You must remember that something like having broken systems can't be fixed overnight. You have to have better systems, and then you still have to shift things from broken systems to newer systems.
The cable network is old, and run as a government monopoly for a long time.
The UFB network is new and planned - For major problems having 3 day outages there does indeed sound much worse.
IME, for large Chorus problems affecting a lot of users things are usually resolved in about four hours by a group of people, but with individual things it can be a bit hit and miss over who you get.
I would like to see them get paid more, work shorter hours, get better training etc, but I can't really see it happening. And I've had way more Chorus connections than Cable, but cable a) couldn't figure out my address, b) sent a tech who had never done a cable install before and didn't know what they were doing, and just walked out requiring a 2 hour phone call to get another appointment when they again couldn't figure out my address, requiring yet another phone call and appointment, where they then misprovisioned the speed, requiring another phone call where they tried to tell me that speeds can vary when it was exactly half the speed it should have been. Next house was better, they only misprovisioned the speed. But it was still hard to get resolved.
With clear-cut problems, it seems Chorus are generally pretty good. The problems seem to come from marginal problems where tech's don't have enough experience/knowledge to fix a fault, or just don't really have good procedures to follow.
Like it seems you had a mislabeling problem and someone fixed it on the spot - they may or may not be a procedure about this, but it didn't seem like it went up the chain regardless. And Chorus techs are just paid to fix a specific fault, not to improve the design of something that's working. (like properly labeling, etc)
mercutio: For major problems having 3 day outages there does indeed sound much worse.
I don't know how major my outage was (complete loss of service, but I don't know how widespread it was) but it was indeed frustrating. The main reason for the delay was apparently that Faults isn't open on the weekend. Thankfully I had 3G available as a backup, and the most annoying thing was my ISP still charging me for a full month despite the loss of service.
Getting back to the original question - this from my experience in the feild
jpoc: Since moving into my current home on the North Shore, I have had 4 serious problems with my broadband connection.
These have been over three different ISPs and I have come to the conclusion that there is an underlying issue with Chorus and I have no idea how to fix it.
When I first signed up with an ISP, I got a call from the ISP to say that my circuit was live, I plugged in my modem and got nothing. The line was dead. I contacted the ISP and they gave me the condescending line about sending a tech round if I really could not get it going myself and they told me that there would be a $199 charge if it turned out that I was not setting my modem up correctly. The Chorus guy duly arrived, confirmed that the line was dead and wandered off to the cabinet at the end of the road. He came back and asked me if the house had ever been connected with a different line. Having only just moved in I had no idea. He went back to the cabinet, did something, came back and we had a connection.
Most houses in urban NZ have at one time or another have had 2 copper circuits to them / for many they were used 1 for their 'normal' phone line and another for Fax/dial-up BB / then along comes ADSL so secound line dosent get used and becomes 'intact' to the house.
Now when someone moves out and another moves in, instead of waiting for the first line to be released by the orginal provider the second 'intact' line is taken or allocated to the new provider to provide service to the house (which is actualy the end of chorus's responsiblity, as the house wireing is the responsiblity of the end user and their provider).
Some times the so called 'intact' circuit gets broken down over time (as its not working it doesnt get reported as faulty so doesnt get fixed)
This circuit would have been what was allocated to your provider and would have to have been 'fixed' and then connected to your internal wireing by the chorus tech.
A year or so later, the ISP went bust and some other outfit bought the customer accounts and I was told that I would be switched over. I was given new login details and, when the old connection stopped working I entered the new credentials but there was no connection. My modem reported that there was a signal on the line but that it could not authenticate. My new ISP told me that the line was OK and that from their end, they did not think that my modem was plugged in. Cue the visit from the Chorus guy who muttered something about the service not being provisioned on my circuit. He went off to the cabinet and came back to ask me to retry and everything worked.
as above but this time back to the original but now 'intact' circuit and the one your failed ISP was using becomes 'intact' (This is normal practice between ISPs and Chorus and nothing out of the ordinary - and the records are keeped of the changes)
A couple of years later, having correctly sensed that my new ISP only had a few months left, I switched to a newer ISP. The new ISP is Orcon but this is not really an Orcon issue. Orcon informed me that I would get a new Orcon modem in the post and that I would just have to plug it in on the day that they would inform me that I was now on Orcon. No visit from a tech, just a new modem to plug in. Great. Then I got another message that I had to be home for a tech to visit. Not so great. But I took a day off and this time, two Chorus techs turned up. They told me that they were provisioning me a whole fresh new circuit. Cue an hour or so while they beeped and buzzed at each other while one guy was at my wall connector and the other was out at the cabinet. All was good and there I was connected up.
and again back to the circuit you had when you first moved in and the other circuit becomes an 'intact' ( again normal practice)
Coming to the present, the street took a direct hit in the Saturday/Sunday storm. We lost broadband and I reported the fault. Orcon muttered about an Auckland wide issue and told me that they had no idea when I would get my service back. By Monday, they had refined the message to say that Chorus were working in many locations to fix faults but they still had no idea about timescales but they confirmed that there were several customers down in my area. Then we spotted some Chorus guys working at the cabinet but our broadband was still down. That was two days ago. Yesterday evening, Orcon came up with an update. My local cabinet was all fixed up and everyone else was back on line and they would have to report this to Chorus as a new fault.
I have come to the conclusion that Chorus do not actually know which circuit goes from my house to the cabinet and so they never can get it right and they have to keep testing the lines to work out how to reach my house. Not only that, they seem to have discovered this four times and established the connection three times but they have never managed to update their own records of how to reach my house. Can this really be possible?
I dont know what actualy happend to your cabinet but what happens is that when there are faults related to a cabinet failure all the jobs are firstly linked to the cabinet fault. When the cabinet is fixed those jobs found, to be not only be related to that problem but to another fault in the network, are then looked at seperatly - this is what i suspect has happend in your case
mercutio: For major problems having 3 day outages there does indeed sound much worse.
I don't know how major my outage was (complete loss of service, but I don't know how widespread it was) but it was indeed frustrating. The main reason for the delay was apparently that Faults isn't open on the weekend. Thankfully I had 3G available as a backup, and the most annoying thing was my ISP still charging me for a full month despite the loss of service.
Which 'faults not open during the weekend' are you refferring too (possibly your ISPs abbilty to generate work into the chorus fault recording system ) as the chorus faults service runs (via there service contractors) 7 days a week and generaly 10 to 12hrs a day if not 24 if it is warrented or required. I will condition that in that there are limited tech feild staff on at the weekends, at present, that have the right skills to sort out NGA/UFB related faults compared to those that can work on copper related faults. Not only because there arn't many but also because there arent that many faults in the NGA/UFB network warrenting them being on.
mercutio: For major problems having 3 day outages there does indeed sound much worse.
I don't know how major my outage was (complete loss of service, but I don't know how widespread it was) but it was indeed frustrating. The main reason for the delay was apparently that Faults isn't open on the weekend. Thankfully I had 3G available as a backup, and the most annoying thing was my ISP still charging me for a full month despite the loss of service.
MyRepublic had a 3 day outage in Hamilton that was apparently a non-redundant backhaul problem with some issue where I think they were trying to pass blame. But I haven't actually heard of any multiday outages from other people yet. That one was kind of all over the place. A quick google should find it.
3G as a backup is far from ideal! And I'd make serious complaints to your ISP if there wasn't some kind of mitigating circumstances like weather or accident or such.
The Chorus guy patiently sorted it all out last Wednesday and informed me that as far as he could see I now had dsl to the house.
My Orcon modem still would not synch so I tried another modem and that could get dsl synch but, not having the Orcon goodness baked in, it could not connect.
So, thanks to Chorus for sorting out their stuff.
Then I just had to wait for today to get a new modem from Orcon. It seemed that the storm had taken out the dsl side of the modem.
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