Escalation, sadly, appears to be the only option.
I had a similar saga with NBNCo. My ADSL line had regular problems, so when I received a letter advising that NBN would be rolled out in my area, and there was an 18 mth window to sign up, I jumped in. Once it was available. I called Internode to upgrade to a 50 Mbit service. They said "it doesn’t appear that NBN will support that in your case. Anything beyond 12 Mbit is not showing up as supported. I asked various technical questions, but Internode, as a retailer, only had the scant information provided by NBN.
Since it was still an improvement, and in the hope my internet would be more reliable (i.e. that the wire faults from the longer ADSL wires would be reduced by having a node somewhere closer), I signed up. The cost was the same, save for a new VDSL modem.
The FTTN service was worse than ADSL. When it rained, I had endless dropouts. Uploads were random events. and so on. At one point, I had no NBN for three weeks, and I had to prove that the fault was not my brand new high-end modem; the wire connecting the modem to the house phone circuit; the house circuit itself…I had the house wiring bypassed by direct outlet adjacent to the NBN entry point, obtained a two alternative VDSL modems - both brand new; and so on. The same problems remained. Throughout this, Internode was fantastic. They replaced the brand new modem with another, even though I was adamant there was nothing wrong with the original. I also asked someone at Internode what the split was between problems with FTTN; FTTP; and HFC connections - having at least some high-end data comms and IT management background, I know how these things work. I was advised that virtually all of the problem call are with FTTN - what a surprise.
A couple of months after the long outage, I received a letter from an NBN contractor, advising that they required access to my property for NBN service upgrades, as fibre was to run along my frontage. I called the information line, and was advised that I would have an FTTP connection when the project finished.
So, the FTTP box was duly connected to my house, awaiting cutover. I called the information number again, and was advised that their part in the project was complete, but it would require NBN to connect the the back end to network terminating equipment (this is normal - the individual house fibre runs need to connect via a network multiplexor of some kind). I called Internode, to find out, but their connection to NBNCo did not provide such information. NBN had a help line, so I called this, only to speak with someone basically following a scripted response…I had earlier learned from one of the NBN sub-contractors that my node was approx 1700 metres from my house, well beyond the claimed 900 mtr max for FTTN, which is a limit with built-in obsolescence.
One day, I was visiting my next door neighbour, who told me how good the NBN is. I asked him what he had, but he didn’t know. I took one look and saw the modem and battery backup unit and realised it was connected to FTTP. He had been contacted by his ISP, and moved from ADSL to FTTP. Everything suddenly worked.
I contacted Internode, and no matter what they tried, the NBN system replied “Already connected to NBN”. They escalated internally, and sent notes to NBN on my behalf, to no avail.
I wrote a letter to the CEO of NBN, asking for it to be delegated to someone with the capacity to make a business decision rather than follow a script, along with a summary of the stupidity of the situation. Within days, I had someone on the phone from NBN (I can’t recall his title), who offered his most profound apologies and explained exactly what would be required - I needed to disconnect my NBN service, which might be out for a day (as if I’d notice, given how bad the FTTN had been) and then reconnect. That would automatically generate an FTTP connection request.
These corporations have codified all of their responses to customer problems, so that their minions don’t make any “executive” decisions. It builds in inflexibility, thoughtlessness, and ineptitude - and extreme frustration for anyone on the receiving end of their “service”. They care not a jot how much of our time they waste.
On the plus side, FTTP is brilliant. Glass fibre is vastly better to run through often wet ground than wires that have been broken and joined many times over, and have insulation material that degrades and cracks over time. Although I knew that long before this debacle.
