13 June 2009

Telstra has no cable?

| Ags
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I have a friend. Lets call her Miss Mac.

Miss Mac is a customer of TransACT for her internet and home phone. Last Saturday both services ceased working. Miss Mac phoned TransAct and was told the next available technician would be Tuesday. Miss Mac agreed (it was a long weekend after all).

Upon inspection it was found the neighbour had cut the cable from the junction box on the front side boundry, whilst digging post holes for his new fence. The cable needed to be replaced. (from the box to the house). TransAct only rent the use of the lines from Telstra. Telstra is responsible for the maintenance of the asset.

Miss Mac phoned Telstra and was told the next available technicion would be in 2 weeks time. WTF?. Miss Mac is doing some studies and needs the internet for research. If I know Miss Mac an argument ensued.

Several days and phone calls later Miss Mac demanded a reason for the delay.

Bottom line – Telstra has no cable………Thats right…..No cable.

A big WTF?

After picking herself off the floor from laughing, she explained that age old theory to them which is NO service, NO payment. At least for half of the month.

Miss Mac was told that she MUST pay because TransAct still had to pay Telstra for the rental and they would be out pocket.

Diddams…….

Is there a cable shortage? Or cant they afford it after the reported $13 million dollar pay cheques.

My Staffy dog can lay better cables.

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Gungahlin Al said :

goose said :

I have a crackling line

Is that the queue at the swine flu clinic at the hospital?

lol

Personally, I think Telstra can remain as they are, in return for the ACCC being given sharper teeth.

I can’t wait for RuddNet (and RuddNet-based providers) to compete with Telstra’s infrastructure, and compete with or even take over TransACT’s Fibre infrastructure.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy12:08 pm 15 Jun 09

I keep getting Telstra’s ‘business recovery team’ ringing up. And I keep telling them to fck off. When they ask why, I tell them that the only time I can talk to someone helpful is when they are selling me something.

Gungahlin Al12:01 pm 15 Jun 09

bren said :

This is why Telstra’s Retail network should be seperated from it’s infrastructre network.

+1!

This is why Telstra’s Retail network should be seperated from it’s infrastructre network.

James-T-Kirk11:15 am 15 Jun 09

Transact and service provider are being used in the same sentence.

That is soooooo funny!

🙂

The neighbour should be paying — Remember 1100 Dial before you dig!

Gungahlin Al10:07 am 15 Jun 09

goose said :

I have a crackling line

Is that the queue at the swine flu clinic at the hospital?

I have a crackling line – the Telstra operator heard the crackling line – Telstra technician comes has a listen and said I have “NO” crackling line? – Next day I pick up the phone and low & behold, the line is crackling.
Telstra are F…..g hopeless.

Ags said :

You have missed my point….

Telstra has no cable…..Thats like saying KFC has no chicken or the pub has no beer.

I didn’t intend the post to go in the blame game and technical direction. I wanted ‘take the piss’ remarks and witty comebacks, just for my own amusment.

I think everyone got that, and were highlighting the point that as a Transact customer you should have not had ANY DIRECT communication with Telstra.

As for the no cable part that is BS. To mine it seems like it is payback time for you leaving Telstra and going to Transact. My old girl was in a similar boat recently. She had a crackling line. She reported it to her ‘carrier’ which is AAPT and it took the best part of 3 weeks for Telstra to come and replace the drop cable to the house, which was the cause of the problem.

Gungahlin Al10:27 am 14 Jun 09

dvaey said :

#11 Gungahlin Al, if your house is unable to get broadband, you can apply for assistance under the federal governments broadband guarantee. If you cannot get a cabled broadband service to your house, the government will subsidise a satellite connection.

Also, have you looked at the numerous wireless broadband options? Either Next-G or Longreach?

Just because one company doesnt provide any faster than dialup, doesnt mean that no other options exist.

We now have ADSL2 in Harrison, although it was a long time coming, due to Telstra delays upgrading the Crace exchange. But some of the older Gungahlin suburbs don’t have any *wired* options at all. That was my point. Yes there are now some growing wireless options – like the Skydata I mentioned before, but they are invariably slower, more expensive and with lower download limits than you can get if you have ADSL2 or cable.

This is the nation’s capital. It is bonkers that we have people having to resort to wireless or satellite to get decent broadband for pete’s sake. And it is just as bonkers that we had to jump up and down to get the LDA to start putting cable into Franklin – unfortunately the first half of it (and all of Harrison) was built before they srated taking notice.

#11 Gungahlin Al, if your house is unable to get broadband, you can apply for assistance under the federal governments broadband guarantee. If you cannot get a cabled broadband service to your house, the government will subsidise a satellite connection.

Also, have you looked at the numerous wireless broadband options? Either Next-G or Longreach?

Just because one company doesnt provide any faster than dialup, doesnt mean that no other options exist.

Why does Telstra’s lack of service surprise anyone, ever? It is a sheltered workshop for morons, not a 21st century leading edge telco.

Being a X-telstra employee, If she spoke with telstra that person she spoke with could loose their job. She would be considered a Wholesale customer (because she’s signed up with transact) and it’s against the rules PERIOD for anyone in telstra to talk with her.
And for anyone to hint that they may be out of cable HAHA, I find this whole story hard to believe. I think there are some hidden facts.

However I do know that telstra takes it’s own sweet time fixing anything. Main reason is because it just doesn’t have enough people to fix things. All that money you pay for services ends up in peoples hands that wouldn’t know how to screw in a screw. Sorry but that’s the way it is.

I couldn’t believe the way we handled our paying customers I was part of it and it was embarrassing. Departments didn’t communicate with each other, I just had to keep apologising to people.

Imagine you used manpower to staff your pub, you had a just-in-time beer keg contact with coke china and you leased the premises from elders. this is a closer picture to what telstra is like. so when you think about it the pub really can run out of beer, They just calculate how many customers they will loose if it happens and try to supply spirits as an alternative (sometimes at a discount). You can’t expect the pub to give better service to the customer of the pub next door which has a contract with your pub to supply their customers with beer.
Now we all understand, right?

You have missed my point….

Telstra has no cable…..Thats like saying KFC has no chicken or the pub has no beer.

I didn’t intend the post to go in the blame game and technical direction. I wanted ‘take the piss’ remarks and witty comebacks, just for my own amusment.

Gungahlin Al5:37 am 14 Jun 09

You think you have problems? Big chunks of Gungahlin are still stuck on dial-up! Not even ADSL1 is available to them. If they are lucky, they may have line-of-sight to the mountain that Transact has their microwave repeater on and can take their Skydata service. If not, it is nothing beyond 46kbps for them. Our GCC website traffic shows still 25% on dial-up.

And even more unbelievably, all of Harrison and half of Franklin – suburbs only recently built by the LDA – have no cable installed AT ALL.

I agree with steveu. CSG applies. You still have to pay the bill, however, a separate CSG credit will apply later on once you pursue the matter.

Keep forcing the issue with TransACT who are supposed to be the ones pushing Telscum to fix the cable. You have no relationship with Telstra and should never be expected to call that lot. Once the issue is resolved, call TransACT again and ask politely for a CSG assessment. Do not take no for an answer. Ask for a supervisor if the operator isn’t familiar with CSG.

Spectra said :

It depends if there’s a TransACT cable in the suburb – they never quite got around to cabling many suburbs around Canberra before they kind of just gave up on the rollout. A few years ago, clearly unhappy that they weren’t getting customers in these suburbs simply because they couldn’t be arsed providing any way for said customers to connect, they decided to muddy the waters quite a bit.

Thats not the reason actually. They never had any plans to cable any suburb with underground power as they would have had to go into lease agreements with Telstra on the conduits in the street or install their own. Hence why they only put their own cable in suburbs where power was above ground.

Customer Service Guarantee seems to apply here. Im pretty sure it is bound by legislation. You are entitled to have access to a land line I believe.
Someone here has to take responsibility – either Telstra or TransACT. That isnt your problem though. They seem to dodge it quite well between the two of them.
Cheers
Steve

I’m surprised, but I have seen the type of connection described utilising Telstra cable… I’ve also seen a dedicated Transact line into a home as well… how they determine which to do I don’t know.

It depends if there’s a TransACT cable in the suburb – they never quite got around to cabling many suburbs around Canberra before they kind of just gave up on the rollout. A few years ago, clearly unhappy that they weren’t getting customers in these suburbs simply because they couldn’t be arsed providing any way for said customers to connect, they decided to muddy the waters quite a bit. Suddenly, all the suburbs that had missed out received a letter saying they could now connect to TransACT! Which actually meant that transact had started placing ADSL DSLAMs in Telstra’s exchanges and leasing the copper lines, just like most other big ISPs did. Of course, it’s not a true “TransACT” connection in the sense that you can’t, for example, get TransTV over it, but why give people the full story when you can spin them some bullshit?

My understanding is that Transact do use Telstra’s copper cable from Transact suburb exchanges to the house. If that cable was damaged, it would be something Telstra would need to repair or replace.
When Transact get to FTTH i think they’ll finally be free of leasing any copper from Telstra.

gooterz said :

Thats odd..!

When we got ours they tried to explain whey they left both a port for telstra and a port for transact as well as a data port. They hooked up their own transact cable from outside to in and moved the telsta line to its own port and changed all the current ones to transact.

You should get what you pay for, if you sign upto something that doesnt work for a long period of time thats bad.. If they dont compensaite her.. Send a msg to the TIO. Some people find them quite useful http://www.tio.com.au/

If you have Transact cable then it is clearly nothing to do with Telstra. Reading between the lines it appears as if Miss Mac has choosen Transact as her carrier over the traditional Telstra cabling. (Just like when you select Optus/AAPT etc) Indeed the fact the cable was underground would indicate that Transact cable is not present as generaly Transact will only cable to places where the other services are above ground, hence why a good portion of Canberra (new suburbs) cannot get Transact cable.

Now having said as Miss Mac is using Transact over Telstra cable I am surprised Telstra even spoke to her, as Telstra’s customer is Transact not her.

I don’t see why “Miss Mac” had to phone Telstra herself. Transact should be the ones contacting them… if your service is through a provider there should be no need for you to contact Telstra directly.

I’m surprised, but I have seen the type of connection described utilising Telstra cable… I’ve also seen a dedicated Transact line into a home as well… how they determine which to do I don’t know.

Thats odd..!

When we got ours they tried to explain whey they left both a port for telstra and a port for transact as well as a data port. They hooked up their own transact cable from outside to in and moved the telsta line to its own port and changed all the current ones to transact.

You should get what you pay for, if you sign upto something that doesnt work for a long period of time thats bad.. If they dont compensaite her.. Send a msg to the TIO. Some people find them quite useful http://www.tio.com.au/

Communications Ombudsman?

neanderthalsis1:59 pm 13 Jun 09

Well, the price of copper has been on the rise so they probably flogged the copper to a scrap metal merchant to pay Sombrero Sols golden handshake.

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