I have been procrastinating for a couple of months now. Why? Simply because I was worried about all the hassles of having to port my old number across to somebody like 2talk. To this old fella (IT aware, but also a little in awe of rapidly changing technology), it seemed a little difficult with no way back and hey, I am used to the old bill arriving in the mail.

So cautiously bought myself a new modem (Netcomm NF4V) so I could plug my Panasonic cordless and extensions in and almost lost the plot when I could not configure it for my then current telecom ADSL connection until I saw a post here on Geekzone that there was a new firmware out there. Voila back in business and now finally time to press that tempting "buy now" button on the Bigpipe website.

And then everyone (apart from me it seemed) was having problems with Netflix and something at the back of my head was screaming "don't change .... don't change anything!" (just yet)

So on Monday morning at aprox 9.30 I took the plunge and signed up, followed up by a request on line that I wanted to retain my number so as port it over, all responses and confirmations from Bigpipe happening within minutes. Great stuff. Imagine my surprise when I received an email from Bigpipe at 11 am saying that my connection date would be the 18th - just two days after my request to change to VDSL. Brilliant stuff !!

So along comes Wednesday and my son is going nuts after school "Has it changed yet? Has it changed yet?" (Trust me, there is nothing worse than a child without their XBox). "Not yet son, but it will only be down for about an hour or so". "You will survive!"

Internet goes down at 5.45 and then I receive an email on my phone at 6.08 from Bigpipe saying "It's all on - Get amongst it". A quick reboot with new VDSL settings under the quickstart menu and we were up and running and enjoying some great Hi-Def goodness streaming from the BBC.

Brilliant service and so much easier than I imagined. The whole experience has put all of my previous dealing with Telco companies in a new category of "Outdated and Time Wasting".

So thanks Bigpipe, I am VERY impressed.

The moral of the story? If you are an old fart like me and have this preconceived idea that "tech is eroding customer service" or that "it is simply too hard to change", you could not be further from the truth.

(Now fingers crossed that the port over goes well).