Incompetent broadband upgrade.

[Oblivion]

So I assume that everyone has heard that New Zealand is going to get ultra fast broadband, and so on.

Well, according to Telecom, our upgrade has been delayed by a further 6 months. :And adding on all the other times that it has been delayed, brings the total to 2 years of delays. (The first time that I saw the upgrade counter thingy, it was that we were scheduled to be upgraded by Dec 2009!) The thing is, I see people down there at the exchange quite often, but overall nothing has been happening, an in the past few months, the internet speed has just plummeted.

So, should I give Telecom a somewhat friendly email to give them a royal hurry up?

[Blackbird]

They'll duck and weave and blame it on Chorus, another part of their empire.

Te Kouma, a little village just south of Coromandel Town, has a population of around 200. 5 people have broadband and the rest have dial-up at 24 kpbs Effing near unusable. No plans to upgrade the village in the foreseeable future and people rely on it for banking and other essential services.

I'm a voluntary computer tutor at the local branch of Senior Net (for senior citizens). The emails I got from Telecom and Chous ducking for cover defy belief. I sent the emails to the Ministry of Economic Development who have some involvement and I won't quote their response, but you can imagine that they were less than impressed.

They're a bunch of incompetent amateurs.

[SMOKEU]

Internet is always going to be slow in NZ, no matter what government propaganda you hear. Think of the international ping!

[scracha]

Internet is always going to be slow in NZ, no matter what government propaganda you hear. Think of the international ping!

Then divide it by the speed of light FFS. The local ISP's could also cache the hell out of it so it aint too bad.

[Okey Dokey]

the rest have dial-up at 24 kpbs

My god, that put things in perspective. My dial-up speed is nearly twice that on a good day Great to know it isn't the worst- thanks!

[Winston001]

Many New Zealanders still have only dial-up. No broadband available at all. Personally I want to see BB available to most of the population rather than upgrading ADSL2 for cities.

[imdying]

A friend went from Telecom to Slingshot. Down from 14MB/sec to 2MB/sec over night. They have been very helpful in trying to 'fix' it, and have refunded his bills, but basically they're going to string him along as long as they can and do nothing. It's not the techs fault, they can't setup his connection to work properly as that would go against the corporate policy Slingshot has for residential internet (which is to restrict it to 2MB/sec, regardless of whether it is sold as an 'unlimited' connection or not).