samadhisoft.com

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.

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.