This is not just happening with the NBN – it is happening here in Canberra with its home-grown VDSL (coaxial cable) network originally installed by a mostly-publically-owned company called TransACT.
When iiNet acquired TransACT here in Canberra four years or so ago they acquired me as a customer, and they acquired TransACT’s legacy process of issuing two bills, not as you might expect for the landline and the broadband service – those two were combined into a single bill – but for those two and separately for being my Internet Service Provider.
At the time I paid $10 a month for the ISP service, which iiNet proposed increasing to $30. In compensation they offered me a $20 discount off the standard charge for their cheapest landline/broadband plan, for which I currently pay about $40 a month (after two or three dollars of call charges and a further discount for paying by direct debit), a total of about $70.
On May 10 I received two emails, one for each iiNet account, with an identical spiel about what I believe was in effect a forced upgrade to their new the VDSL2 network, for which the cheapest plan would be $70 a month.
Two days later I had a call from TransACT – I’ve taken the chance to tell the tale of the source of that call elsewhere on Choice’s website (Mobile phone doesn’t ring but do get SMS about ‘missed call’).
The TransACT representative, a Filipina called Sunny, confirmed that the new plan would consolidate my existing two bills so that I would be paying no more for an improved service, particularly for an increase from my present download limit of 9GB – which I have never exceeded, incidentally – to Liimitless Data (and I complimented her on the double-i pun). She suggested I should move across immediately, rather than waiting until July when the (forced?) “upgrade” would occur anyway.
Despite my somewhat-allayed concern at losing my reliable landline for the unreliability of VoIP – they call it Netphone – and other only somewhat-allayed concerns discussed at length with Sunny, I agreed.
She immediately transferred me to another line where after a brief old-fashioned ringtone a man’s voice began to tell me about the requirement to waive my CSG rights.
When the recorded voice asked me whether I agreed to the waiver, and I said no, Sunny came back on the line immediately to ask me if I was really not agreeing, and when I confirmed my refusal to waive these rights without at least doing some research into what it might really mean, she told me it would be impossible to proceed with the upgrade without the waiver.
I asked her what the alternatives were, and she said she thought it should be possible to retain my CSG rights by remaining with my existing two-bill system but for access to the new network (since the old network was being closed down come what may), and she put me on hold to check. When she came back she said I could continue to pay TransACT $50 a month and iiNet $30 a month, losing my special discounts in the process (for which she had some excuse I’ve now forgotten).
When I said this meant I was effectively being asked to pay an additional $10 a month to retain my CSG rights, paying a total of $80 a month plus some call charges rather than the $70 I was paying at present, and would also pay on the new network (at a minimum) if I waived my CSG rights, she did not disagree. She promised to put this alternative offer in writing and email it to me, but she has not done so yet.
