I'm with Slingshot, and I was a happy user. I was getting 17 megabit down, and about 800 kilobits up. My local connection was via a street-side cabinet down on New Brighton Road, commonly called BUR/S, about 500m line distance (I think).
Recently, this cabinet jumped in front of a car, and caused itself grievous damage, with half of it being damaged beyond repair (labeled DEAD), the other half stating BUR/S Copper only. Since then, Slingshot have attempted to do everything for me that they can, short of demanding that Chorus replace the DSLAM cabinet. Unfortunately, Slingshot weren't able to get me onto a neighbouring cabinet, as all those slots were full. The best that Chorus could do was to assign me to receive DSL from the Burwood exchange, a distance of nearly 7 km, and I've no idea what the line distance is, nor how many joins there are between myself and the exchange. I'm now getting between 400 kilobits and 600 kilobits downstream. Yes Virginia, my downstream's slower than my upstream speed!!
What I'm after is more information on what other cabinets I could be allocated to by Chorus. I understand there's a Chorus representative present on these forums (ChorusVan) but I'm a bit wary of just PM'ing a user out of the blue, when my problem's been 'dealt' with by an ISP. I'm trying to short-circuit the process here, as it seems that none of the ISPs affected by the cabinet damage can do anything further for their up-to-800 affected customers.
If anyone wishes to approach me via PM to gain further details, I'm happy for that to happen. I want to get faster than 597 kilobits. Really, really badly.
So, can someone directly from Chorus approach me please? I'm quite happy to natter to Slingshot again if I have to, but I don't hold out much hope for that, as they have to talk to Chorus via some sort of ticketing system.
EDIT: I've done isolation tests, nothing changed. I have a Netgear N150 modem (DGN-1000) with latest firmware available. The house has a master splitter installed, and a monitored linegrabbing alarm. All that work was done a few years ago, and has performed sterlingly up until June 29th.
Regards, Brickviking
(Post 1 - and yes, I'll introduce myself soon)