It’s finally arrived. Twenty years after being promised a community with a broadband infrustructure it has finally been delivered to the Mawson Lakes Parkview Village via NBN’s NFC infrustructure.
It would be interesting someday to get the details of what exactly happened, but the end result was that the early parts of Mawson Lakes had coax cable in the street, which the later parts didn’t. In addition to this, much of the earlier sections were also put on ‘pair-gain’ for their home phone which ment that the new ADSL technology for broadband over their phone line were also not available. Many homes opted for fixed wireless connections, which can be verified by the large number of wireless dishes on the roofs across the neighbourhood.
When we originally bought our property in 1998, it was with the promise by the developer that Mawson Lakes residents would have access to broadband when they moved into their homes. This was before the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the Optus vs Telstra cable wars, which saw large amounts of cable rapidly rolled out across Australia through this period, through to mid-1999.
The developer Delfin, now Lendlease, had made an arrangement with Telstra to do the rollout in Mawson Lakes. When Optus decided to stop, Telstra also stopped it’s rollout nationwide, including Mawson Lakes, even though a separate cotract was in place. My understanding was that the contract commitment by Telstra Delfin was eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum..
While having waited so long for the internet service that had originally been promised, I there was happy enough to be able to pre-order the service when this option became available. This ment that finally there was some progress. The order progressed and was eventually booked in for the week before Christmas.
The installation almost happened without any drama whatsoever. A combination of the way the NBN has been designed (as a wholesale business) and the ISP, ment that not only did the process become incredibly frustraiting, but this frustration could easily have been avoided in several different ways, including not making a simple mistake in the first place.
Mistakes happen, this is a reality of life.
In this case, the serial number, or MAC address of the ISP supplied router had been entered incorrctly, presumably by the ISP. I have no way of knowing if this was indeed the case or not, as the NBN technical support person wasn’t allowed to directly talk to me (as I overheard on the second call out), but the problem was solved between the NBN and my ISP in the background while I waited. This is what happens when you pay peanuts for data entry. On the first visit the NBN installation was done and everything from their point of view was working as expected, so the technision left. The router was ment to self-configure, which it didn’t, so several calls were made to the ISP and a second NBN callout was eventually made four days later.
In the meantime, on the day that the NDN as provisioned, my perfectly functional ADSL service was disabled and the login removed. After several calls, I was able to get a temporary login setup for this service so the family could atleast have internet access over Christmas. ATt this point the problem with the NBN service had yet to be identified. A further call to the ISP was required as they then attempted to bill me for the temporary.
In sort, not only did I fail to get a working ISP/NBN service, but the existing functioning ADSL service was cut off, with no expectation given on when any of the issues would be resolved.
Amongst all of this rant, there are a couple of highlights. I can report that there are still some knowledgable tech support people around who know the systems well enough to fix an issue without following a script. They are rare though. I hope they are being paid enough.
