OK, I freely admit to being a bit challenged when it comes to communications technology, but could someone with a techno brain explain to me what the difference is in having a landline and having broadband coming through the same cabinet? Just trying to get my head around why we're being stung an extra $4 per month for a landline as well as another $4 for broadband if it all comes out of the same cabinet into the house.
I'm grizzling, I know, but this latest increase means that within the last year or so, our combined basic phone line/internet bill has gone up by $14 per month, including the extra $6 per month for 2 mobiles that we can't actually use at home as we don't have coverage here. So extra dosh for nothing, really.
Cheers, Mich.
Good exercise for the heart is to bend down and help someone up. Anon.
Wow, lucky to be rural and able to get VDSL! Wish we could get VDSL in our brand new subdivision 5 minutes out of town!
Generally with telecoms, they are all selling you pretty much the same thing, similar to the power companies. It might pay to give a few other companies a call and see what they will offer you.
Telecom (Spark) has always been one of the worst, I've had pretty good luck with Slingshot, also have a lot of friends very happy with Vodafone.
It's all probably six of one and half a dozen of the other. I've heard a few people recently complain about Vodafone, and the hell they've been through on their customer service line (mistakes made, ages waiting, foreigners answering with accent issues).
Hi Kernels - we're operating on ADSL but the cabinet has capability for those within about 2.5km of the cabinet to access VDSL - but of course S*ark charges extra per $10 per month or so to upgrade to that (and even if you did, being rural there's no guarantee of a huge difference in speed).
I'm quite relaxed about the speed - it's an improvement on what we had pre-cabinet upgrade and I'm very grateful for that. My question was around why S*ark (and they're just the first ISP to do so) are raising the landline and broadband charges when it appears to me that they're both served by the same lines into the house. Doesn't quite make sense to me, so I thought someone might have an answer.
Cheers, Mich.
Good exercise for the heart is to bend down and help someone up. Anon.
Mich;505895 wrote: Hi Kernels - we're operating on ADSL but the cabinet has capability for those within about 2.5km of the cabinet to access VDSL - but of course S*ark charges extra per $10 per month or so to upgrade to that (and even if you did, being rural there's no guarantee of a huge difference in speed).
I'm quite relaxed about the speed - it's an improvement on what we had pre-cabinet upgrade and I'm very grateful for that. My question was around why S*ark (and they're just the first ISP to do so) are raising the landline and broadband charges when it appears to me that they're both served by the same lines into the house. Doesn't quite make sense to me, so I thought someone might have an answer.
Cheers, Mich.
My understanding is that Chorus recently got permission to charge more for the old copper lines than they have been. Their pricing is controlled by the commerce commission because they are a monopoly. So they charge Spark more and the cost gets passed along to the consumer. I would expect pretty much all telcos to up their prices in the near future.
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