The joy of Dialup…Not!

This week we have been having a little trip down memory lane. Due to Telstra’s incompetance our ADSL has gone off line. Last week it seems that Telstra put someone else’s configuration onto our line, with the result that My Darling Wife Kym (MDWK) who complains that I never mention her here, received some irate phone calls from some woman who wanted to know why we had her telephone number! MDWK explained that perhaps she should call Telstra as she (MDWK) had no idea why we had her telephone number. Of course this meant that we lost our ADSL as well.I called iiNet to log a fault explaining the situation with our number and that our ADSL was down. They logged a fault with Telstra and told me that it should be rectified by 7pm the next day. Well, the next day our telephone line was back, but not the ADSL. I called iiNet again who said that they would log an ADSL fault with Telstra (Why they didn’t do that when they logged the original fault I don’t know) but that it would take between 5 and 15 working days for the ADSL to be restored.
MDWK asked why I don’t shout at someone to get it fixed, to which I replied that because of the half-assed approach to de-regulating the telecommunications industry in Australia:

  • iiNet would love to fix the problem, but all they can do is ask Telstra and
  • Telstra doesn’t really care because they have to do the work for one of their competitors

I am constantly amazed at how short-sighted the government was when they de-regulated telecommunications (And to be fair I think it was actually the previous Labour government that kicked the whole thing off, rather than the current Liberal goverment.). They seem to have got it right with power. I can choose any electricity supplier I like, but I don’t hear anyone suggesting that there should be multiple power distribution networks outside my house as it seems to be understood that the delivery infrastructure is a natural monopoly. Telstra claims that it would like to roll out a new fibre network, but to do so it requires an access holiday “in order to promote competition”. Let me get this straight. In order to “promote competition” Telstra wants to decommision the very network that its competitors rely on? And what company actually wants to promote competition anyway? Not Telstra, certainly. Perhaps I should have categorised this under “What The?” rather than computers.

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