Telstra broadband shrugs off criticism

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.

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Talkback 5 comments

    More Telstra BS at it's finest ...Heard It All Before -- 29/07/02

    More Telstra BS at it's finest lol.

    Telstra PR really need to brush up on their lying as it's not fooling anyone.

    What else in new! Telstra care ...F&*K TELSTRA -- 30/07/02

    What else in new! Telstra cares nothing about it's customers except the fact that they have money in their pockets.

    As far as I concerned, telstra should be AXED , everyone sacked and people who care about quality service and 100% uptime of these service be employed.

    It's about time the government put an axe to big compaines making billions of profit and not doing anything to improve servives and lowering fees.

    Good luck telstra, I hope your shares fall out the window and you go broke. Your rip off - don't care about consumer attitude won't last long.

    Happy with telsra, I applied o ...Anonymous -- 31/07/02

    Happy with telsra, I applied online for a self install kit on a Thursday night, it arrived the next Monday, install was a dream with Telstra and am impressed with the service I have had from them.

    "Customer requests for ou ...Anonymous -- 27/08/02

    "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,”

    I am one of those statistics but, for the forseeable future, am restricted to a 28.8k dial-up service due to Telstra's policies and pathetic lack of planning.

    What percentage of these REQUESTS are denied due to "incompatible equipment" (RIM and/or Pair-Gained) telephone lines?

    Comments from Whirlpool need t ...Anonymous -- 15/09/02

    Comments from Whirlpool need to be taken with a certain amount of skepticism.It appears that this site is a sponsored anti-Telstra entity run by a young man with a permanent chip on his shoulder. There have been a number of "meltdowns" in the discussion forums of late as the sites "owner" attempts to impose his own opinions on all discussion.

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