Telstra... Getting more useless every day
-
The other day I got a brand spanking new phone with all this ultra fast 3g technology that I'll probably never use because Telstra charge rediculous amounts for data. Anyway, I decide that my old sim card is probably close to 10 years old and that it might be time for a new one that supports 3g. I figure this is a good task to accomplish during my lunch break.
I fire up whitepages.com.au to find my nearest Telstra shop. I like whitepages.com because it will show all the matching businesses on a nice, useful whereis.com map. Gotta love technology! I search for Telstra Shop, Mile End. Instead it gives me 50 unrelated results with 'shop' in the business title. I go through until I finally find 'Telstra'. Scroll down a bit further and find Telstra shop. See <web link>
Fine, I follow the web link to the Telstra store locator site. It asks for a post code and a state. I don't know my post code so I have to head over to google and search for postcode, Mile End. Ah, 5031. I head back over to Telstra, type it into search and what do I get?
No Records Found.
How completely and utterly useless. I enter a perfectly valid post code (for a well established suburb within a captial city) and I get record not found. What's the point of a store locator that can't locate your nearest store? I guess I won't be getting a new sim card during my lunch break.
-
It doesn't surprise me, telstra are one of the most annoying companies i've ever had to deal with, i've been trying to get onto their mobile support line for three days and keep getting disconnected or getting put on hold for half an hour before i hang up, i bet if i ring the sales enquiries line i'll get straight through though. Also WTF is the go with their internet deals, ADSL 2 with a 1 gig a month download limit(i think there might even still be a 500MB one too). Honestly what are you going to do with 1 gig a month at that speed, you could reach you monthly limit in a couple of hours.
-
@element[0] said:
It doesn't surprise me, telstra are one of the most annoying companies i've ever had to deal with, i've been trying to get onto their mobile support line for three days and keep getting disconnected or getting put on hold for half an hour before i hang up, i bet if i ring the sales enquiries line i'll get straight through though. Also WTF is the go with their internet deals, ADSL 2 with a 1 gig a month download limit(i think there might even still be a 500MB one too). Honestly what are you going to do with 1 gig a month at that speed, you could reach you monthly limit in a couple of hours.
To be a little more precise, you should be able to download a gig in about 45 minutes 3 megabit/sec, or roughly 91 at 1.5 megabit/sec.
-
@element[0] said:
It doesn't surprise me, telstra are one of the most annoying companies i've ever had to deal with, i've been trying to get onto their mobile support line for three days and keep getting disconnected or getting put on hold for half an hour before i hang up, i bet if i ring the sales enquiries line i'll get straight through though. Also WTF is the go with their internet deals, ADSL 2 with a 1 gig a month download limit(i think there might even still be a 500MB one too). Honestly what are you going to do with 1 gig a month at that speed, you could reach you monthly limit in a couple of hours.
Telstra - leading Australia into the 1950s
-
@merreborn said:
@element[0] said:
It doesn't surprise me, telstra are one of the most annoying companies i've ever had to deal with, i've been trying to get onto their mobile support line for three days and keep getting disconnected or getting put on hold for half an hour before i hang up, i bet if i ring the sales enquiries line i'll get straight through though. Also WTF is the go with their internet deals, ADSL 2 with a 1 gig a month download limit(i think there might even still be a 500MB one too). Honestly what are you going to do with 1 gig a month at that speed, you could reach you monthly limit in a couple of hours.
To be a little more precise, you should be able to download a gig in about 45 minutes 3 megabit/sec, or roughly 91 at 1.5 megabit/sec.
And only for the price of a 40GB plan at another ISP, what a bargain!
-
@element[0] said:
@merreborn said:
@element[0] said:
It doesn't surprise me, telstra are one of the most annoying companies i've ever had to deal with, i've been trying to get onto their mobile support line for three days and keep getting disconnected or getting put on hold for half an hour before i hang up, i bet if i ring the sales enquiries line i'll get straight through though. Also WTF is the go with their internet deals, ADSL 2 with a 1 gig a month download limit(i think there might even still be a 500MB one too). Honestly what are you going to do with 1 gig a month at that speed, you could reach you monthly limit in a couple of hours.
To be a little more precise, you should be able to download a gig in about 45 minutes 3 megabit/sec, or roughly 91 at 1.5 megabit/sec.
And only for the price of a 40GB plan at another ISP, what a bargain!
Which is a pretty unimpressive plan to start with.
(40 gigabytes) divided by (one month) = 127.59582 kilobits per second(56 (kilobits per second)) multiplied by one month = 17.5554341 gigabytes
So it's about twice the capacity of a 56k modem.
-
@asuffield said:
Which is a pretty unimpressive plan to start with.
I'm not sure where you're from but here in australia we have some spectacularly unimpressive internet plans, it's a bit of a joke compared to the rest of the developed world
Check out these deals from telstra
see that, you can get a whole 200MB downloads a month for only $30!!1! what an age we live in
-
@element[0] said:
@asuffield said:
Which is a pretty unimpressive plan to start with.
I'm not sure where you're from but here in australia we have some spectacularly unimpressive internet plans, it's a bit of a joke compared to the rest of the developed world
Check out these deals from telstra
see that, you can get a whole 200MB downloads a month for only $30!!1! what an age we live in
These are phone internet plans, right?
I get cable 1600 downstream, which is the second-lowest option (I know I'm lagging behind some of you bandwidth junkies, but it's fast enough + doesn't cost any more).
Check it out:
Je aanbieder voor Televisie, Internet en Bellen | Altijd verbonden | Ziggo
Altijd verbonden met Ziggo. Met Internet, Televisie en Bellen beleef je thuis en onderweg het beste van tv en web.
Upload is strangely pinched, oddly enough.
-
@element[0] said:
I'm not sure where you're from but here in australia we have some spectacularly unimpressive internet plans, it's a bit of a joke compared to the rest of the developed world
Check out these deals from telstra
see that, you can get a whole 200MB downloads a month for only $30!!1! what an age we live in
We are really being held back by Telstra, that's true; everyone else seems to be able to offer better deals...
-
@Quinnum said:
Telstra - leading Australia into the 1950s
+1. Almost all internet deals in Australia are crap. It is one of those things that makes you feel like the Australian government has lost it. I've spent some time in SA, so let me rant a bit:
<rant>
What's up with SA:s attitude that insulation is unnecessary? WTF? The temperature in winter sometimes drops below freezing, and the SA:s just warm their hands over their toasters. No radiators, no insulation, sliding glass doors. Totally unbelievable. And as for those flamethrower-based solutions, that's probably the most environmentally unfriendly solution ever, wasting heaps of energy. And a tip to you australian people: Insulation works both ways, you can even keep you house cold with it. Amazing :D When John Howard suggested that everyone should start using low-energy ligth bulbs, I seriously thought it was a joke.
</rant>Anyway, here in northern Sweden, where I live, there is no concept of a "cap". Even students get really good internet, and I don't think many people have less than 10Mbit/s nowadays. Several cities have gigabit WAN:s. Niiiice!
-
telstra is crap because they are allowed to be. Australia has a population of about 96, so there is really no competition.
Their market share is rapidly diminishing as are their clients, and as new technology comes online that unhitch consumers from telstra, telstra's offering just gets worse because they need to make up the revenue shortfall.
Today telstra announced that 300 tech jobs will go. The government with more than a little help from Sol and Ziggy has turned this once excellent company into the shit sandwich it is today.
-
@Obfuscator said:
<rant>
What's up with SA:s attitude that insulation is unnecessary? WTF? The temperature in winter sometimes drops below freezing, and the SA:s just warm their hands over their toasters. No radiators, no insulation, sliding glass doors. Totally unbelievable. And as for those flamethrower-based solutions, that's probably the most environmentally unfriendly solution ever, wasting heaps of energy. And a tip to you australian people: Insulation works both ways, you can even keep you house cold with it. Amazing :D When John Howard suggested that everyone should start using low-energy ligth bulbs, I seriously thought it was a joke.
</rant>Interesting rant. I'm not sure where you get this idea of no insulation from. Everyone I know of who lives here has insulation. People do seem to have a lot of sliding glass doors and large glass windows. It does get to freezing here occationally, but that doesn't happen very often. Where it does happen more often (Adelaide Hills for example), the houses tend to be better insulated and designed to take into account the direction the house is facing. Often in SA, it's more important to consider the very hot summers which regularly hit over 40degress C. Often being in a very well insulated house during these times of years is downright painful. After a couple of days, these sorts of homes tend to heat up to very hot temperatures and the temperature does not drop overnight. With a home that's less insulated, the heat tends to build up during the day and then drops considerably overnight. This tends to mean that the house will less insulation will actually be cooler during the summer. One of the things about SA summers is that the temperature tends to drop considerably overnight. In fact, if you live in some parts of SA, you will see temperatures in the high 30's during the day drop to close to freezing overnight!
As for broadband, I'm surprised anyone still even considers Telstra as a player in this market. They are so behind the other major ISPs in the country, it's really not funny. It's interesting to note that Internode, one of the big broadband providers here introduced ADSL2 around a year before Telstra did. It's interesting to see a huge number of people moving away from Telstra for the Mobile and broadband market. It's rather impressive when you think that around 10yrs ago, they were the only player in the mobile market. Interesting to see their market share dwindling away!
-
@DaEagle said:
@Obfuscator said:
<rant>
What's up with SA:s attitude that insulation is unnecessary? WTF? The temperature in winter sometimes drops below freezing, and the SA:s just warm their hands over their toasters. No radiators, no insulation, sliding glass doors. Totally unbelievable. And as for those flamethrower-based solutions, that's probably the most environmentally unfriendly solution ever, wasting heaps of energy. And a tip to you australian people: Insulation works both ways, you can even keep you house cold with it. Amazing :D When John Howard suggested that everyone should start using low-energy ligth bulbs, I seriously thought it was a joke.
</rant>Interesting rant. I'm not sure where you get this idea of no insulation from. Everyone I know of who lives here has insulation. People do seem to have a lot of sliding glass doors and large glass windows. It does get to freezing here occationally, but that doesn't happen very often. Where it does happen more often (Adelaide Hills for example), the houses tend to be better insulated and designed to take into account the direction the house is facing. Often in SA, it's more important to consider the very hot summers which regularly hit over 40degress C. Often being in a very well insulated house during these times of years is downright painful. After a couple of days, these sorts of homes tend to heat up to very hot temperatures and the temperature does not drop overnight. With a home that's less insulated, the heat tends to build up during the day and then drops considerably overnight. This tends to mean that the house will less insulation will actually be cooler during the summer. One of the things about SA summers is that the temperature tends to drop considerably overnight. In fact, if you live in some parts of SA, you will see temperatures in the high 30's during the day drop to close to freezing overnight!
As for broadband, I'm surprised anyone still even considers Telstra as a player in this market. They are so behind the other major ISPs in the country, it's really not funny. It's interesting to note that Internode, one of the big broadband providers here introduced ADSL2 around a year before Telstra did. It's interesting to see a huge number of people moving away from Telstra for the Mobile and broadband market. It's rather impressive when you think that around 10yrs ago, they were the only player in the mobile market. Interesting to see their market share dwindling away!
I guess that socializing with students doesn't take you to the fanciest neighborhoods, but when I lived in Adelaide (about 3 years from now), almost all houses that I came across were left un-insulated. There might be a smart reason for not insulating you house in extreme heat (condensation that leads to mold or something), but if you have good insulation and an air-conditioner, wouldn't that be the best solution? And if you have a well-insulated house, you can trap the coolness during the day and open the windows during the night, wouldn't that also be smarter? And yes, my rant was probably a bit exaggerated, since I thought that Adelaide was a really nice place to live. It just gave me that 1950:s feeling :)
-
@asuffield said:
@element[0] said:
@merreborn said:
@element[0] said:
It doesn't surprise me, telstra are one of the most annoying companies i've ever had to deal with, i've been trying to get onto their mobile support line for three days and keep getting disconnected or getting put on hold for half an hour before i hang up, i bet if i ring the sales enquiries line i'll get straight through though. Also WTF is the go with their internet deals, ADSL 2 with a 1 gig a month download limit(i think there might even still be a 500MB one too). Honestly what are you going to do with 1 gig a month at that speed, you could reach you monthly limit in a couple of hours.
To be a little more precise, you should be able to download a gig in about 45 minutes 3 megabit/sec, or roughly 91 at 1.5 megabit/sec.
And only for the price of a 40GB plan at another ISP, what a bargain!
Which is a pretty unimpressive plan to start with.
(40 gigabytes) divided by (one month) = 127.59582 kilobits per second(56 (kilobits per second)) multiplied by one month = 17.5554341 gigabytes
So it's about twice the capacity of a 56k modem.
Sweet google shows this post as the first result :P
