[TelstraClear] 8 years of broken broadband, 10000 phonecalls later, still not fixed

Forums › One NZ (including Farmside) › [TelstraClear] 8 years of broken broadband, 10000 phonecalls later, still not fixed

bakewells5856

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#92148 27-Oct-2011 19:24

for the last 8 years we have had to put up with very unstable and slow broadband, usually around 300kbps download or lower, and cutting out around twice a day for a few minutes to a few hours. One of there favorite excuses telstra gives us is "because we live in a rural area and the distance from the exchange ect ect", but there are people even further away from the same exchange with roughly 30 times our speed.

after a few hundred more phone calls it was found out that instead of being on the cabinet about 200m down the road, they put us on one that is like 6km away. when asking why they don't put us on the cabinet we SHOULD be on, they tell us its full and we are on the waiting list. Now what is this 'waiting list?' we were one of the first people in our area to sign up for broadband, and they tell us that we are in the Que behind the people in our area who signed up after us? thats like when queing up for a popular ride at a theme park and people who just join the que go to the front rather than the back, so the people who have been waiting for longer miss out.

over the next years more and more boxes have shown up down with the other cabinet as more and more people have been signing up for broadband with no trouble, which sort of kills the whole 'waiting list' theory, all those people have at least 3mbit, and yet we are still stuck on this crappy speed. Now with the whole 'waiting list' theory out of the picture, it meant they had to dig into there vast arsenal of BS excuses. GOODY!

Jumping forward a few years to about 2 months ago, our speed had gone up to ~900kbit. Most people would consider this slow, but to us it was realy good, we were actuly happy with it. Just as we were getting used to it, they took it away again. back down to the old ~250k download. FFFFUUUUUU

lately we have been making thousands of phonecalls, telling them to get us back up to the speed it WAS, in comes the favorite excuse. "its because you live in a rural area so you cant get good speed, blah blah"
WE KNOW THAT, BUT OUR HOUSE HASN'T ****ING MOVED LAST I CHECKED, SO WHY CANT YOU PUT IT BACK UP TO THE SPEED IT WAS LAST WEEK!!!!!!!!!!!

its almost like there taunting us by letting us enjoy half decent internet for a while and then taking it away again, just to remind us what were missing out on.

now back to the present time, and this is what we have.
also notice that the upload is far higher than the download? they could at least get it the right way around....

Line Rate - Upstream (Kbps):592Line Rate - Downstream (Kbps):176
we have tried EVERYTHING they have sugested, including wasteing money buying new modems and filters, hiring electricians to check the cableing, turning it off and on again... you get the point.

anyway hopefully if telstraclear reads this they might try do something about it, i figure the only thing left to try is public humiliation. I have also emailed fair go to see if they would like to get in on it.

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#538278 27-Oct-2011 19:26

change to another provider

johnr

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#538280 27-Oct-2011 19:30

Simple change provider, You are foolish one for staying for so long

John

bakewells5856

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#538281 27-Oct-2011 19:31

oh yeah forgot to add that, when asking other providers, they said they cannot guarantee us a spot, and before they can look to see if there is a space open we would have to cancel our current service, and if we do our current spot wouldnt be there anymore if we try crawling back to telstra. so we could loose out alltogether if we try.

johnr

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#538283 27-Oct-2011 19:40

bakewells5856: oh yeah forgot to add that, when asking other providers, they said they cannot guarantee us a spot, and before they can look to see if there is a space open we would have to cancel our current service, and if we do our current spot wouldnt be there anymore if we try crawling back to telstra. so we could loose out alltogether if we try.

You can change provider without losing your connection if you port services to another provider

cyril7

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#538285 27-Oct-2011 19:41

Hi, maybe you could provide some more info, like roughly where you are, maybe more stats from your modem, in particular line attenuation etc.

While you line speed may have for whatever reason jumped to 900k yet you get no speed increase then I doubt its just the ISP, I mean that just too low to be an ISP bandwidth issue, but more likely the increased speed was met by higher error rate/packet loss and the end result is not much changed

DSL is not a magic carpet, if you live beyond the normal realms then the results are going to be all sad, so tell us more usable info and go from there.

Cyril

hio77

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#538291 27-Oct-2011 19:45

hes a good friend and also on the same exchange... simply put for its size our exchange does WAY too much.. you would actually think the RBI would do something for the likes of us but.. the little stretch at the start of the road is all that is worth doing it seems..

Personally im ok with my speeds (used to get 3mbit/768kbs but since some issues with overloaded exchanges and lines being split im sitting on 2mbit/768kbs - profile was also changed due to this mess up and well ... our provider isnt too keep on touching our line given our history of issues :P )

but bakewells5856's treatment you could say has been well below what uld expect from any isp tbh, even the chorus techs are pretty good at straight out lying to people here it seems, told him he would be moved with a new upgrade to the cabnet/lines to it... and stated he would be seeing a speed of 6mbit down in the next 2 weeks.. we are now a month or so on still no sign of this actually happening (then again i was told my house had moved outside of range of adsl before..)

anyway.. to make light of this.. anyone know if READSL is supported in nz? i personally feel it should, wouldn't it be the most productive way of providing adsl lines to rural customers

in saying all this and stating the facts about rural customers i personally DO NOT count iver of us rural ... given we have RD addresses but i know for a fact that i was never changed the 10$ rural connection charge anyway :)

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bakewells5856

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#538292 27-Oct-2011 19:45

"You can change provider without losing your connection if you port services to another provider"

that's not what they tell us, even so the other providers said that switching wont make a difference

cyril7

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#538293 27-Oct-2011 19:47

"You can change provider without losing your connection if you port services to another provider"

that's not what they tell us, even so the other providers said that switching wont make a difference

Thats pretty much correct, hence the details asked in my post above.

Cyril

hio77

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#538294 27-Oct-2011 19:47

cyril7: Hi, maybe you could provide some more info, like roughly where you are, maybe more stats from your modem, in particular line attenuation etc.

While you line speed may have for whatever reason jumped to 900k yet you get no speed increase then I doubt its just the ISP, I mean that just too low to be an ISP bandwidth issue, but more likely the increased speed was met by higher error rate/packet loss and the end result is not much changed

DSL is not a magic carpet, if you live beyond the normal realms then the results are going to be all sad, so tell us more usable info and go from there.

Cyril

the numbers hes stating are his sync rates not speedtests, i have personally seen it and tried what i can to help but, once your on a forced profile (like we both are) messing with modulation etc just causes you to get d/ced to try to force the correct modulation for your profile -.-

if this is wrong then feel free to correct me but this is what i see with my modem and his so im pretty sure in our case it is true anyway..

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johnr

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#538296 27-Oct-2011 19:49

If the exchange is congested there is not much you can do about it and correct change to any provider and it will be the same

bakewells5856

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#538297 27-Oct-2011 19:56

here is my modem stats
that modem being a TD-W8960N

i live about 10 minutes drive away from Bethells beach

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#538299 27-Oct-2011 19:59

johnr: If the exchange is congested there is not much you can do about it and correct change to any provider and it will be the same

try telling telecom that... their next lot of phone network upgrades are underway ...T3G was installed over a year before ADSL2.. now they are doing.. no idea what to it but im sure its a good way to load more onto the exchange..

the building itself is no bigger than well.. my bathroom ... and yet it supply's a huge area..

although the exchange has a lot of load, it is no reason for the sync speeds in which the OP has.. the fact still remains that his speed was more than halved, i experienced the same thing (different road though) earlier in the year, in which im sure if you really want to look into it will be on my account log :) was plenty of fun :/

really i think this is more of a thing were we are rural enough that upgrades aint "needed" which would be the sort of area that ild expect the next best solution would be PROVIDE READSL! im still yet to understand why READSL is not used in NZ, please anyone tell me the big idea to not providing a technology which could provide far better reach to customers on the edges....

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cyril7

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#538300 27-Oct-2011 20:00

Your line attenuation stats are what needed, not the sync speed, we know thats bad, just trying to relate it to the speed.

Edit sorry just saw the post with the stats.

Cyril

bakewells5856

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#538302 27-Oct-2011 20:00

While you line speed may have for whatever reason jumped to 900k yet you get no speed increase then I doubt its just the ISP, I mean that just too low to be an ISP bandwidth issue, but more likely the increased speed was met by higher error rate/packet loss and the end result is not much changed

DSL is not a magic carpet, if you live beyond the normal realms then the results are going to be all sad, so tell us more usable info and go from there.

when it was 900k it actually was 900k. speedtests and downloading ect could confirm that, and it wasnt just a spike it was that speed for around a month.

phantomdb

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#538303 27-Oct-2011 20:01

okay for starters, if your 6 km away do you have a CLEAN phone line ie no background 50hz hum or anything that could degrade the quality of signal.

Next each point in that 6km run of cable has to have a joint and at each joint there becomes resistance = degraded signal.
ONE would asume you currently pay for LINE RENTAL or Wiring Maintance, check what that covers and excercise your right to have the Wiring checked.

I do rember back in the day when telecom use to connect wires using BLUE Beanie connectors these degraded over time and caused issues so having a cable check may find this sort of issue.

And the obvious one UNPLUG EVERY PHONE device in the house (A house alarm is also a Phone Device if monitored) check your line speed, probaly best to reboot the router and get a fresh reading. if the reding is MUCH higher slowly plug phones in untill it degrades.

Now also because you are rural, lightning is an issue try a freinds modem on your line to confirm you modem is not DAMAGED (Simply plugging your freinds in here and doing a line speed test should show this.)

Hope that helps,

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