It appears that my modem froze at some stage yesterday, preventing access to the site. The modem has been rebooted and all seems well for now. Let's hope it doesn't mean it's about to die - I do have a spare in stock but they are a pain to programme.

Welcome back - the site was down all day yesterday and much of the night before, as well.

Thanks for your efforts in keeping the site running.

I do have a spare in stock but they are a pain to programme.

Not wishing to be a Jonah, but it might be wise to have that spare programmed and ready to go ... just in case.

Also have a defunct modem. Optus informed me that it is not working because there have been speed changes in my area and that a new modem is needed. Sign up for another 3 years and we will send you a free one - please wait 4-5 working days.
Annoyed because they could have sent a modem ahead of this change (assuming that they knew about it). But no notifications from them except that the cost for service is increasing slightly; and no notifications from NBN. Back on line through my mobile hot-spot.

One of the things forgotten but was more prevalent with older equipment, is that having a spare was not always a good idea if it, sat unused and not powered for a long period. The electrolytics will still deteriorate if left unpowered for substantial time (say two years) and when it is most needed its probability of failing is increased.

This is one of the reasons why I will actually take an electrolytic and use one of the reformers on it, to prove it before I use it. Just because its new to you, does not tell you its history. I have had allegedly new caps, fail to make it to their rated voltage, before becoming a DC conductor.

Me having them in stock, also does not help them.

Marc

The site does seem a little more responsive now, unless i’m imagining it.

Optus informed me that it is not working because there have been speed changes in my area and that a new modem is needed. Sign up for another 3 years and we will send you a free one - please wait 4-5 working days.

I like how they demand you reward them with a three year supply agreement in reply to being cut off the 'Net whilst you are still paying up front for the service that no longer exists. It shows the complete arrogance and contempt these companies have for their customers and Optus is by no means the only culprit.

The hubris is gobsmacking.

GTC: I'd programme the new modem but if it goes on the shelf for a few years following that it'd probably need doing again. In any case, I'd need to disrupt the site (and other services) in order to test it.

" demand you reward them with a three year supply agreement in reply to being cut off the 'Net whilst you are still paying up front for the service that no longer exists"

Yes Brad this really did make me angry. Either they don't care, or there is poor communication in the industry eg between Optus and NBN to avoid service losses of this kind. Maybe both.

I have stuck to Optus as one of the big players because soon after changing to Onetel, they went broke. So I decided to go to Optus because at the time I was not happy with Telstra. Apart from the first few years when unaccountably I was told from time to time that my email password was wrong and needed changing, I have been happy with the service.

All the ISPs are quite comfy with NBNCo being in charge of the network - it gives them a good scapegoat when things go wrong. Because retail customers cannot deal directly with NBNCo, there's no way of verifying what's being fed to us.

Many of the larger ISP's really don't give a toss about their customers.

In the case at our local radio station as NBN was penetrating more our then ISP (iiNet) decided that they no longer supported ADSL services and gave us about 5 weeks notice that they were terminating the ADSL service and that was it.

There was some form of issue between Telstra and NBN Co that meant that the radio station could not have NBN and that mattered NOT to iiNet...the cut off date was the cut off date take it or leave it.. Nice people hmm as it mattered not that without the Internet we had NO means of getting our stereo audio to the transmitter site some 3 kms away.

So we turned to Optus 4G internet with a pair of hi gain 4G antennas and a NBN compatible modem that had a 4G fail over function.
We ran like that for about 8-10 weeks whilst NBN Co & Telstra sorted out the hoohah with the scrappy bit of cable out to the street.

The Optus 4G internet proved remarkably good but it messed up us requiring a Fixed IP Address for the outside broadcast modem to be accessed from the field.

When the NBN was offered we took it up with Aussie Broadband who in my view are one of the better ISP's around in terms of Customer service as they have call centres in most states and are very responsive.

We kept the 4G fail over function by swapping the SIM to a Aussie Broadband SIM which is only Optus anyway but retailed by Aussie and to do the setting up of the modem they talked me through activating the Remote In Access so that they could program it to suit their service and once done I deactivated that function.

That has been very handy at times when we have had Firmware upgrades to do and things were not going well so again switch on the Remote In access and they sorted things out.

Additionally as a customer IF you have a NBN service problem you have the ability to actually carry out various Line tests by getting access to your account in the case of the service going down. So by using say your mobile phone wifi hotspot function to get internet access you can log into your account and do a whole series line tests which greatly helps sort out issues.

For us at 6KCR we LOVE Aussie Broadband...great service and very cost effective..check em out.

we LOVE Aussie Broadband...great service and very cost effective..check em out.

We use Aussie Broadband for CCTV access at the industrial site where my workshop is and which requires a static IP address -- a feature either not offered by the majors or, if it is, then at a prohibitive premium.

Originally we were with Harbour ISP, but that was bought out by Aussie -- and there is the rub. History shows that these small, support-friendly, ISPs inevitably get gobbled up by the majors as the owners of the small ISPs cash in on their enterprise.

Classic case: service-wise, every 'brand' taken over by acquisitive TPG went to the dogs.

As for the NBN, all of the majors are pushing like crazy to get their customers onto 5G so that they can abandon the NBN to its fate. I have told my ISP's (India-based) sales nuisances to stop hassling me on that basis until they can provide landline access via 5G (haha!). I still use my landline for making private calls and for when I expect to be put on hold for a long time.

I do love the plethora of apps, especially those promoted by emergency services as a group wan.. on how great are we.

Of course these citycentric twitt's fail to realise that Telstra is all about money nothing about service. I have to keep a landline as the mobile since day one has connected unreliably to a tower 40Km away on 3G: 4G is worse. That's been going on since day one (30 years ?) I have letters saying they have no intention of fixing it. Likely trying to get "Blackspot funding" so the taxpayer pays for it.

Only in Australia would you create, or implement something guaranteed to fail, due to (in this case) very few of the phones needing the warnings, having no signal to get anything. And only in Australia, would you get pollies doing nothing to fix it (or anything else).

Aussie BB was setup I believe by a couple of disgruntled ex Telstra Engineers and in many ways their way of doing things mimics the ethos of the old Telecom.

They may have bought out many smaller ISP's but when you do the research on their expansion programs they have their own backbone routes all over Australia and also overseas.

They mean to be in there for the long haul and very soon will be giving Optus and Telstra a run for their money. Most certainly do when it comes to looking after Customers.

5G may well be OK in the densely populated areas but it struggles once you move away from those places.

Once any NBN teething troubles are sorted that feed is very stable we have found...we at KCR DID have some initial cable issues with high levels of errors making the NBN modem unstable and switching to the 4G erratically which played merry hell with out audio path as at each switchover the Internet connection gets dropped and the Codec has to then reconnect with the TX Codec which takes a short while so NO audio goes to air.
However the NBN techy swapped us to another cable pair and since then (touch wood) NO Problems at all.

It seems that a lot of the noise issues being encountered is due to the way PMG/Telecom/Telstra setup their cable reticulation so many NBN feeds are very long and all on adjacent pairs. The old POTS network was really NEVER designed to carry what it is doing now.

4kHz was the upper frequency limit and they now shove way over that down the line with this DSL multiplexing they do for NBN.

Generally it works well enough so long as the run from their Node to the customer modem is not overly long.

One of the many things we knew prior to WWII and the infancy of radio was that AM carried further than any other type of signal, but as it is effective we close down those AM stations. The higher frequencies tends to move to "line of sight", which in mountains and undulating country, can render it ineffective and satellite is also ineffective on several frequencies and types.

Our fore fathers designing, often their own rural radio nets, often using war surplus radios, knew what worked and a lot of the modern stuff, in rural areas fails and that includes mobile phone.

One of the biggest improvements would be to get rid of Telstra and nationalise the network, to the old PMG model, where one group was dedicated to infrastructure, not money.