Most of Telstra’s data and calls cycles through the US before returning here. The following is an older article but the information is still valid:
and some other worthwhile reading:
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We have naked adsl with iinet and we’re currently into our second month of no internet/worse than dialup speeds, with no resolution in sight.
For the first half of this time we had no internet at all, for the second half we’re getting 0.09mbps at best (down from our usual pretty poor 3.5 to 4 mbps). As we have a voip phone, this means we also have no home phone.
To date I’ve made over a dozen calls to iinet about it, we’ve had technicians attend the premises on four separate occasions and, on the advice of the last one, had the entire house re-cabled.
Our internet seems to break every 3-4 months or so, and it’s usually an earth leak somewhere between the pit outside our house and the exchange. Every time it does it means at least an hour on the phone to iinet, a day of work to let techs into the house, and up to a month with no service. I have noticed the service from iinet has been steadily deteriorating since their buyout by TPG, and what was once a great customer experience is now woeful, and I am planning on changing isp’s once the service is back up and running again.
Worst of all, we just received our months bill for the internet service that we haven’t been receiving.
Out of I’ve just lodged a complaint with the Telecommunications Ombudsman, so hopefully that gets me a resolution before the two month mark.
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It really is the luck of the draw when iinet engage with VisionStream to send out a tech to diagnose the issue. Then you have to hope that Telstra do the right thing with the fault analysis that VS have done.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere the horror stories I’ve heard from one particularly good VS tech who’s been out to our home on a few occasions. It would appear that Telstra aren’t too keen on maintaining the old copper infratructure, especially in areas where it will be soon made redundant by NBN HFC.
Our ADSL has been stable since November, but by saying that I’m sure that I’ve just jinxed us, especially as it’s raining… 
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Yes, it’s my understanding that there’s a ‘do the absolute minimum maintenance we can get away with until the nbn comes through’ approach to the copper.
Some of the VisionStream techs that have come to our place over the years (and there’s been many) have explained that most of the problems are due to an earthing fault between our premises and the exchange - there’s two wires - a fault with both gives no internet at all, but a fault with one gives pre-dial-up speeds, which may or may not be what I’m experiencing now. We don’t know, as we’re blaming telstra, and telstra are blaming us. Hense re-wiring the entire house, and trying an alternative modem and cabling. (ie, it’s not us). Iinet seem to side with whoever they’ve spoken to last, but never seem to get back to anyone about it.
Problems are further exacerbated as we’re a naked dsl connection, which means there’s no dial-tone on our line. So occasionally we’ve had our wires re-purposed for an adjacent property by a lazy tech who thought they weren’t in use.
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What I’ve heard from VS techs is that the copper pair is re-allocated, not due to laziness, but to placate whichever customer is complaining most loudly 
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I lost my wires a few years ago due to incorrect recording when they had to change out my pairs. They neglected to update the records properly so they were propagated, and the pairs were still booked as spares.
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Not sure if it will pay any dividends but are others in your area experiencing similar issues? Perhaps if there are making a community complaint to the TIO may render a better service to all.
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Hi all 
. Just an update regarding internet speeds and the rather large difference I’ve found the NBN makes when done as originally intended. Luckily we found last year when building here in Tamworth that the local council are a forward thinking mob when it comes to giving approval for new land developments up here. Our land couldn’t be released for sale until all modern services that could be reasonably connected physically were set up (which left out natural gas as there’s no pipeline on our side of town sadly). This means that all new homes built have the option of fibre to the premises not to the node - the connection point is outside your front gate. Unfortunately there are also those here in Tamworth living in pre-built accommodation that have Malcolm Changemind’s version that is only fibre to the node or fixed wireless. The people up here on tat system that I’ve talked to are wishing they had their old 56k modems back 
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The 2 screenshots below are from just after 8pm on a Wednesday night (so peak traffic period) and the first is between here and Blacktown. The second is a minute or so later between here and Los Angeles. The speed differences are a standard no matter the time of day - Australian sites are always faster due to less distance/infrastructure to pass through.
As many consumers realise, if the governments of all persuasions were fair dinkum and looked at the NBN as required infrastructure in this wide brown land, instead of something they can flog off down the track to some business mates for a song (like NSW Lotteries) they would do it properly. That means fibre to the premises anywhere cable can go, and a properly supported and fit-for-purpose wireless/satellite service for those places cable can’t get to. Of course it’d be expensive, but still a damn lot cheaper than doing it all again in 10-20 years time!
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Any new development since NBN rollout has to fit fibre to the premises and new land developments charge $300 when you get your connection (to help offset the infrastructure cost). They do not have to link to the NBN as the wholesale provider as TPG, Telstra and a few others do run their own networks beside the NBN.
Wholehearted agree with the FTTP to everyone possible, but it will be as you rightly point out an expensive overhaul to the almost defunct MTM NBN we have now.
There have been a few of us on this site loudly trumpeting this very scenario/wish/hope.
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I’ve recently been informed by email from Telstra that I would be " probably " going over to the NBN at the end of April 2018 . They advised me I would be getting FTTK/C . /
I phoned them up and asked about pricing etc compared to FTTP which I want . I was told that the price was basically the same . I made them an offer of a 1/10th of the price of FTTTP because that is all the FTTK/C is good for . A 1/10th of the speed of FTTP . They were slightly annoyed at this but I have seen my neighbours and am going to try to get some council representative groups behind our stance . Why should I /we pay for an inferior , already outdated system that is a worldwide joke . FTTP is the way to go not some Hybridised Crap invented by politicians to save money .
Friends of mine have actually dropped speed since going over to NBN . They were getting 38 Mbps on cable now they get , at best , 23 Mbps on NBN .Of course they could move up a tier as they are called now That is what the friendly man at the Telco shop said …I agree they should . AT NO CHARGE TO THEM . I’ll connect to it , no worries , as long as I don’t have to pay FTTP prices . / I’ll pay for the performance I get . I recently purchased a Turbo Sports Car . It cost me $6500 more than the standard model . Imagine if they told me the non performance standard model cost the same . Basically this is what is happening with NBN . We are being screwed over big time .
When I asked a good friend , who is a tech for a leading telco what the theoretical speeds were for FTTP vs FTTK/C . FTTP = 10GiGs per second , theoretically . FTTK/C 1GiG per second theoretically . /
I do believe , I stand to be corrected on this , that for a charge of $ 600+ they , NBN , will come and evaluate your property for FTTP connection if you are in a non FTTP area .
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Yeah Optus tried to hit me with the “first to connect on a property” charge, but I got up them about it. I asked why the first person to install on a property gets hit with that when if they sell the next person gets it for free, and if that was a fair business model. They told me it wasn’t an Optus charge, it was a government mandated NBN Co charge. I said I don’t care who the charge is coming from, if Optus can’t carry that cost for me to continue being a long term customer then I should find another retailer to take my money. Funnily enough I got a phone call the very next morning from a “supervisor” saying they had reviewed my case and that Optus would absorb the charge as a thank you for me being a loyal customer lol.
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From what I know about networking (and not a PHD by any means lol) if you have cabling coming to your premises for phone or cable tv already, there is no reason whatsoever that fibre couldn’t be run as well. What the evaluation would most likely entail is where the closest fibre node to your property is, and what route they would have to take to get it to your premises (to work out install cost). The cheapest way to go about it would be as you suggested, getting the whole street together in a proposal, as that would make a good business case for NBN Co running the cabling along the whole street. I find it ridiculous though that NBN would charge so high for what is effectively a quote, when they would have a heap of cost scenarios already on their books from the initial stages of the NBN (when it was all going to be FTTP). Remind me never to get any of the NBN board members around to my local club to run the chook raffle lol.
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One of the old adages is that a sufficiently high price is a relatively polite way to tell someone to rack off if you do not want to do ‘it’ without saying it, but would do it for ‘more than enough’ money.
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well for the life of me i can’t get a straight answer as to why nbn isn’t offering fixed wireless in the upper hunter. we live near murrurundi and have, like VERY MANY others in the surrounding areas a direct line of sight to the comms tower on mount helen (it services tv channels, 4g, etc., etc.,)
instead we are offered what is an already overloaded and second-rate option with sky muster.
the whole of the roll-out of the nbn has been a farce, orchestrated by both parties, and especially so with their metrocentric bias when regional and rural areas are most in need of ACCEPTABLE services in the first place.
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I’ve spoken to nbnco about that, and it seems they fill up the tower allocation with the closest houses first. Even if you can see the tower, once it is full to its number of users capacity, then they will not add anyone else.
I can see the Mt St Helens tower from here too, well at least from the top of my hill.
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hi gordon.
interesting. from what i gathered from nbn co there’s no fixed wifi at all in the area? and, the closest houses are all in town (murrurundi) and they already have landline nbn.
meanwhile, i’ll plod along with my 2.5mbs (on a good day) whilst paying an exorbitant sum for the privilege of doing so…
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See: https://www.nbnco.com.au/learn-about-the-nbn/rollout-map.html#
and zoom in on Murrurundi, and there’s definitely no fixed wireless available there.
Have you tried setting your phone as a hotspot for data? Plans are available with decent data allowances, I have 12GB/month with Optus for $40 (and the usual unlimited phone, SMS etc), and resort to that when nbn isn’t working.
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i looked at mobile hotspotting but the allowances are pretty pathetic, especially so considering i was/am looking to use the nbn for work (i’m a video producer). i must compliment telstra however on keeping my adsl connection ‘working’, even if the speed is so poor at least i do have it and they’re excellent at getting any problem attended to post haste.
i shall continue watching the debacle roll on and hope that sense prevails (HA!) and fixed wireless comes to murrurundi 
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Sort of yes and sort of no about running the Fibre to your house. For the most part they can run fibre almost to your premises in the conduit that Telstra and others have already put in place. What remains is from the pit to your house and this does not always include conduit. If it doesn’t then under the NBN rules they have to install that conduit and then complete the run of fibre to the house. If they are using HFC in an aerial cable area it is the only time they will continue with an aerial connection.
My friend @vax2000 is going to “benefit” from the change from HFC to HTTC, this means the, possibly non-conduit, run of copper from the pit to his house will be used instead of the drilling and so on needed to fit conduit and fibre to his house. FTTC is certainly going to be faster than FTTN as the attenuation over copper will be significantly lessened by the short run of copper left.
Of course this run of copper could already be through conduit to the house and why in that case would/should it be so expensive to do, when for HTTC they are already running fibrre to a pit no more than 200 metres from the house. And I am bewildered about what they will do/ are doing in these cases about older suburbs where copper is run aerially to the house???
The cheapest way wouldn’t be a street application but an area, suburb or council application as the quote cost would be adsorbed by a larger group than just the street or would be funded by the ratepayers/council. The community need to get actively annoyed 
and lobby their Councillors to push for better.
This may not be the NBN Tower. Many fixed Wifi towers are being purpose built for the NBN, a local Comms tower may or may not have the NBN presence on it. Nor is the Fixed Wifi a good answer when it comes to speed particularly in areas of heavy rainfall, foliage and anything else that interferes with the signal. However you may have more success if you try to find someone who runs a wireless internet service in your area and connect through them or get your community to set one up (could be costly this way though).
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You make some good points and yes FTTC is definitely better than FTTN, but it’s still taking the piecemeal approach to the whole thing. Whether it’s FTTN, FTTC or the present mess with fixed wireless and satellite services (or lack thereof) at the moment doesn’t matter, because all those things will have to be done again in 10 or 15 years when companies like Amazon arc up about their potential customers not being able to get online when they want to. No Australian government is ever going to be in power long enough to see an NBN type build through from start to finish, so you know the Coalition will be in there at some stage to destroy it - and the only voices the Coalition hears come from their future/past employers in the private sector, as they don’t give a toss about you unless you are in a marginal seat and even then it’s only if it looks good for them, not the end benefit that counts.
Think Baaaahrnaby’s destruction of the APVMA he moved from Canberra to Armidale. It was supposed to be a huge benefit to the Ag industry, create jobs in his New England electorate and the majority of employees were supposed to move with it, but he forgot to ask them first if they wanted to move lol. The vast majority told him to stick Armidale up his jumper and left to easily pick up work in other places in Canberra. Decades & decades of combined experience lost to the APVMA in a pork barrelling exercise that has become a circus. To get staff to move to Armidale they are offering them $55k (a year’s wage to many people) in moving expenses if they agree to stay in Armidale for 2 years and since they still expect 85% to say no, the taxpayer has the upcoming cost of redundancies to pay, as well as the recently announced need to hire overseas workers to fill roles of those staying in Canberra lol. Any hope we have for a fit for purpose NBN nationwide is disappearing faster than the Murray-Darling system, and because it’s national infrastructure pork-barrelling won’t help.
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