Optus is dead, long live Internode!

After a painful 2nd month of being traffic Shaped and after a harder look at our budget due to the GFC, it was finally time for us to leave the nest that was Optus cable and look for something better.

I put in my order via Internode to get an ADSL connection done. No problem I think, after all, I'm near the exchange and I've got telephone lines already so this should be a piece of cake.
So began a comedy of errors to switch to ADSL.

First up, Internode informs us that for the first number we provided, they get a "Service Account Not Found". I was thinking this was due to us getting our phone line repaired recently, so I ask them to try again. No dice. They inferred due to my 2nd phone line being with Optus, that my phone line was being delivered via the Coaxial Cable network not via a twisted pair copper cable. Fair enough I thought.

So I asked Internode to put the ADSL service on my first phone line. After all that phone was with Telstra for a long time, so it MUST be on copper right? Hell this house came with copper before Optus was even around.

Turns out that when we switched that first phone line's bills to go via Optus a few months prior, they changed that phone line to run via the Coax cable network as well. Joy! And guess what? Optus has no copper line service anywhere (well at least certainly not my area).

So in order to get an ADSL connection, I have to go begging back to Telstra to take me back!
Luckily they were happy to have me back and switched me over for 'free'. Free as in 'costs', but as it turned out, not free in terms of 'effort'. As you might expect when working with Australia's crappiest ex-monopolist, everything was slow. I put in the order and they said, we'll be done in 3 weeks. So I ring up in 2 weeks to see progress and I find the entire order got canceled because they typed into the wrong customer account number for my current setup with Optus and conveniently forgot to inform me. They said I needed to put in another order. After some harsh words, I said I want it done in the SAME time-frame. Amazingly enough, this '3 week minimum' order got done in a week as a result. Once the Telstra tech got into the house, they were done in 10mins. Does it really take 3 weeks to schedule a technician for a 10minute operation?

As soon as Telstra activated my phone line, I rang up Internode and resubmitted my order and they did that quickly. Was I done? No. A week later, Internode asked me to ring up Telstra and collect the details for my own wholesale account number for that phone line. I don't know why I had to ask instead of Internode asking Telstra directly, but I'm guessing ISP's aren't fond of talking to each other. So after I get this number, I give it to Internode. They say thank you and say they will give it to Optus (because Optus is the wholesaler for ADSL2). So we've come 360 back to optus. Oh sweet irony.

Finally a week after all that, Internode has someone provision the exchange and also my modem arrives on the same day. Eager with anticipation, I wire everything up. I notice doing the 'speed tests' that my speeds weren't that different to Optus. In addition, the modem reports my connection as 384 up, 8,064 up. Huh? Where is the 24MB/s connection I thought I was getting. Unfortunately it appears the Optus ADSL box at my exchange isn't DSLAM equipped so I'm only getting ADSL2, not ADSL2+.

So finally after 2 months of futzing around, I finally get myself onto Internode. Ironically, this wasn't much of a change. Optus's grandfathered plans gave me 12GBpeak/24GBoffpeak @ 10Mb/s line speed. Internode gives me 25GB @ 8Mb/s line speed. However this is why I changed.

- Internode packages the phone line into the plan so I'm paying $89 a month. Optus Cable plus line rental cost us $120 a month. This was the number 1 reason for the switch.
- Whilst it looks like I have 36GB, in reality its all too easy to get screwed by the 12GB cap and end up at 64kb/s line speed for a month. 25GB flat is a lot easier to manage.

Internode has a number of unmetered services (I <3 free Steam), plus it doesn't count upload, but in reality it's the above two things that encouraged the change. Also I disliked Optus' treatment of long term, heavily committed (We had a number of services with optus) customers. A business should look after those loyal customers and providing an expensive and outdated product with no intention of providing discounts is NOT one of those.