Thread: what the hell is wrong with comms companies in AU ?

Are you familiar with mobile coverage in the UK? It's apparently woeful, more so when you consider the population v land mass. Not that I'm disagreeing with your sentiment.
Choosing a comms provider in Australia is akin to voting, pick the least bad.

It's funny Inc, the little community that I live in are right now in a massive rage about exactly the same thing that you're talking about here. Telstra for me, they're expensive but they are drama free, have the data flowing and I'm one of the seemingly few where I live that are not having problems. The rest are and they are absolutely raging about Optus in particular.

Since the NBN Australia is like a 3rd world country & as for Brisbane it is like a country town. Everything you need has to come from Sydney Or Melbourne & that takes forever these days . Nobody keeps stock in Brisbane.

Originally Posted by 1950landy

Since the NBN Australia is like a 3rd world country & as for Brisbane it is like a country town. Everything you need has to come from Sydney Or Melbourne & that takes forever these days . Nobody keeps stock in Brisbane.

If you think Brisbane is like a small country town, how do you think those living in small country towns feel.... and then those who live in little localities! Quite a few people here dont even get mobile phone coverage!

I feel for you , I really do.

If you live outside the Metro area in WA its either Telstra or bugger all coverage and if you go to a remote mine site or locality the ONLY coverage is Telstra.
Not much option to use other carriers outside of Perth or the other main cites here in the West.

We had the NBN connected back in January 2020 ( Telstra is our provider) we have had limited internet since then unlike ADSL . After many many hours on the phone to Telstra three service people coming out who did nothing & I mean nothing , when they came in they just checked the speed with there phone , said there is nothing wrong & left, ( THAT WILL BE $200 THANK YOU) Which I refused to pay because my understanding was if they did not fix it there was no charge. I then sent an email to the CEO of Telstra who told me the NBN had handed the repairs back to Telstra to fix but did ask me to do a speed test in each room of out house which showed the room with the modem the speed was 90 but other rooms it was in the 20's . He suggested I connect a cable from the modem to the computer a distance of 25m (in one of the bedrooms) which worked but was a trip hazard . The next suggestion was to buy a WiFi extender another $500 , it is now worst , even the TV 1/2m from modem Netflix has to do a 5min catch up around every 20 min's ( I think it was better with out extender then we either had Netflix or ew didn't. It is looking like I am going to have to get someone in to run cables through the ceiling to all the points we need the internet, I don't know what that is going to cost. This was forced on us by our our government they should be footing the cost or at least contributing to the cost. With ADSL we had a phone that worked 100% of the time , Netflix worked 100% of time & internet 100% . Now we have this great NBN works 50% fi we are lucky.
When it is not working & I ring for help by the time I get through it is working again so all tests show all good , they think I ring them for nothing , WHY would someone ring them every day & spend hours listing to there sails pitch over & over again if all was good. One of my pet hates with Telstra is when they ring you , if you don't answer them in time , they have rung from a number that you can not ring back on & you have no idea who it was that rang so you then have to jump through all the hoops to speak to someone & they have no idea who rang you or what it was about. I don't blame Telstra for all this I blame the government who have given us a cheap NBN service & the NBN who do not want to fix anything & just want us to spend money to fix a service that they do not supply.
I am the 1st to admit stuff with computers is beyond me & for this reason when we asked to be connected to the NBN I asked that they fully connect us , I wanted it to all work when the installer left , I did not want to have to do anything , all I wanted that when they left every thing worked as it did with ADSL . We were willing to pay for this service , the guy who came did nothing & nothing is what we got .

Yes Telco services here are amongst the worst in the world, not just the OECD.

We live in the Haweksbury NW of Sydney and Telstra is pretty much the only carrier that can provide any ‘service’ in our particular location (very hilly around here). We have recently had a result after years Corvallis escalating frustration to the Telstra CEO Andy Penn’s Specialised Customer Contact Team, Consumer & Small Business. We had quality and reliability issues with mobile, land line and internet (ADSL) going back over 25 years.
Anyway we now have a 4GX antenna and a local WiFi booster which is providing vastly improved mobile coverage (none inside the house previously) and improved internet but not brilliant, mind you anything is better than the ADSL. Though now we have a single point of failure in that this service is provided via a single Telstra tower in Wilberforce. We still have problems with the land line but at least we have some improvements.
Telstra to their credit waived the antenna install cost ($600), but the install techs left the usual mess.

Cheers - Simon