This is my third post on this subject. My first post is here Part I and my second post is here Part II. Reading the previous posts is recommended before wading into this one as there’s a lot of history.
Rather than recap a lot of details that everyone is familiar with from the first two posts, I’m going to focus here on what’s new.
There’s been two interesting developments since my second post (though the bottom line is that I am STILL experiencing drops which is the core problem which has provoked these posts and the other measures I’m taking to try to get these problems resolved).
The first interesting development is that from 0830 yesterday morning, when I sat down at my computer to begin the day, until 1550 in the afternoon, I had NO DROPS – none. My signal was as solid as a rock. At one point, I downloaded a 156MB file from Microsoft in the USA and it came across flawlessly at 160+ KB/Sec.
At 1550 in the afternoon, I experienced my first drop and they have continued, apparently unabated until now at 0900 on December 14th (Christchurch, New Zealand time).
This tells me that Telecom’s equipment is certainly capable of providing the type of service I want and expect.
The second interesting development occurred at about 1615 yesterday. I received a call from Telecom inquiring as to how my broadband service was.
I quizzed the fellow who called me to determine if he was calling in response to my long standing ‘connectivity drop’ problems or if this was just an unconnected courtesy call from Telecom. He said his call was unconnected to my ongoing problems. Well, perhaps, but I found the timing to be remarkable, if that’s true.
He listened to my description of my problems. At the point when he called, I’d just experienced my first two drops for the day (at 1550 & 1604) after over seven hours of uninterrupted solid service. He gave me a new E-mail address which I can use to inform Telecom of my broadband problems (broadband@telecom.co.nz) and he also gave me three phone numbers which I might get technical assistance ( in addition to the one I’ve been calling thus far, 0800-00-30-40).
The new numbers were:
127 – call this for automated assistance.
0800-xtra – talk to human beings here.
0800-22-55-98 – talk to human beings here as well.
I made sure he had my problem case #, 129-33-084, and we rang off.
My drop problems continued continued through the evening yesterday and into this morning. It’s December 14th @ 0915 in Christchurch just now and I’ve been experiencing connection drops over the last hour or so for 5% of the time I’ve been monitoring with my pinger program.
This morning, I placed yet another call to Telecom @ 0800-00-30-40 and talked to Ashwini in first level broadband technical support. I gave her my case # and after she’d read a bit to get caught up, I told her about the 7+ hours I’d experienced with no drops yesterday and I asked her if she could carry that information to the Advanced Group and request they revert my line to however they had it configured from 0830 to 1550, yesterday.
She did this and came back and told me the following: She said that they are experimenting with configuration profiles in an effort to fix the problems that I and many others are having (her words, ‘many others’) and that this was probably why I saw my service improve. She also said that at about 1600 yesterday, they had a shift change and, at that time, the old configurations would have been put in again and that this is probably why my service had reverted to dropping again.
Again, as many other people I talked to have said as well, she asserted that they are “working on the problem” but that there is no ETA for getting it fixed. I sensed at that point, that I wasn’t going to get any more new information.
Before we rang off, I asked her for the spelling of her name and for her employee number. She spelled her name for me (Ashwini) but she said that she couldn’t give her employee number as they’d just had a directive down that they are not to do that. This is, apparently, a new policy as just a few days ago, I had a Telecom employee give me his employee number of his own accord.
Bottom Line
– Telecom’s equipment is capable of delivering good service as I experienced for 7+ hours yesterday.
– Telecom’s first level broadband technical support people continue to be as polite and professional as ever.
– Telecom is unwilling or unable to give an ETA for fixing these problems which have, for me, been going on since November 23rd which was the first day I was connected.
– I am going to continue to write these posts and continue to try to interest the NZ Herald, Stuff, Fair Go and other news and consumer protection agencies to become involved and interested in these matters until such time as I begin to receive the service I should be receiving.
I will remain polite and factual but I will also remain like a bulldog latched onto Telecom’s trouser leg until something happens beside genteel conversations with technical support people and refusals to give an ETA when these problems might be solved.
I encourage anyone else experiencing these same issues to speak out and contact the media and technical on-line groups and anyone else who might be able to increase the pressure to get these problems solved.
Hey there,
I feel for you and your plight. My issues are not the same as yours, I can actually hold a connection.
But like many other people I’m dealing with the “slow to no” international traffic and crap national traffic, after being on a good connection…… silly me for wanting the no cap on the Go Large plan…. it’s just rubbish!
Being a technical person and a software engineer I’ve been hounding telecom/xtra’s customer service desk to the max and emails every day with speed traces from many various sources, aswell as their own.
One thing I think I may have in my favour is that I specifically asked a sales rep before actioning the plan change if my speed woud be effected. Their answer to me was “no it wouldn’t, I’d see no speed difference”. What a load of crock!! My connection was degraded between 40 to 80% after the change!!
Now I don’t know the channels to go through with media etc, you seem to, so if you want another member in your plight for quality and fairness then count me in.
Cheers
Jamie
Hi guys,
I have been going through absolute hell with these guys, and have undergone all of the steps which you have described in your fantastic report. I have been hounding these people but as you say I was geting a whole heap of polite generic responses from them (telecom employees) who are well aware of the issues and their unsolveability. A few of them have even admitted to this by declining to comment my prompts to get them to tell me as to what is really going on. After almost spending a year with speed issues, disconnections, massive ping rates, another even further decrease in speed after “unleashing”. My conlusion is based around thse key points.
There is no way that they would be willing to take so much abuse from me and then still not fix the problem if it could be fixed.
They admitted that it is the hardware fault in my exchange.
My friends and I have done so much research that we could write a book about this crap.
What has finally frustrated the hell out of me, and what was my final straw is the fact that two of my friends have experienced same issues with go large and after changing over to Xnet all of their problems have disappeared. I, the wise one have decided to stay on the old 5gig plan, but the problems started almost simultaneously when the unleashing campaign started its dirty deed. After seeing how great Xnet  was with my other two friends it was a no brainer. And yes you guessed it, I changed over to Xnet and it made absolutely no difference to my download speeds of about 30 kb/sec internationally. All the speed tests and line tests are perfect. The connection is white hot, the web pages are opening at incredible speeds, but as soon as I am seen as downloading a file it all stops. There is an initial burst of speed but then it gradually settles at about 30kb/sec…Aaaaaaargh. Obviously an exchange hardware issue. It feels better though after sharing it with you people cause I know you understand. I wish ther are reading this and please feel free to send this to whom ever you like…Count me in if you need someone to accompany you on Fair Go. Regards,Jake.
Almost forgot…one of them told me that the exchange issue will not be looked at untill there are are certain numers of users in my area, in order to make it finacially justifiable. Brilliant. So they are pushing ahead with this great marketing campaign which will even further decrease available bandwidth. Definitely a case for the commerce commission. They are milking the poor naive public untill people start to hit the streets to express their opinion which is something that should be looked at. This technology is such an integral part of our society and our everyday lives.
All for now…Thanks for reading.
So, Jake, did you try the solution discussed on in these posts? Your throughput gets slowed some but your signal gets solid. It wasn’t clear from the stuff you said if you tried it.
I tried everything. The disconnection issue is there, but it is not that serious as the example mentioned in the report. Tried playing with modem settings as per links (reducing the speed on the modem). It does seem more stable, but the download speeds are still rubish, maybe 5% imrovement. The thing that gets me is that they gave me a month at pro plan a few months back and that worked beautifly this was the $79.00 job with full up / full down…this thing absolutely flew. I mentioned this to one of the team leaders and he said that their network set-up has changed completely now (after unleashing i guess), so even the pro plan would not help now according to him. After this I went onto xnet as mentioned and nothing again.
Regards,
Jake
Just spoke to the technical team at Xnet and they are officially on Telecom’s case about my issues. Will keep you posted.
Just heard Telstra, Orcon, Xnet, Ihug, and others are going to band together and invest in upgrading the current network. Yippee! Not
Why should telecom spend money fixing a network that apparently these other ISP’s can use or leach off. If theres going to be any major capital upgrades, it should be all ISP’s and the Government!. They are the guys making decisions on things they do not understand! Unleashing, Alcatel and Telecom did warn people of the possible side effects of unlimited adsl.
I am having problem – broadband connection constantly droppin. Has anyone had success solving this yet? Cheers Greg