Telstra broadband shrugs off criticism - News - Communications

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Telstra broadband shrugs off criticism

By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
July 29, 2002
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Telstra-broadband-shrugs-off-criticism/0,130061791,120266974,00.htm

Telstra's announcement of an upswing in broadband subscriber numbers today has been marred by allegations of substantial delays in connection times and broadband applications going missing.

According to Eric Leigh, managing director of Arachnet, a West Australia-based ISP, at the moment ADSL is in a situation similar to that dial-up found itself in five or six years ago.

However, he was critical of the extensive delays Arachnet, which onsells Telstra retail broadband services, experiences at the hand of the telco giant.

-I think everybody's experienced problems with ADSL applications. As a company we're not satisfied with Telstra," Leigh told ZDNet Australia. -We're certainly experiencing delays beyond the stated 5-10 working days, and we've been told no compensation would be forthcoming, because 5-10 working days is an indication not a contractual obligation."

A Telstra spokesperson told ZDNet Australia she wasn't aware of a 5-10 working day stipulation, and was unsure where Arachnet got that information.

In addition, broadband community Web site Whirlpool claims to have received reports that Telstra has -lost" 2,500 DSL applications. Telstra again shrugged off the allegation, saying it was unaware of any problems.

Telstra today announced it services more than 175,000 broadband customers, and is confident of meeting its target of one million customers by 2005. "Customer requests for our broadband service have doubled from the second quarter to the fourth quarter last financial year, to more than five thousand a week," Telstra CEO Ziggy Switkowski said in a statement.

Optus has responded by claiming over 65,000 OptusNet Cable customers, and claims it enjoys a majority market share within Optus cabled areas.