I changed my small architectural home office to NBN last Friday and it was a mess. Four days later and I have just sorted it out. In that time I have had to go to the Telstra shop for a new phone as well as Bunnings for cable and plugs.I have
had my internet slow down then fail completely and needed a 52 minute call to Telsta/Bigpond to get back on-line….and that was the easy bit.
NTD TO TELSTRA BIGPOND ROUTER ISSUE
I already had cable internet at my home office and so no new wires to the house were needed.What needed to be done was provide a point at which NBN could say “that is my equipment and from there on that is yours”.The way this is done is that a NBN box (Network termination device or NTD) isput in and connected to the end of my cable and my Telsta router/distribution box which was only 6 months old was thrown away. A
new NBN ready Telstra ready one was then installed.I now have 2 ugly boxed to look at instead of one.This also means when fault finding there is one more link in the chain that can go wrong.Digressing now for a bit of a gripe about big business being stupid and inefficient….. I cannot understand why Telstra would supply me with a new router during the NBN run-out that isn’t NBN ready.... especially when the existing one was still working without problem, This
means that in 6 months I have thrown away 2 perfectly working pieces of equipment. Telsta to prove it is being “Green” does provide a recycling point that they can be returned to…. Mmmmdoes that make sense ???
NTD AND LAND-LINE PROBLEM
My problem was not so much the NBN, but the associated the land line. The copper telephone
system is turned off incrementally as NBN is run through suburbs. In 18 months
it will be completely gone. This means if you wish to keep your phone land-line
it now needs to through the NBN cabling system.
CONNECTION TO OLD PHONES AND POWER
The old phones ran on the 2 pair copper cable that used to come into your house from
the street and the old dial up and ADSL internet ran on it as well as your
phone.These wires were powered by a
bank of 50 volt batteries in your local telephone exchange which meant that if you
had an old phone you didn’t need to plug it into a power point and so it ran
quite nicely without fail through power blackouts. Thiswas terrific in emergencies in the days
before everyone had a mobile.With the advent
of Cable theinternet was faster and we
then had 2 distribution systems… one for phone and one for internet. Now we are
back to one set of cable again but we need power to run the phone, so during
blackouts or if your internet service is down your phone will not work.
NBN CONNECTION TO EXISTING PHONES MAY NOT WORK
Prior to the NBN I had an old wall phone and another from the 60’s that looks a little
like the bat-phone, plus a Telstra T-hub with 2 stations. The problem was that
they are not NBN ready and sowas told I
needed a new NBN ready phone to keep my service working…..Simple? Not a bit …
NBN CONNECTION FROM NEW PHONE TO OLD PHONES
My new NBN ready phone was plugged directly into the back of the new Modem and
(unexpectedly) everything worked fine. The problem was my other phones. The
instructions that come with the NBN and Telstra don’t say much about that. The
NBN guy just installs the NBN. He knows nothing about phones. After all the NBN
stops at the NBN box so he doesn’t have to…..
It is up to the user to make sense of the self-install kit their provider (in my case
Telstra) provides.OK, I’ll confess now,
I did 7 years with Telstra as a Tech back 30 years ago in the old pre-computer
world. Surely I was up to it?
I plugged the auxiliary extension lead into the back of the new phone and connected it
into one of my houses pre-wired phone-points and checked that I had dial tone
and that I could dial out. It turned out that I could receive calls but I
couldn’t get a ring tone. There is no point in having a phone if it doesn’t
ring. I had to check and see what the problem was. I plugged and unplugged
phones one by one to see where the fault lay. Even with everything unplugged
but the new phone I still didn’t ring.It looked like something was faulty somewhere in my wiring.It worked fine on the old system, but not the
new. I thought it may be due to cable length as I probably had hundreds of
meters of cable through the house.
I had7 phone extensions in my house run with a birds nest of wiring I had added to over the last 30 years. I have raked
ceilings in my home and therefore no trafficable ceiling spaces, so I had run
the wires up and down stud wall cavities, behind plaster, through one double
brick part of the house, under the floorboards and between the roof tiles and
the sarking.I had also done things like
terminating 2 or 3 wires to one telephone jack and go off in multiple
directions …some of which were now redundant after swapping my office through 3
different parts of the house as each successive child was born and we needed
more room. The house is also on 5 different levels which adds interest to the
floor-plan but makes running cables a nightmare. It also makes tracing where the
various cables go a nightmare. I gave up after a couple of hours and decided to
start from scratch.
I went to Bunnings and purchaseda couple of 15m
pre-terminated cables with RJ12 ends (like a computer cable but smaller &
with only 2 wires). I bypassed all my existing cable and ran the new one in and
I managed to get my 30 year old wall phone up and running as well as the new
phone. This was progress.I now had my
office phone and my extension in the house working fine.….
CONNECTION FROM NEW PHONE TO TELSTRA T-HUB FAILED
All I needed was to put a double connector onto the back of the new cable and connect in my T-hub
and I would also have a couple of hands free stations…. Perfect.....Unfortunately
plugging in the T-Hub killed everything.No phones would ring. Bugger….
I figure I can get by with what I have for a while and go out and purchase a new NBN ready
hands free system as my auxiliary phone. It is a pity my T-hub doesn’t work
anymore as it was the most modern phone I had in the house and I liked the
tablet and the clock. I have 2 working lines and will be content with that for
the time being.
NBN CONNECTION TO INTERNET FAILED
As for the Internet….at least it works.... Well actually it worked
then it didn’t…. then after almost an hour with an exceptionally friendly but
technically and linguistically challenged technician it worked again.
NBN CONNECTION SPEED SLOWER THAN I PAID FOR
I still have an open support ticket out with TELSTRA as the
NBN speed I am getting is rubbish….. I was getting around 30MB/s prior to NBN
and was paying $94 a month for it.Bigpond/Telstra promised up to 100MB/s if I kept on the same plan.
The moment I was connected to the NBN I was down to 22 MB/s.I could get that on a plan that cost half
what I am paying. I was told after another trip to the Telstra shop that speed
would pick up after another 48 hours. I waited and tested again. Still 22MB/s….
I inquired again and was told that it would pick up after 18 months…… So why
would I pay an extra $50 a month for something I cannot get?
NBN PROVIDER NOT PROVIDING.... LOOKING FOR ANOTHER PLAN
Ok, I have decided that I will look around for another cheaper plan as well as for a new
phone. Problem sorted…. Yes?....not quite.
I thought I had better check my recorded messages to see what business my office had missed while
my phones were down. I dialed my Telstra message bank and put in my pin…..
Guess what?Yep, it doesn’t work
anymore. It now tells me that my pin is wrong and to try again!!!!!
