Volition

As much as Australia's happy telco monopoly Telstra annoys me, they sometimes do get it right.

For example, I called them up to connect the line at my new place. They managed to get it connected that day, which that is pretty good I guess. I did have to go find a phone and plug it in for them so they could test it, but they said it'd be up and running by the afternoon and it was. On the other hand I asked them to keep the service at my old place running until Friday night, and it was cut off Friday morning.

Also, when I had my provider, Internode, change my ADSL connection over it was going to take Telstra over three whole weeks to flick a switch to turn it on. Outrageous! Then I get a call from Internode last Friday (only 9 days after asking them to do the change-over) and they say Telstra had already flicked that switch and the service was ready to go. Fantastic! So I head home during my lunch break and plug the ADSL bridge in and lo and behold; no ADSL link. Telstra had forgotten to flick the switch after all. Sigh.

If you're confused by the fact that Internode has to ask a direct competitor to provision an ADSL service for their customers, it is because Telstra, as a monopoly, own effectively all the exchanges, copper lines and other infrastructure. This makes it really hard for competitors to install ADSL hardware into those exchanges, even if you are Internode and you have your own telco sister-company. Most don't bother, and just use Telstra's ADSL network to carry their own IP connectivity for their customers. Which is a pity becuase Telstra's ADSL network is really, really, badly designed - according to a friend of mine whose company does a lot of sub-contracting for Telstra. As a person who actually uses it, I'm not suprised. The reliability and speed of the network can suck badly.

Still, anything is better than the modem connection I'm using at the moment. Maybe Telstra will actually flick that switch for me tomorrow and I'll be back in happy-happy ADSL land.