Mate. As you said too late. This is the other thing I am finding strange. The concept of customer service is a novel one for almost all telcos. The bizzare thing is that the companies that actually provide a superior level of customer service in NZ are pretty bad here. VF come to mind here. I had a conversation with VF help desk and I was trying to chose a data bundle (mobile email) for my cell/pda. VF here has two plans - one for Blackberry and one for PDAs based on Windows mobile. So I tried clarifying with him - since all these plans mean is that you will provide GPRS access on a post paid account rather than actual email infrastructure - what is the difference and why one is so much dearer than the other. Is there anything I need to know before I sign up? And I got the answer - I don't know. I ti is upto you whether you sign up or walk away. When pressed he asked me to check with imate (teh PDA maker) on which plan would suit!!!!!!! This is not what I expected from VF. Also Igot a wireless modem router for my Telstra DSL and it didn't sync u on the g.dmt line code. So I called Telstra to find out if I have all the settings right. After waiting for 25 mins I finally talk to help desk and want to run a few settings past him. But before I could say anything he queries what modem is this. Once he heard this was BYO modem router, and on top of that a wireless one - he didn't want to have anything to do with me. He actually hung up on me.

Telecom here with AAPT could have made a nice little market for itself had it invested a bit in the infrastructure and had imported the wonderful service culture from NZ. Optus probably has the best customer service of them all. And here is the thing that mystifies me - they are all investing heavily in convergence and multiple consumer plays - to increase their market share and to reduce their churns!!!!!!!! Well how about you fix the customer service, focus on your customers and build packages that align to your customer segments. And then treat your customers well. Pretty basic stuff, but I suppose not sexy enough. I mean I am not going to be watching a movie or IPTV on a 1.5mbps line. So stopbuilding that stuff. And if you want to go there then build the damn infrastructure to support it. It truly sometimes feels that I have fallen through the hole into the wonderland. At least in NZ we knew that NGN was going to come one day and then IPTV will follow. In the interim we will probably make do with medium BW and some drip feed video along DTT TV.
Here it's nuts.