ON JULY 17 Kinglake Ranges News called Telstra to arrange switching over from ADSL to the NBN. Without any notice Telstra shut down Kinglake Ranges News ADSL (and landline) service at 9:36am on Friday, July 21 though a technician won’t be installing the NBN until Thursday, July 27.
Telstra’s sales team never disclosed Kinglake Ranges News would lose internet access for almost a week to switch over to the NBN.
After being on the phone with Telstra from noon until 1:20pm Kinglake Ranges News was told “We can reinstate your ADSL account, but it will be a new account [as] the old one is closed and this takes four business days.
“Once an NBN order has been placed NBN Co cancel the ADSL connection and we [Telstra] can’t restore it [ADSL],” said a Telstra spokesperson.
Kinglake Ranges News contacted Telstra’s media department and spoke to Carl who stated they’d ‘escalate this’ and ‘call Kinglake Ranges News back shortly’ at 1:22pm.
The call was returned at 3:56pm after a call to Federal Minister for Communications, Mitch Fifield at 2:59pm with the department stating “the minister is currently unavailable” but we’ll “try and find a resolution for you.”
Communications Minister Mitch Fifield
(Source: http://mitchfifield.com/)
Kinglake Ranges News internet (ADSL) connection was then restored at 3:15pm.
Telstra was again contacted at 1:41pm as Telstra blamed NBN Co for shutting the ADSL down too early and NBN Co blamed Telstra as ‘handpasses’ of responsibility between Telstra and NBN Co went on for over three hours.
Kinglake Ranges News also contacted NBN co who stated, “We have no authority to change your NBN and can only re-instate your ADSL if you cancel your NBN order with your provider.”
Telstra nor NBN Co ever mentioned being offline for a week when signing up to switch from ADSL to the NBN. No correspondence. No courtesy email.
Offers of free data and to “use [a] mobile phone as a hotspot” were made with 10GB of ‘free’ data offered by Telstra. Doesn’t help provide weather data to the internet and Bureau of Meteorology every fifteen minutes.
If switching from ADSL to the NBN with Telstra (and perhaps other NBN providers too) make sure to check how long you’ll be without the internet and confirm dates between ADSL shutdown and the NBN technician arriving to switch from ADSL to NBN or you may be without internet access for over a week, according to Telstra and NBN Co.
Later last night both NBN Co and Telstra contacted Kinglake Ranges News to ensure that the ADSL was again working with further offers of free data totaling 24.59 gigabytes. Kinglake Ranges News accepted the free data offers.
Kinglake Ranges News suggests insisting the ADSL shutdown and date of an NBN technician arriving at your premises to switch over to the NBN occur the same day.
Communications Minister Mitch Fifield has been contacted for further comment.
Text & Images ©COPYRIGHT 2017 Kinglake Ranges News.
