A neighbour's DSL connection with Slingshot and phone service faulty for two months

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › A neighbour's DSL connection with Slingshot and phone service faulty for two months

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Behodar

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#3429442 31-Oct-2025 10:18

MichaelNZ:

Chorus changed the procedure for copper faults a few months ago. I don't exactly understand what the changes are nor have any first hand experience since then because we have so few clients on copper and none have had faults in the interim.

But my crystal ball combined with what Chorus has said publicly, is copper is on the way out.

I suggest you have a discussion with them around an exit plan.

Someone at work (from Military Road, Whakatane District) got a letter from Chorus recently that could be summarised as "copper will get less reliable as time goes on, please get off it", so it seems that they're trying to make proactive contact. There's no fibre in the area.

nztim

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#3429456 31-Oct-2025 11:03

If VDSL is under 50mbps I am now directing people to star link or a local WISP

Avoid 4G/5G it is pants and inconsistent

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

freitasm

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#3429525 31-Oct-2025 11:30

rhy7s:

MichaelNZ:

I suggest you have a discussion with them around an exit plan.

Yeah, will do. He has issues with Musk and has a lot of obstructions to the south in terms of the hill he's on with forest on the ridgeline so might need to run a longer ethernet cable than what's in the kit, however he is also in an area of very poor mobile reception so mobile data would also require quite a long ethernet run to get somewhere with a better chance of reception.

An exit plan is not Starlink only. As others mentioned, check for WISPs in that area, if fibre is not available.

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rhy7s

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#3429528 31-Oct-2025 11:41

freitasm:

An exit plan is not Starlink only. As others mentioned, check for WISPs in that area, if fibre is not available.

Yeah, I will see, our WISP's service checker indicates availability but I would be very surprised if there is anywhere they'll get line of sight from the property. Regarding Starlink, going to their ordering page at the moment it looks like the hardware lease option applies to the Residential Lite package as well at the moment? (Free trial plus no hardware cost listed)

MichaelNZ

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#3429529 31-Oct-2025 11:44

Behodar:

Someone at work (from Military Road, Whakatane District) got a letter from Chorus recently that could be summarised as "copper will get less reliable as time goes on, please get off it", so it seems that they're trying to make proactive contact. There's no fibre in the area.

I have not seen this letter but it sounds very much in the realm of likelyhood.

But from my point of view I am also hesitant to lodge tickets for DSL faults so I get where a previous poster was coming from.

UFB can be tested to the ONT, and while there are cases where this test is misleading these have happened as part of a wider fault and Chorus have fixed it in the street and nobody has been billed.

In short fibre (usually!) works or it doesn't.

This is not the case with DSL. If Chorus can't find a fault the ISP gets billed and has to pass that on to a customer who is unhappy and may even refuse to pay. Depending on their distance and line quality there may not be a fault to fix. It may simply suck anyway.

We have only a small handful of clients left on DSL and we are not taking anymore. My VDSL line (which was reliable and fast) was finally terminated yesterday to coincide with our custom UFB install.

Nobody in this industry wants to lose clients so where possible we are working with then to get a paid UFB install or letting them stay a little longer on their DSL, or move to another service like Starliink. But if it goes faulty we probably won't get it fixed.

DSL is falling of a cliff this year and next.

While I can't speak for others in the industry I would be surprised if they weren't also thinking along similar lines.

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