^^^

To everyone still waiting for their UFB. I hope you get it soon.

Sigh... not a peep from the Chorus outbound team. Have signed up for Skinny's mobile broadband service. First stage of admitting defeat: organise a plan B.

you do know you don't have a relationship with chorus right? they may have been nice in helping you out but they don't owe you anything

your relationship is with your ISP

Jase2985:

 

you do know you don't have a relationship with chorus right? they may have been nice in helping you out but they don't owe you anything

 

your relationship is with your ISP

 

Yes, Chorus has been really nice to me, but I'd beg to differ on the relationship. There are two front-facing relationships that Chorus has with the customer: facilitating consents on behalf of the customer, and working with the customer to organise the scoping and installation process. Chorus directly makes contact with the customer on these issues (e.g. setting up a time to visit), not via the ISP.

It may well be that the relationship is without any accountability since they ultimately "owe" the ISP by being accountable to them to set everything up, but there is a relationship.

What an EXCELLENT post !

I have to admit to reading the words of your experience twice. And both times I laughed, I sighed, I chuckled and I cringed. Bugger - I even cheered a little bit! (For all of you).

So clear to me through your recollection of the events, is that everybody is trying their best. Sometimes, in difficult circumstances, but you recognise that.

It is nice to see that there are still people out there that continue to do so, and that the "it is my right" brigade have not swallowed us up completely. 

Hope it all works out for you. With an attitude like that, you deserve it.

thewanderingv:

 

Jase2985:

 

you do know you don't have a relationship with chorus right? they may have been nice in helping you out but they don't owe you anything

 

your relationship is with your ISP

 

 

 

 

Yes, Chorus has been really nice to me, but I'd beg to differ on the relationship. There are two front-facing relationships that Chorus has with the customer: facilitating consents on behalf of the customer, and working with the customer to organise the scoping and installation process. Chorus directly makes contact with the customer on these issues (e.g. setting up a time to visit), not via the ISP.

 

It may well be that the relationship is without any accountability since they ultimately "owe" the ISP by being accountable to them to set everything up, but there is a relationship.

 

 

 

Well that's because consents and civil are actually the service company's problem, right? The rest of it is with your RSP.

I guess my thoughts are that I'm fairly skeptical, so even if someone has a possibility that they won't need consents, I tell them to gain them anyway because then it gives the service company no excuses :)

I would also have just signed up to Big Pipe temporarily and dealt with UFB as it comes.

Updates:

I'm now certain I won't have fibre on the 10th of May. But I will have a scoping visit on the 17th of May, and a tentative installation date of 8th June.

Skinny mobile will have to do until then. Let's hope the scoping goes well.

Requesting UFB on the 18th April and having an install done on the 1st June is a speedy install.

Mine took 8 months after consent was given and after the MUD install was done. Building was installed with UFB on the 1st Feb 2015 and I did not have it installed 10m down the hallway till the end of August 2015.
A friend of mine also having the same experience, in Auckland 5 months and counting since request.

Once the official Scope is done the install will be relatively quick after that.

I think the main reason for delays is the sheer number of installs being completed, I don't think there's enough contractors to do the jobs.

This is the kind of service level that can be expected where the installer is protected from the sanction of the market.

If Chorus had competitors (I realise this is impractical) atrociously poor service would not be tolerated by consumers and Chorus would lift their game or lose their customers.

But it's a monopoly so we are all stuffed.

While I twiddle my thumbs waiting for the Chorus scoping visit next week, I've turned my mind to things I've been drooling about doing in my own home, including:

1. Organising a visit by CTS (thanks Cyril7) to run some CAT6 cables and set up ports around the house

2. Picking up an uber-cheap (NZ$150, incl shipping and delivery) Edgerouter Lite (after reading about 1000 copy-paste endorsements from michaelmurfy) via Amazon

3. Using the Cambium 70% off offer to pick up 3 E400 APs which I'm going to test out to see if it's better than the 3 Eeros I have running

The things I do to keep myself entertained...

Orcon has shipped my modem out, which I'm taking to be a good sign.

All of my ordered goodies have arrived, and we've got CTS doing our cabling/patching work next week.

If only Chorus suddenly had a surge of spare capacity to clear their jobs say, two weeks, in advance? :)

The Chorus tech came in to scope today, and again couldn't understand what the fuss was all about. He was in and out within 10 minutes, and promised to do whatever he could to speed things up. Perhaps out of politeness, but still reassuring to a naiive n00b like me.

He said that he would send off the photos to Wellington Electricity today, and then if they came back quickly enough he might be able to bring forward the installation date given how easy the job was.

Fingers remain crossed.

Huzzah!

Yay!

While I twiddle my thumbs waiting for the Chorus installer, I thought I'd give a big shout-out to the Skinny 4G broadband plan. 

I have a Skinny 4G patched through to my new home network (thanks to the CTS guys who did a really good job with the internal cabling), and it's great. It has been an incredibly reliable alternative while Orcon and Chorus juggle my life between them.

If you do enjoy the luxury of having additional equipment, say like an Edgerouter Lite to route and some Raspberry Pis configured with pi-hole augmented DNS servers, the Skinny 4g connection shines even more with all the local network efficiency gains.

As I wonder whether WE has gotten around to my pole consent, at least I can wonder out loud on a reasonably fast backup connection.