I signed with ABB shortly after having HFC cable connected to my exterior wall. Since this topic started ABB has had more ‘good press’ than most of the RSPs and their pre-sales and support has been a head above most. An impressive function is that they have a feature whereby you can put your address into their web page and see which of their nodes will service you, with a graph of its CVC and loading!
The ‘welcome’ emails included the basics of what to expect and while not answering everything provided reassurance they know their business. An example is (if applicable) advice to keep one’s current landline active until after the number is ported or the number will be lost, as well as details for logging into their web portal account.
From order to connection was a 4 weeks wait for a booking. The NBN tech rang before arrival, was on time and spent 2 hours including testing the HFC signal, running interior cabling to my preferred location, connecting and confirming the NBN provided cable modem, and waiting the few minutes it took for me to add my BYO router and confirm all worked and I was happy. No drama. 10/10. Landline number porting to VOIP to follow.
Things that could be better handled so far? While obvious in retrospect, an ABB email account is required to use their SMTP server. Email is a ‘service’ under NBN (or ADSL) rather than at top level with NBN and VOIP so it was not immediately obvious how to. I rang and they told me where to set up emails as well as made one for me.
Their phone lines give you your place in the queue and an ETA. Very nice compared to mindless lift music that goes for an indeterminate period. Hold times have varied from 1~15 minutes and in each case my purpose for calling was fully resolved.
I signed for NBN-50 because I had a coupon for a 6 month discount, no ongoing commitment w/my BYO modem. Off-peak speeds are consistently 48/17.7Mbps and peak 46/17.2Mbps.
While VOIP settings are on the web and easy to find, one has to ring support for the VOIP user/password. A bit manual. The landline number was ported a week after my HFC was live. I tested it moments after getting the SMS that porting was complete and I could/should now cancel my previous plans. Inbound calling worked fine but outbound did not. The level 1 support went through the router VOIP settings methodically but no joy. He then rang his level 2 to see what my router was sending. After a few minutes on hold he reported the problem was that my VOIP was still marked as ‘internal’ rather than ‘active customer’ (their error) and it was corrected forthwith. (I suspect this happened because I got my VOIP user/password well before my number was ported so that step could not be done at the time, and got lost. Most people would get their user/password after being notified porting was complete and everything would have been done at once.) Anyway, all was then good.
My experience is that ABB’s level 1 support is as effective in problem solving as Primus’ level 2 was, with no hassles or call-backs, at least in my experiences to date.
The bad: if one uses a landline and all the typical features (call waiting, forwarding, blah, blah) ABB’s is Very Basic. It makes and receives calls.
Support advised
There are some star codes that can be used: For example:
Unconditional call forwarding is - *72(followed by the number and then #)(*92 to remove)
Anonymous blocking - *77 (*87 to remove)
This was implemented fairly recently and hasn’t been completely tested at this
point. We are working on some documentation for this currently and it should
be available in the future.
some???
Since my landline gets Very Light use it is not a worry for me, but something to be aware of. Their VOIP is a work in progress even after being in business for a few years. I would not characterise this as a good look in comparison to any other VOIP service, although others might be as basic when one meets their reality.
VOIP 1/10 for features, the few calls to date have been 10/10 for quality.
