Thread: Is this typical?

Originally Posted by johntins

There is only one thing I'll say here, and that is: even if hell freezes over I will never, ever in my life ever use Telstra ever again. I am on first name terms with a number of people at the TIO's office due to T's unbelievably poor customer service and complaints resolution service. Their billing service is even worse. Never in my life has any organisation left such a bad taste in my mouth. I have wasted more than twelve months of my life fighting that mob.


Just sayin'. Oh, whoops, is that naming and shaming?

I have to agree that the customer service is atrocious and that the company is a Dog but unfortunately they are the TOP Dog and have the best coverage out of all the other providers.
So unless you live in the city or a main provincial town your choice is severely limited.
In the majority of remote towns and other areas in Australia if you don't connect using Telstra you won't have any phone reception or internet connectivity at all.

Originally Posted by trout1105

I have to agree that the customer service is atrocious and that the company is a Dog but unfortunately they are the TOP Dog and have the best coverage out of all the other providers.
So unless you live in the city or a main provincial town your choice is severely limited.
In the majority of remote towns and other areas in Australia if you don't connect using Telstra you won't have any phone reception or internet connectivity at all.

Yep, and that is the bit that really sucks. It is the major failing of the Telstra sale, and shows clearly why Government should not get involved with business. I chose to use a mobile provider that piggybacked on T's networks, as I was often off the beaten track, and even then, that provider was restricted by this "former" monopoly. In my view, T is anti competition and should be a serious focus of the ACCC, but the legislation precludes it.

In a country this vast, with a population this sparse, the idea that service providers should have to duplicate, or triplicate, or quadruplicate and so on infrastructure for something as basic and essential as communication is an indictment on us as a society. It is truly pathetic.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

So there are by my count 74 NBN service providers according to a helpful letter NBN sent to us today. I've never heard of most of them.
Apart from price, is there any actual advantage in switching away from the well known ones? Would the service improve if we dumped Optus, or is it just about price.
BTW we had two more dropouts over the weekend. Same deal - switch it off and on and it comes back.

Mick, There are stack of things that can affect the performance of your FTTN service:

Check this map to find out the estimated distance you are from your node along with a gestimate of the speed that should be achievable(Search for your address then click the dot).
NBN MTM Alpha

In your home:
Remedying old wiring can give possibly the biggest improvement, people have seen significant improvement in speed and reliability by doing the following:

• Before starting this process get a baseline of your modems sync speeds. This is the speed at which data can be transferred up/down with the current line quality. This information is available from the modems management console which you should be able to log into and retrieve. This speed should hopefully be close to what you got from the map above. If it is then your line quality is good - your attention will be more focused on reducing the dropouts.
• Disconnect wiring to all outlets other than the one your modem is connected to so you just have the single line running to your modems wall plug(no branches/joins)
• ideally have a new cat5/6 cable run from the lead-in (cable that comes from the street) to your modems location.
• Make sure the cable is kept away from power wiring
• Make sure the cable is not routed near fridges/washing machines/driers etc. The starting and stopping of motors will induce interference in cables run near them causing dropouts.
• make sure the modem has clean power - a surge protector can help with this
• Check your modems sync speeds again to see if you have achieved improvement - ideally your sync speed will be similar to that estimated on the map above

Once your internal wiring is in order, you can check if any further limitation is related to your connection (poor copper quality or distance) back to the node or is a limitation of your ISP:

• If your sync speed is significantly lower than what the map above estimates you should get then it is likely you have an issue with the line between your house and the node. Complain to your RSP so they can have NBN sort it out (good luck).
• If your sync speed exceeds your plan then then you should expect to get your full plan speed. Your RSP will limit your speed to the plan. (Use an online speed test tool to check your actual speeds)
• if you are getting much less than your plan and less than your sync speed then this points to an issue with your RSP. This will be most evident with slow downs in the evening when more people are online and things get busy. This happens because your RSP has oversold the bandwidth they have purchased from NBN for your locality (this is called CVC). I.E. they have bought capacity for 100 subscribers but sold it to 1000 - while not many are using it performance is fine, but when everyone is using it it is terrible. This is when you need to be looking for a new RSP and as much as people put them down, Telstra is one of the best performers (it's their customer service that lets them down), Aussie Broadband has an excellent reputation on all fronts.
• If your sync speed is lower than your plan speed eg plan speed is 100/40 but sync speed is 70/30 then this may well be due to the physical limitations of the line such as your distance from the node - nothing can be done about this.

Unfortunately with FTTN, users need to do everything they can to make sure their home wiring is in order. Getting a licensed cabler to do this is most effective. Once this is done it removes a factor that the RSP/NBN can blame on you.

In your particular case it looks like you need to sort wiring to stop the dropouts and change RSPs to get rid of the slowdowns. If the dropouts continue, there are steps that can be taken to see if the problem is internal or external but, that will be next.

Hope this helps a bit.

Originally Posted by SBD4

Mick, There are stack of things that can affect the performance of your FTTN service:

Check this map to find out the estimated distance you are from your node along with a gestimate of the speed that should be achievable(Search for your address then click the dot).
NBN MTM Alpha

In your home:
Remedying old wiring can give possibly the biggest improvement, people have seen significant improvement in speed and reliability by doing the following:

• Before starting this process get a baseline of your modems sync speeds. This is the speed at which data can be transferred up/down with the current line quality. This information is available from the modems management console which you should be able to log into and retrieve. This speed should hopefully be close to what you got from the map above. If it is then your line quality is good - your attention will be more focused on reducing the dropouts.
• Disconnect wiring to all outlets other than the one your modem is connected to so you just have the single line running to your modems wall plug(no branches/joins)
• ideally have a new cat5/6 cable run from the lead-in (cable that comes from the street) to your modems location.
• Make sure the cable is kept away from power wiring
• Make sure the cable is not routed near fridges/washing machines/driers etc. The starting and stopping of motors will induce interference in cables run near them causing dropouts.
• make sure the modem has clean power - a surge protector can help with this
• Check your modems sync speeds again to see if you have achieved improvement - ideally your sync speed will be similar to that estimated on the map above

Once your internal wiring is in order, you can check if any further limitation is related to your connection (poor copper quality or distance) back to the node or is a limitation of your ISP:

• If your sync speed is significantly lower than what the map above estimates you should get then it is likely you have an issue with the line between your house and the node. Complain to your RSP so they can have NBN sort it out (good luck).
• If your sync speed exceeds your plan then then you should expect to get your full plan speed. Your RSP will limit your speed to the plan. (Use an online speed test tool to check your actual speeds)
• if you are getting much less than your plan and less than your sync speed then this points to an issue with your RSP. This will be most evident with slow downs in the evening when more people are online and things get busy. This happens because your RSP has oversold the bandwidth they have purchased from NBN for your locality (this is called CVC). I.E. they have bought capacity for 100 subscribers but sold it to 1000 - while not many are using it performance is fine, but when everyone is using it it is terrible. This is when you need to be looking for a new RSP and as much as people put them down, Telstra is one of the best performers (it's their customer service that lets them down), Aussie Broadband has an excellent reputation on all fronts.
• If your sync speed is lower than your plan speed eg plan speed is 100/40 but sync speed is 70/30 then this may well be due to the physical limitations of the line such as your distance from the node - nothing can be done about this.

Unfortunately with FTTN, users need to do everything they can to make sure their home wiring is in order. Getting a licensed cabler to do this is most effective. Once this is done it removes a factor that the RSP/NBN can blame on you.

In your particular case it looks like you need to sort wiring to stop the dropouts and change RSPs to get rid of the slowdowns. If the dropouts continue, there are steps that can be taken to see if the problem is internal or external but, that will be next.

Hope this helps a bit.

Thanks for that helpful advice. Will check it out. Our internal connections are new.
It dropped out again overnight. We never had dropouts with ADSL.
Speed test 11.1/1.7
Your site says 100 is available.
Our plan is 12
So it's not the plan, it's the dropouts that are annoying.

Great post Sean

except it wont find my home,,
and when I physically zoom in its all shaded yellow = " no speed given " which covers the whole of the Sunshine coast

I am happy with the NBN speed, which is around 3 times what adsl was,, but it does drop out a lot lately,,

Originally Posted by Pedro_The_Swift

Great post Sean

except it wont find my home,,
and when I physically zoom in its all shaded yellow = " no speed given " which covers the whole of the Sunshine coast

I am happy with the NBN speed, which is around 3 times what adsl was,, but it does drop out a lot lately,,

Hey Pete, that's because the pillar location near your place has not been identified. If you can locate the pillar yourself then you can send it to "MrMac" on whirlpool and he will update the map accordingly:

If FTTN technology has no estimate (yellow), it is due to the Telstra Pillar not being located. This is required as FTTN speed estimate is based on estimated length of the copper cable from the Premise > Pillar > Node
Feel free to whim me in above if you want to provide Pillar/Node locations. Please map them in Sign in - Google Accounts & separate pillars/nodes and send in bulk. Single pillar/node updates are not prioritized due to time

With regard to modems, I opted for the subsidised Fritz box modem that Internode supply. It has good wireless, two analogue phone circuits and even understands pulse dialling and rings the bells in my Bakelite phones. It has also been far more stable than my old TPlink modem that I used with ADSL which usually had to rebooted every couple of weeks.

Internode :: Residential :: Hardware :: FRITZBox

Regards,
Tote

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