I've been following Darthkermit and a few others on here with their attempts at getting fibre installed and I just thought it would be enlightening to show how mine is going.

This is all a bit tongue in cheek and to be fair, I pretty much expected the runaround and I was trying to mitigate stuffing around as much as possible by getting all the ducks in a row early re the consent.

Let's just say that I have not been disappointed by Spark and Chorus lack of co-ordination. It really is like wading through quicksand.

So- after having a few issues with the broadband connection (like lightning hitting the local exchange and Chorus apparently not telling Spark), I watched with baited breath as the Chorus men hooked up the little black boxes in our street that I knew were the fibre thingies I'd longed for.

8/12/15 lodged an on-line Body Corp consent form with Chorus (I'm the body Corp secretary for 3 units) and received automated e-mail confirmation... all go... or so I thought.

I regularly checked Spark's web site to see if they knew the little fibre cable was ready to be hooked-up, but no, even though several other internet providers were in the know and slipped tempting offers into my old fashioned mail box on the street, Spark hadn't heard the news.

This inspired me to check Chorus web site and, yes- Chorus said the fibre thingie was waiting for me to hook up.

I checked Spark's web site again- appeared broken, so I spoke to Spark and the guy did a manual search. Yes, fibre is available- all I needed to do was to provide consent and maybe in a about a month we could be hooked up. I advised I had done an on-line consent in December but the guy said there was no record of it, so I should talk to Chorus.

16/1. Then I got an automated e-mail from Spark saying “The fibre installers have figured out where the new lines need to go, but have to get permission from affected parties” Strange, I thought- no-ones been on my property.

Tried to call Chorus, but they didn't want to talk, so I e-mailed them and received a nice (automated) e-mail to say they would get back to me within two days.

Sure enough 2 days later received an e-mail from Chorus Customer Care saying they don't deal with the consents, I had to call another company- phone number attached. It was a complete fob-off.

Called the 'consent' company, spoke to a nice guy who tried to help, but said they had no record of the consent form. I advised that Chorus had e-mailed me confirmation of the lodged consent in December so forwarded that to him. He said the consent hadn't come through and might be 'somewhere in the system' so would note on the job for him to handle the consent when it came through 'in the next week'.

Couple of days later get a call from someone at the same company- they had just received my consent form (I guess from Chorus after all) and wanted to confirm the details etc. I explained that someone else there had flagged it for his attention since I spoke with him and he knew what was going on. The woman said she didn't see the note but no problem, she would process the consent.

I then get an e-mail from the same woman saying that I needed to confirm in writing that I was giving consent for Chorus to install on the property.

I e-mailed her the details again that were in the original on-line consent.

22/1. I get an automated e-mail from Spark saying, “Good news, the installers have the consents they need... the local fibre company will be in touch...”

Great I thought, then I looked at the Spark 'progress' page only to find that it said 'waiting for consent' again.

I threw my hands in the air and went to get the snail mail, only to find a nice flyer from Spark in the box to trumpet that 'Fibre is now available in my street'... along with my phone bill and a charge of $137.00 to get a technician from Chorus out last month- despite me telling their call center in the Philippines and the technician that I had the same fault previously when the exchange got hit by lightning. That obviously all fell on deaf ears.

31/1. I'm Still waiting for a technician to get in touch from Chorus. Considering we might not be past the consent stage yet it looks like that guy from Spark was right about 'Maybe a month away'.