When the National Broadband Network (NBN) arrived in my area in late 2016, residents were greeted with a barrage of junk mail advertisements from all manner of internet service providers offering competitively priced internet at fast speeds.
At the time, I was under contract with Telstra, so I did not consider moving from Bigpond cable to the NBN. And that was a good move. In the months following the NBN’s arrival, I heard multiple horror stories from neighbours, acquaintances and friends who suffered from connection problems with the NBN, dropouts, painfully slow speeds, and even some cases of households being stranded without internet access for weeks on end.
It got so bad that Telstra told me to stick with its existing service until the NBN’s problems are fixed.
The horror stories relating to the NBN are obviously wide-spread, given the number of complaints relating to the NBN have risen for the second year in a row according to the Ombudsman’s latest six monthly report; albeit the rate of complaints has fallen:
Complaints to the telecommunication industry ombudsman have increased for the second year in a row as more suburbs switch over to the national broadband network.
However the proportion of complaints per residences on the network has trended down, with complaints per 1,000 premises added to the NBN decreasing from 4.1 to 3.2 in the first half of 2018.
The ombudsman received 167,831 complaints in the the 2017-18 financial year, an increase of 6.2% in the previous year, according to its annual report released on Wednesday…
Almost half of all complaints in 2017-18 related to connection or service quality issues or switching to a new provider with the majority of complaints in that category about services delivered by the NBN…
It received 57,289 complaints about service quality or speed, of which 27,000, or 47.7%, related to the NBN.
Yesterday we reported that one-in-three households are looking at 5G wireless services for their home internet connection, thus threatening the viability of NBN’s rollout of fixed-line broadband.
It’s looking highly unlikely that the $50 billion NBN will ever live up to expectations, and will more likely become an expensive stranded asset.
