ADSL comes to Porepunkah
I want to praise Telstra here for bringing Porepunkah into the 21st century by enabling ADSL broadband through our exchange.
That’s a fine result for our small town considering just 50 or so people registered interest.
The Commonwealth Government subsidised this connection, so praise there also. It’s been my contention for a long time that all Australians deserve equal access to communciations, regardless of where they live, and slowly that notion is being realised.
It’s the same principle as postage stamps and local calls costing the same all over Australia.
My cricitism is that Telstra has an unfair competitive advantage when it comes to marketing its broadband services. To have our exchange enabled, we had to register our interest with Telstra.
A couple of weeks before the connection I received a sales call from Telstra advising their rates.
On Tuesday, there was a Telstra van outside the post office also promoting Bigpond broadband.
I’m a genuine prospect, so I spoke to the lady on the phone when she called, and I visited the van. Unfortunately, Telstra is more expensive than some other providers.
The “special” here was $30 per month for 500MB monthly download with free setup. The price isn’t too bad, but the catch for me is a 24-month contract. I simply don’t want to commit for that long.
If there had been no contract I would have signed up immediately with Telstra. As it is, I’m studying all the options on the independent Whirlpool site and trying to make up my mind.
My other bugbear with Telstra is that they haven’t reported the ADSL availability at Porepunkah to whoever maintains the web site that shows ADSL status.
Or if they have reported it, the results aren’t showing. This means I can’t register with any other provider. I contacted one and they said to wait.
However, I could ring Telstra now and have ADSL almost immediately. Something about this is fishy and possibly anti competitive.
I'm a 41-year-old father of four working as a newspaper editor at Mount Gambier in South Australia.
