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This is my second post on this subject. The previous post is here Part I. This post will make better sense if you read the previous one first.

There’s also a third part here Part III.

The problem is, of course, drops. My broadband service drops me every five to 15 minutes and then reconnects me after 20 or 30 seconds. I run a pinger program that pings several sites out on the Internet and I can see by looking at its records that I am in the ‘dropped’ state between 5 and 6% of the time day in and day out. This has been going on since the first day my service was connected on November 23rd. I’ve called Telecom about this issue at least every other day.

It is actually a misnomer to call this a ‘Go Large’ problem. I’ve now learned that it is a problem in the exchange (perhaps in many exchanges) so it will affect folks regardless of their plan. It won’t even do you any good to change ISPs because, inevitably, your physical connection will still come through the same exchange and hence you will experience the problem. FYI, I live in the CBD where Peterborough intersects Park Terrace by Hagley Park. I know my exchange is 1.5 km away but I couldn’t tell you where.

Today, I called into Telecom to complain once again and to try to learn more about the problem. If there are any Telecom folks reading this, my case # is 129-33-084. The notes on this case are quite long.
Today, I talked to Aaron and then Jason. They were both quite helpful and professional as everyone I’ve talked to there has been. Along the way, I learned a lot of things:

– they confirmed, once again, that the problem is in the exchange. Therefore, changing ISPs would not help as they would all go through that exchange for this address. Internally, Telecom has a case # or a problem ticket number (25007296) which uniquely identifies this exchange problem.

– apparently, Telecom has installed new cards at the exchange (perhaps many exchanges?) in an effort to improve services and it is these cards which are suspected of being the problem.

– Telecom is working with technical reps in the US on this issue.

– They looked at my profile. At the distance I am at (1.5 km from the exchange) I should probably be on low power. I would have been originally, but at one point when they were troubleshooting my problem, they changed me to a higher power setting in my profile. Apparently, it hasn’t helped as I am still being dropped 5-6% of the time, day in and day out. They changed it back today to low power. I’ve been monitoring since then (1.5 hours) and I’m still being dropped 6% of the time so the profile is a red-herring.

– the traffic ‘shaping’ Telecom does to prevent peer-to-peer downloaders from overwhelming the shared bandwidth is based on what they see in the packet headers that identifies certain peer to peer programs. Therefore, unless you are using an identified peer-to-peer program, your traffic will not be ‘shaped’.

– ‘shaping’ goes on 24 hours a day but people will notice their throughput rates will be generally better outside of the 4 PM to midnight window.

– If one exceeds 700 MB/day, they will send you a E-mail or give you a call but he said he doesn’t think this program is up and running yet.

– I asked how I might contact a supervisor in the broadband group to register my complaints at a higher level. They gave me the following E-mail address which is where people should write if they have complaints about Telecom’s broadband services:

bbservices.feedback@telecom.co.nz

They said that your should include the case number of your issue in the E-mails’ title. I am going to write this address and I am going to continue publishing here. I’ve also dropped E-mail to Stuff, the NZ Herald, Fair Go and others.

I think it is intolerable that Telecom is flooding the airwaves for their new suite of services while at the same time that have such a serious problem and are taking so very long to get it sorted out. In spite of all the times I’ve talked to Telecom, I’ve never found anyone willing to venture a guess as to how long it might take to solve this issue.

One good bit of news was that yesterday, the Telecom representative I talked to refunded my $49.95 for this month’s Go Large service.

You comments and suggestions are welcomed.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 11th, 2006 at 15:14 and is filed under Technical, Telecom NZ. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.