Telstra's "answer" to our ADSL issue

[LewisM]

I submitted a TIO complaint about a month ago, and granted, Telstra was quick off the mark to "rectify" the problem - slow internet (only slightly better than dial up) and frequent drop outs (20 to 30 per day).

Initially, they sent a tech, who re-ported us onto a better/freer port. Worked well re drop outs but the speed was still between 3mb/s and 6.6mb/s - ADSL 1 speed.

Today, in a further effort to appease, they upgraded our plan from 500GB/month to 1 TB / month (whereas most we EVER used was 250GB /month). So, now we have even more bandwidth that we can't utilise!!! :screwy: - it's like a dog chasing it's tail! That's ALL they can do, apparently (despite me saying how about refunding us 3 months of "service" where we had all the drop outs, or dropping us to a price/month commensurate with our speed and average usage).

Shame I can't on-sell bandwidth :lol::lol:

Way to go telstra - compensate the customer with a completely hollow fix. Might be satisfying for some gaming kid, but even watching Netflix we don't get above 250GB/month...

[xelasnave]

They probably figure they can give you unlimited because at the speed you can't use most of it.
Alex

[LewisM]

That's what I said Alex :lol:

[xelasnave]

Yes and it bears repeating
Alex

[LewisM]

That's what I said Alex.

(repeating it) :lol:

[LewisM]

Ok seems we aren’t being appeased. Seemed many got this “upgrade” today. One wonders what Telstra is up to!

[Atmos]

I live on the 7GB per month I have with my mobile internet and never use that. Thanks to my 60MB/S down load speed I can do anything I want quick smart :lol:

[Steffen]

That has nothing to do with your complaint. Most people got their broadband plans upgraded (https://exchange.telstra.com.au/data-take-customers-streaming-era/). I noticed my cable plan being UNLTD today (used to be 1000GB).

This doesn't help when the bandwidth isn't there, of course...

[LewisM]

Yeah, as Telstra just discussed with me lol.

Why suddenly they being "generous"? In light of the massive complaints being levelled at them I assume, all with the premise of "meeting demands" :)

[xelasnave]

I am in a similar boat to Colin.
I was on 5 or 6 gig on the phone but got a 18 gig plan when I purchased the lap top...Apart from cage fights which I now tire of I don't know what to use it all for...first month I downloaded astronomy stuff, deep sky stacker, PHD guiding etc and still had gigs left over.
Which raises my question...what do folk use the net for such that they need or want so much.
Alex

[Camelopardalis]

You’re going about t all wrong, Lewis.

They know you live in Canberra, so they’re expecting a back hander first :lol:

[LewisM]

I know - the Brown Paper Bag Society :)

I gave Kunama a brown paper bag as a joke recently, with a diagonal in it. We called it Canberra Style.

[Camelopardalis]

:lol: :lol:

[Wavytone]

Hah ... Alex the big uptick in data volume isn’t from ordinary web surfing ... as you say there’s only so much you can consume.

Here the big usage stems from:

- me using my MacBook and iPhone hotspot to access office remotely - frequently video calls - and this can be intensive for many hours. This can chew 1GB per hour.

- iCloud syncing lots of photos up/down between our various devices - wife is quite capable of 1000 shots a week of which I delete 99%.

- AppleTV downloading 4K video which we tend to watch in preference to TV.

- little fella has discovered YouTube and ABC Kids. Hes quite capable of getting through 2-3 GB a day, though I’m expecting the novelty will wear off soon.

So in total it’s not unusual for our total usage to exceed 10GB per day and sometimes 15GB. We have a bundle with Internode that works out about $150 a month across the lot.

In some respects there are ways to do all this without chewing through so much data - however with an all-Apple setup that collectively has worked seamlessly for us for years I’m not likely to switch. What’s more impressive IMHO is that it all DOES work reliably - so well it has saved the day many times when my customers work environments had failed one way or another - and the cost isn’t punitive.

[julianh72]

Alex,

Everybody's needs are different, but the real "game changer" for most typical households is streaming TV - whether that's Netflix, Stan, Foxtel Now, Fetch TV, Free-to-Air catch-up content, or YouTube etc. Once your household viewing habits change to be streaming video rather than FTA TV, it's very easy to go through 200 - 300 GB per month if you're watching in HD, or two or thee times as much if you're streaming mainly 4k content. (And you need a good reliable high-speed connection to be able to watch streaming TV, especially in "peak evening hours", and this is something that many people aren't able to access on the NBN.)

From my household's perspective, pretty much the only FTA TV we watch in "real time" these days is the evening news and a few current affairs shows. We do set up a few favourite shows to record automatically, but I don't get as paranoid about missing a show as I once was - partly because there's so little worth watching, and partly because most of our favourites are available on "Catch-Up" anyway.

But it's not just about watching TV - our internet connection gets hammered by two university students (and I'm sure at least SOME of their data needs are uni-related, not just cat and music videos! ;) ), and my partner and I are engineering / project management professionals, and the "data rooms" we need to access from home for our projects hold many tens of gigabytes of data. Add to that operating system updates, cloud back-ups of our household data, etc, and you're well into the hundreds of GB per month.

We find that our current data allowance of 550 GB per month is OK at the moment, but knowing how data usage grows exponentially (we were getting by fine on 200 MB per month about 4 - 5 years ago, then 500 MB until about two years ago), I'm expecting to need 1 TB or more within a couple of years at most. Luckily, we've got a good (non-NBN) FTTP connection which can support our present and future data needs - not all households on the NBN are as lucky as us.

[AndrewJ]

I feel left out here :-)
Im lucky to use 5GB per month
and then only when windoze drops its mega updates
Andrew
ooohhh, first pom has just gone, gotta go watch the FTA
( at least its not watching me ;-) )

[PhilTas]

You're not Robinson Crusoe, Andrew

[Terry B]

I received an email from Telstra telling me that they have upgraded my account from 500g/month to unlimited at my "current speed"
That is ADSL where the best we have ever got is 4mb and it is usually around 1.5mb. Even with the kids using as much as they want we have never used more than 150g in a month so the unlimited is useless. We will never get NBN as I am 10km out of town and can only have satellite which would be worse than the ADSL that I currently have.
The joys of living a rural lifestyle. :P

[LewisM]

Same here in the nation's capitol :lol:

[pjphilli]

I am an ex Telecoms Engineer and from discussing telecoms experience with my contemporaries it is obvious that there is little customer understanding of the difference between speed and capacity which is taken advantage of by the suppliers. There is certainly a lot of anger out there regarding the appalling way the compulsory NBN is (or not) being delivered usually with no option of staying with what is often a good service (I am in this category).

[LewisM]

Telstra tech rang me again after resetting our service etc. Told him the speed test and he said it the best possible...and that it meets minimum service guarantee. What a crock.

Thanks Telstra :lol:

[Exfso]

How far are you from the node?

[LewisM]

200 metres

[Exfso]

Lewis, I am 150metres away and at non peak times get 96Kbps download and around 36Kbps upload. During peak periods it can drop off a bit, but nothing like it used to with IINET running the show. If your speeds are crud both peak and non peak, I suggest it is an ISP problem, and if ok during non peak and dropping right off during peak, it is definitely and ISP problem not having enough backhaul to handle the increased traffic. Many moons ago I had this issue with Telstra when peak periods occurred on ADSL, I left them and went back to Adam Internet who are now IInet, and the rest is history. Actually Telstra said it is what it is and get used to it, after a trip to the TIO I left them. Would not touch them with a barge pole now, the amount of incorrect information they gave me was ridiculous. I now use Aussie Broad band and they are great, you actually get someone who can speak English. Wait times are almost non existent, and during Peak periods, they monitor usage and adjust CVC accordingly.

[doppler]

The best part of the NBN changeover for me was finally being able to give Telstra the boot. My internet is unlimited, no contract, $30 a month cheaper, speed is a bit slow (but faster and more reliable than Telstra's ASDL) and constant even in "peak" periods. Telstra got caught out charging premium prices for not so premium services. Once NBN comes to an area Telstra doesn't own or control the network any more.

[toc]

In my house we normally chew through 400-600 Gig per month with ease - 4 people all streaming video will do that :) When 8k TV's and content becomes more common, there is no chance our prehistoric network here will cope ;)