Waiting for Telstra, Pt III

We're still waiting. Its now some weeks later and, despite numerous phone calls to the Telstra dealer concerned, Mercury Blue, and to Telstra itself, still no sign of either the promised modem, or anything else.
Mercury Blue is based in Adelaide it seems, and based on this experience, they're simply a waste of time.
They do a variety of things for Telstra it seems. Mobile upgrades, and also operate as The Broadband Centre.
www.mercuryblue.com.au

Waiting for Telstra, Pt II

This week Telstra reported its one-millionth customer signed up to a broadband service.
Based on my experience, most of those will be customers of services bought from another company,
rather than directly from Telstra or one of its dealers.
Once we had shifted our home phone service back to Telstra, preparatory to choosing an ADSL service supplier
(which could easily have been Telstra), we were interested to get a call from someone offering us a free ADSL kit.
Initially I declined the offer, because, as eventually became clear, the only thing that was free about the offer, was the look you got at the
the contents of the box sent to you. I'd read about this scam on Whirlpool, so was awake to it.
EWven so, I was surprised that this Telstra dealer, calling itself the Broadband Centre, was making such a misleading offer.
But later on I figured that, what the heck, if they were willing to send us the modem and sign up disk and details etc,
I might as well accept the offer, even if I planned to send it straight back, because it would help me in figuring out
how to get my home network of 3 PCs set up with a wireless ADSL service.
That was my mistake. More tomorrow.

Waiting for Telstra broadband. Part 1, still wating

Waiting for Telstra was, famously, the title of one of the espisodes in the top-rating Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Kath and Kimseries.
The plot involved Kath inadvertently (but typically) gravitating to various misadventures and, in this particular episode, whilst she waited all day
for the Telstra phone technician to arrive.
Waiting for Telstra has been, for many years, a common experience for Aussies whilst dealing with our national, publicly-owned operator of the public switched telephone network (PSTN.
So too, has your correspondent been waiting patiently for Telstra's broadband service to arrive, over the last month or two, after the incumbent provider of our two home phone services, Optus, repeatedly declined our invitation to connect us to their ADSL service.
Now that Optus has revealed it plans to build its own ADSL network service in Australia's three largest states, instead of just re-selling Telstra's service,
the reason why Optus declined our invitation is clear.
And it is important background to understanding why we switched one of our phones back to Telstra.
You see, Telstra, as monopoly owner of the so-called 'last mile' copper-wire between the street and Australians' homes, is the actual carrier of all ADSL services in Australia ( at least from the home to the local exchange), even if many wholesalers actually re-badge the ADSL services they sell as their own.
So we figured the quickesty and simplest way to get on to an ADSL service (even if it doesn't offer the best value for money, or the fastest service) would be to switch one home phone service back to Telstra.
We figured that after that, getting on to Telstra's ADSL service would be a doddle.
That was some time back now, and we're still waiting.
Now, very few people have given any indication that they are reading this blog. Certainly no-one is leaving any comments.
So what have I got to lose if use this blog to name names and well, spill the beans, on waiting for Telstra.
It will be sort of a therapeutic bile purging for me, and could possibly save someone else from the same fate.
Stay tuned for part 2.