Exetel was my company of choice for the change of DSL provider but due to the NBN changeover being apparently well advanced in my area, they were not able to offer me a connection on copper. The plan I wanted was good value so it is a shame it couldn't go ahead.

This is the thing with NBNCo and the twits who created it and probably has much to do with whatever governments seem to bless us with these days:-

Less quality.
More headaches.
Higher costs.
Lower specifications.
Less simplicity.
Bulls--- excuses as to why a 100Mbit service doesn't actually deliver a 100Mbit download speed.

NBNCo is supposed to make the NBN pay its own way, which is the equivalent of the proverbial dog chasing its own tail. Turnbull aptly called it “calamitous train wreck”.

He wasn't wrong.

Brad,
If you cannot get a copper NBN feed what else were they offering??? Maybe your area is served by coax as well which should be able to provide a quite good service.

Time & time again in my career with PMG,Telecom & Telstra I saw the mess that was created by a pollie interfering with what the Engineering Planners had decided upon.
Then having stuffed up the design the pollie walks away and leaves the organisation the problem of sorting out the mess often for years to come.
Most pollies seem to think that they know way better than highly skilled Engineers who have been known to often over engineer a project but that is often a distinct plus in the long run.
NBN should have stuck to FTTP for heavily populated areas where is made economic sense in the long run and future proofed the system for years to come.
Rural areas are a difficult animal to satisfy due to the distances involved, the sparse population & often the topography. Just getting country people phones was a major headache for the PMG,Telecom & Telstra let alone trying to get them 50Mbps internet speeds.

Lindsay

If you cannot get a copper NBN feed what else were they offering??? Maybe your area is served by coax as well which should be able to provide a quite good service.

Post 14, paragraph 1.

My only other option at this stage is to relocate the server to another site and run off someone else's connection. My choices are limited here due to the server containing private information - so the host has to be someone I know and can trust, and also have a connection with a static IP.

Here's another thing I forgot to mention. TPG asked me to lodge a service cancellation request yesterday. I haven't yet done it and won't be doing it. All that would achieve at this stage is that VR would be offline for longer than it needs to be. These companies just treat people like idiots.

I also read recently that Telstra is rubbing its hands together at the prospect of buying NBNCo. Whilst I'd be grateful if a network owner would take over NBNCo and run it properly, I can't help thinking that this would be a case of here we go again on wholesale pricing. If Telstra is to own NBNCo then the ACCC must set some ground rules because Telstra does know how to behave like a 500kg gorilla. That said, if the pricing issue doesn't rear its head again, at least an engineer would dictate network development rather than political parties.

I also read recently that Telstra is rubbing its hands together at the prospect of buying NBNCo.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/telstra-is-preparing-to-buy-nbn-but-not-before-huge-hit-to-taxpayers-20181017-p50a5t.html

Note that Telstra has set up the company InfraCo expressly for the purpose.

https://www.crn.com.au/news/heres-what-we-know-about-telstra-infraco-the-new-telco-infrastructure-business-494860

Oh boy. Do you really think telstra owning the nbn is going to be a improvement. Telstra is a private company with shareholders. The only issue with nbnco is that the idiot pollies started to dictate what to do instead of just leaving it up to the engineers and letting the taxpayer foot the bill.

Back in the early 80s telecom was wholly government owned and engineers dictated the setting up of the network. We actually were the third most efficient phone company in the world with only france and germany ( both government owned ) ahead of us.

Since then all the pollies wanted to do was privatise it.

Any change to the NBN in terms of network structure, wholesale bandwidth purchase and pricing would be a vast improvement over what is in place now. Network topology is incorrect, according to experts; far too many people have been lumbered onto wireless and satellite connections, far too much political interference from both sides of politics, far too many cases of dreadful workmanship with regard to the connections to peoples' homes and ISPs refusing to purchase sufficient bandwidth so customers can have the benefit of the speed they are purchasing (obviously, subject to the speed of the service the customers are downloading from) have all been issues that have plagued the NBN project.

Going back more than twenty years, every single step up in Internet connectivity has been managed by ISPs without any government interference aside from regulatory governance. Right from the days where we all had dial-up connections with modems of 33k or less and then upgraded to 56k, then along came the cable networks, then later we had the choice of ADSL. Apart from the occasional teething glitch that is problematic in anything new, there were no issues with promised speed or promised availability and all these technologies were made available far more quickly than NBNCo has handled their offering.

So, yes, if the ACCC can keep a lid on unfair trading, why not hand the job back to Telstra via a corporate takeover, given that they once owned what NBNCo is using to continue what has been an incompetent rollout from day one. If it was Telstra's plan to go back to ripping us off then obviously I would not support it. It's pointless bemoaning the fact that Telstra has been privatised as that happened more than 20 years ago.

I am pleased to announce an update to the site's front page. This includes a photo of a rare AWA 45E Radiola. Whilst I await a new connection, I will begin work on integrating links to the forums and the log in page from the front page.

The latest is that ACCC won't allow Telstra to take over NBN:

"ACCC chief Rod Sims has made it that clear Telstra can’t buy the NBN under its current structure. "

Have to wait to tomorrow to find out what the last phrase means I suppose.

I read that article earlier on The Australian but I am still trying to work out the ACCC requirement that Telstra must offshoot their interest in a buyout of NBNCo, then ensure that no Telstra board members can also be board members in the offshoot and no Telstra shareholder can also own shares in the offshoot.

To me, parts of that scenario aren't humanly possible to achieve. Whilst its possible to have two separate boards, with one answerable to the other, they aren't going to spend money on something that they can't have a financial interest in. It just does make any sense. But when did most of what the ACCC has done since its inception made any sense?

Thanks for the explanation Brad. I saw the headline in an email from a financial information crowd I no longer subscribe, just before turning in last night.