24 April 2010

Any telco options in ACT other than TransACT & Telstra?

| atto72
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After recently moving to Canberra from NSW I am staggered at the lack of telecommunication services in the Nation’s Capital. I reside in Gilmore (Tuggeranong) & I foolishly signed up with a TransACT Bundle, which I am far from happy with….non-existent customer service, inept billing service and a lack of information conveniently supplied by the sales team on sign up.

I have signed up with Telstra, and as I wished to keep my same home number, thay have to `port’ this number over from Transact, which supposedly takes up to 16 days. One month later I get a phone call saying it will take another month before this can be done.

Has anyone had a similar experience and are there any other telco’s anyone can recommend for home phone and internet access. For the record, Optus don’t service my area!!!

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Just go wireless? Depending on your usage, a mobile phone and wireless broadband could be better value for money than a wired connection. I watch a lot of TV so wired was still better value. I went with iinet naked just so they would talk to Telstra for me. Instead of a landline, my parents call me on my skype account.

Go with iinet. Your monthly phone bills are practically free; including all local calls, interstate calls and calls to mobile phones. Overseas calls are extremely cheap too. You don’t pay any line rental either. We use the internet a lot, so our high speed wireless internet plus phone bill each month is costing $65.00, which is what our previous Telstra internet plan cost, but then we had a $200.00 phone bill on top of that. We have been extremely happy with iinet, we kept the same number and their customer service is fantastic.

Agree with Clown Killer.

Internode are tops, and this is why:

http://www.internode.on.net/about/our_network/

http://www.internode.on.net/about/awards/

Been with them for two years with only about one hour of down-time due to storm.

Have home land line with them too.

Check them out – can’t go wrong.

We swapped to iinet at the start of this year, and they’ve been great. Naked DSL with iinet means no more Telstra, free phonecalls, number porting (which was required for us) and nice fast downloads. I’d go with them anytime.

OpenYourMind6:43 pm 25 Apr 10

We had Transact and were happy with them, but the total package of internet and phone was quite expensive. We switched to Telstra BigPond against everyone’s advice and have been so far, pleasantly surprised.

Thoroughly Smashed11:35 am 25 Apr 10

sexynotsmart said :

So I haven’t had cause to try Telstra.

The only good cause to use Telstra is if it’s the only option.

+1 for Westnet. Great customer service and fast ADSL2+ broadband. They use the Telstra facilities in Monash which is fast enough for us in Macarthur, but if you’re any closer it will be even faster – up to 20mb/sec. Very affordable too.

swamiOFswank9:16 am 25 Apr 10

Had Transact for a few years. Best Telco/Cable/Internet and customer service I’ve ever had. My one great disappointment now is that it’s not available in surrounding NSW.

I’ve been with iinet for four years, they were highly recommended to me by people in the know.

sexynotsmart5:11 pm 24 Apr 10

I’m on my third provider in Tuggeranong (Isabella and Bonython). May I suggest that if you find someone you’re happy with, still with ’em!

TPG kept dropping out. And by that I mean I every few weeks I couldn’t get a session for an hour or three, then it would miraculously fix itself.

Optus was just too damn slow. Pings tripled or worse to the same servers I got good latency to under TPG.

Transact has been wonderful! Reliability is great, speed is OK, price for the bandwidth is fine.

So I haven’t had cause to try Telstra.

I have ADSL2+, VoIP and mobile phones through Exetel (http://www.exetel.com.au) for the past 5 years and I am very happy. They are a bare bones ISP so don’t expect much in the way of hand holding or value added extras, but on price and value they can’t be beaten. My combined communications costs (90Gb Internet / VoIP x2 / Mobile x2) is around $80 per month including line rental.

+1 for iiNet Naked DSL. I don’t really use the free calls to any landline nationwide, but it’s nice to have em.

Have recently switched over to iiNet … good service and technical support so far, but the broadband line drops out constantly, leaving big chunks of frustrating time while it re-establishes itself.

Dunno if it’s iiNet’s fault, or Telstra’s, however.

Clown Killer10:41 am 24 Apr 10

We’re in Kambah and have been with TransACT since 2002. We’ve been extremely happy with the package – free local calls to basically everyone we know (except for a couple of people still on Telstra), 25+ channels of cabled TV and cable broadband that’s quick and hasn’t let us down. Billing is automatic with a statement once a month.

Thoroughly Smashed10:12 am 24 Apr 10

There are a number of quite good alternative options on the market, including the aforementioned iiNet, as well as Westnet and Internode.

Internode consistently top customer satisfaction surveys. They don’t compete on price with budget ISPs like TPG, but they’re a damn sight cheaper than Telstra and make a very good value proposition with their reliability and other features.

http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/2009/

http://www.roymorgan.com/roymorgan/index.cfm?0A32C60E-50BA-1DC3-65B4-2D80E212E75D

http://www.choice.com.au/Reviews-and-Tests/Technology/Software-and-online-services/Internet/ISP-satisfaction-survey/Page/Introduction.aspx

I am unable to get naked DSL due to crap infrastructure so have internode ADSL, nodephone (VOIP) and nodeline (line rental). Everything in 1 bill and I’m a big fan of internode (although they do cost a little extra for ADSL than other providers).

WhyTheLongFace9:26 am 24 Apr 10

I use iinet. Naked DSL and VOIP.

Not great, but better than Telstra or Transact.

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