Snafu.

So, Telstra are increasing bandwidth for cable customers who already get pretty impressive speeds. Fan-freaking-tastic.

Dear Telstra, how about you give your customers with incredibly poor connectivity some love before you give the customers with FAST connections even FASTER ones.

Our latest PS3 update gave us ABC iview. Wooohoo... wait what's that? Our connectivity is so bad we can't use it? Typical.

Situation normal really.

Such a lot of red.

What does that graph tell you?

In a nutshell, the graph shows that from about 4pm the link is pretty much unusable, except for the odd intermittent period of a few minutes where latency drops to 20ms before spiking to stupid levels again.

Trying to VPN into work past 4pm is completely pointless - the connections end up timing out.

Shapely.

Our problem still continues unabated on both the Bigpond and Internode services. We're now keeping constant logs with some graphical magicalness which starkly illustrates the latency we're enduring. I'll post something later.

Since my last post, we've been in constant contact with various bods in Telstra and have had visits to the house, RIMS and the exchange. My partner has been kept up to date every step of the way and from his reports, Telstra really are trying to help us out. The Telstra tech that came to the house was really really good and totally understood our frustration. He couldn't fix the problem, but he had some ideas.

Internode are still doing a fantastic impression of not giving a fuck and still charging us full whack for a faulty service. Yay Internode.

Last week we got shaped a few days before our month rolled. We didn't notice the difference in performance.

Hello? Bueller? Internode? Bueller?

I'm disappointed with Internode. Bottom line. We've been customers for 5 years and have been happy with their service. But their inactivity and fingerpointing over our congestion issue has soured our opinion of them greatly.

Thank you for your email.

I understand your frustration with the congestion issue, taking place at the XXXXXX exchange. As previously mentioned in my last email, in order to fix this problem, we require our wholesaler to perform an upgrade at the XXXXXX exchange.

As you are aware, this issue is out of Internodes control and will affect any service, with any Internet Service Provider at this exchange. We will continue to apply pressure to our wholesaler to resolve the issue as soon as possible however; it is only within their power to advise when this upgrade will take place.

I am sorry that I have not been able to assist you further at this stage, but please be assured we are doing all we can at this point.

Thank you for your patience.

We've heard not a peep from them apart from the cop-out email with token "soother paragraph" you see above. I'd love to know what pressure Internode are applying, and what "doing all we can at this point" means exactly.

Internode have a direct relationship with Telstra Wholesale.

The Internode ticket has been open since 18 January 2009.

And we're still paying full price for a *known* deficient service. Internode's answer for us seeking any financial relief for this crippled service? Choose a cheaper plan. The mind, it boggles.

In another email, Internode advise:

As stated on our website and in our terms and conditions, Internode ADSL connections are not a service that we can provide an operational guarantee on, beyond the commitments made in our SFoA. We do guarantee that we will promptly investigate all matters brought to our attention and work with you to resolve any issues that we are able to; however, some things are simply outside of our control, such as those that occur within external networks and infrastructure and therefore we do not compensate for these issues.

We do apologise for this inconvenience and please be assured that we will be doing everything within our ability to keep escalating this issue to Telstra Wholesale.

Really? Really Internode? Y'know, I don't think you are doing everything within your ability.

It took me banging on the virtual door of the Telstra CEO to get any action on this issue.

Poor form, Internode, poor form indeed.

OMG.

OMG OMG OMG

Less than 24 hours after my email to Mr Thodey, I received a response:

Thank you for your email to the Office of our CEO, David Thodey.

David has asked me to thank you for your email on his behalf and to let you know that a member of our team will be in contact with you shortly.

We appreciate your patience while we allocate this and confirm our commitment to addressing the matters you have raised.

At 6pm Friday night, my partner received a phone call from the Countrywide representative for our area, who advised he would be handling our case moving forward.

The Countrywide rep spoke at length with my partner. The rep knew the history of our longstanding issues and advised that investigations were now underway and he would be in contact.

So I must give credit where credit is due, and give kudos to the office of the CEO for acting on what must be one of many complaints that cross his desk.

Is our problem solved? Not in any way shape or form as yet. Latency last night was abysmal, and we have given up doing anything remotely interactive online.

However, there is hope!

Straw. Camel. Back.

Last Thursday night, when latency was ridiculously high and we were downloading a file at 24k/second, I cracked it. Nothing was usable, I had resorted to loading the 'basic html' version of gmail. VOIP was pointless.

So, after reading that David Thodey "reads every customer complaint that crosses his desk", I thought I'd test this comment.

My e-mail was brief:

Dear Mr Thodey

We write to you out of sheer frustration arising from negative customer interactions with Telstra, particularly over the past 12 months in relation to congestion issues on Telstra ADSL infrastructure we are serviced by. We are now at the point where our internet connections (we have 2 separate ADSL services) are largely unusable for a great majority of the time. Telstra have admitted in writing that the issue affecting us is congestion, but "have no plans to upgrade capacity." We find this answer unacceptable, however multiple attempts to achieve resolution over the last 12 months have been unsuccessful.

I have recently documented our history with Telstra in a blog, which I invite you to read and would welcome your feedback on.

The address for the blog is:

http://telstrafail.blogspot.com/

Please feel free to contact either myself or my husband at any time should you require further information or wish to discuss the matter in greater detail.

I really didn't expect to hear anything. His mailbox must be bombarded daily by angry Telstra customers/employees and general nutballs all wanting his ear. But what the heck, it was therapeutic (although the mail took a while to send - is that irony?).

Anyhoo, I had purged my Telstra anger for the night.

Eleven .

It's nearly 1am.

Latency is 711ms and rising.

We are downloading a file at 11k/second.

ELEVEN.

Global Financial Crisis

That's what I'm blaming for tonight's shocking latency. It's been hovering between 500-600ms first hop for most of the afternoon. It's getting worse now that it's after dinner.

I think people aren't going away for the long weekend like they used to. They're all staying home and USING UP ALL THE BANDWIDTH ON OUR RIM!

Damn this global financial crisis.