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!

Broadband woes

Hello there readers,

Well, I thought that I'd start with a whinge. Typical, I hear you say, always whinging. Sorry, but this is an important one to me. I don't want to get in trouble for telling you all, but tell you I will, since there seems to be nothing else that I can do.

We have been in our house since May 2006, and still can't get broadband access speeds to the house. Last I looked, the house wasn't a cave. And yet, here I am with a pair gain telephone system. What is next Telstra, are we to get morse code sets, so that you can cut your costs further?

I wasn't made aware that I was getting a pair gain line into the house (I didn't even know that such a thing existed), nor was I asked if I would like a connection speed that goes faster than 28Kbps, but here I am, in this very situation.
We live in a house 12Km from the city, for all you snobs out there, we'd probably not be considered inner city. All the same, it's a long way from rural, or out in the sticks as we like to call it. We live in a reasonably nice area, our house is only about 7 years old, and yet we have a pedal powered telecommunications system from hell.

The house is in a lovely location, with a nature reserve behind us, and a park in front. That idyllic (!) setting isn't a good setting to be in if you want to get wireless connectivity. Wireless carriers don't seem to want to transmit through trees, which makes out situation that little bit more hopeless.

Finally, we think that we'd like to try for cable access, no such luck. 5-10 minutes walk through the park and people I know have it, but we can't get it.
How is this customer service, helpful, or anything but a monopoly? We have nowhere to go, to get better access. There is no hope in my opinion of that changing either, as competitors are at our local exchange, so Telstra, one would imagine would have no motivation to allow their competitors to compete.

One final note, to try to get the line transpositioned, you have to apply for Telstra braodband through bigpond. That really does seem to me like a great offer dressed up a little like a monopoly?

I have tried other phone companies, some take the time to tell me that there is nothing that they can do, and Telstra would charge them a lot of money to upgrade the line if they did it at all. And some act almost as if I have the plague or something, and can't wait to hang up on me.

I've tried the wireless option, which due to the trees means that I had to force the modem to work at its top speed, which resulted in frequent and long disconnections, often resulting in my having to restart the modem. The only option I can think of is to install an aerial, but I won't do that unless I can guarantee a decent reception, and good service. So many wireless providers are soooo expensive, and I need some decent amounts of download and upload limits, since I actually work in software. Okay, I don't work in software, I design, and write software, and being able to upload, download, get the latest beta releases of software and so on would be great.

Here's a thought, if there's anyone from Microsoft reading this post, please complain very strongly about this issue, since I can't help you test software, or write applications for it because it would take from now to eternity to download the software on a flaky 28Kbps connection. Please?

So what's happening then? Well, it seems quite obvious to me that the problems are down to a lack of competition, nay, no competition at all. There is no alternative infrastructure available, so competitors can't ever be that. This infrastructure was originally government owned, so really should belong to the people. One solution to this woeful tale is to split the company, to make an infrastructure company, and one that uses those services to sell other products. If that happened, then all competitors would compete on a level playing field, and force the technology to be improved.

I hear murmurings of future developments into WiMax and those sorts of areas. I hope that this technology isn't tree-adverse too, otherwise maybe we will still have the line when it becomes and antique. I wonder if we could then claim squatters' rights on the line?!

I've been in contact with Telstra, senators, ombudsman, the monopolies commission, and guess what, nobody wants to know, or cares. Perhaps somebody will read this, and contact me with some ideas. There must be companies out there that can do something, make some money, and solve my problems all in one kind act?