Broadband infrastructure - yeah right.

We have a 7-8 year old house, we wanted a broadband connection. We can't get a broadband connection, effectively because our telephone provider, a well know Australian telecommunications company from Australia starting with 'T' wants to make more money.

We are on a pair-gain system, which makes us unable to connect using ADSL services. The reason for this is that the one copper line is shared with two houses. Do we pay half the line rental for our line? Not at all. We pay full price, for our line that can connect for dial-up networking at a maximum of 28kbps. I've been told that the line isn't half a line, but that really seems like it to me.

What annoys me is that the said telephone provider is allowed to charge the same money in either instance. There is only one incentive in this situation, and that is to put more people on to a pair-gain system. Okay, so we could go to a different telephone provider couldn't we? If you know which telecommunications provider I am talking about, you will know that we can't. There is no alternative.

Okay, so hands up, who thinks that that sounds like a monopoly?

And is this situation good for anyone, including the telephone provider? Absolutely not. There is no competition to keep them sharp, to drive them to find better solutions to problems, to find yet better ways to make money. Is it good for the consumer? Well, you wouldn't be reading this if it was. I extensively use the internet for my job, well, I did in a past life anyway. Is this good for the country? Well, one thing is, the tax man can't get his hands on the money that I don't make from the broadband internet connection that I don't have can he?

So where can we go now? Well, ADSL is out, clearly, as why would the telecommunications company put in full copper lines, so that we can pick whatever ISP we wanted to use and they miss out on the money. They won't, plus they'd have to give the pair-gain line to someone else, and they might not accept it, whereas we're stuck. It's too late for us really.

Our other option is wireless. That's very expensive for what it is, we live in amongst some trees, so signal strength isn't the best, and the plans for these are not very generous.
So our alternatives are: live with 28 kbps dial up, and pay loads more on phone calls so that telecommunication company can make more money, and we can never get ADSL.
Get wireless and pay more money, as well as having half-line for telephone at same money, and in so doing, end up paying a lot more than we normally would.

I tell you one thing, if we do go wireless, I'm not going near said telecommunications company again due to their complete lack of interest in customer service.

By the way, just in case there are some of your searching for Telstra, there's some information here about them!