Connecting to the National Broadband Network (NBN) has been a rollercoaster ride for Jim Halsey.
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After getting switched on in July, he’s fought through a litany of issues, but it’s 2017 and there’s still no end in the sight to the trouble.
Despite being on a 100 megabit a second plan with Optus, there’s times when Mr Halsey struggles to reach that speed.
“I get 95 to 97mb/s reliably during the day, but from 9pm to 9.30pm it drops to 3mb/s,” he said.
“I was told there was congestion and an Optus supervisor told me to speak to the [Telecommunications Industry] Ombudsman.
“An 80mb/s difference is not acceptable, I can understand there’s fluctuations, it’s fibre to copper wire, but such a gap is ridiculous if it was going down to 70 or 80mb/s, you could understand.
“On ADSL we had congestion, but it was at the same time as there was an offer for six months of free Netflix.”
The congestion isn’t the first problem Mr Halsey has had with the NBN, after first connecting he reported up to 40 drop-outs a day.
He’s replaced the modem, moved its location in the house, the copper wire from the wall socket to the first junction has been replaced, copper wires have been swapped and different lines used.
Mr Halsey lives in McLachlan Street, just 180 metres from an NBN node.
“Technicians have said there’s an issue with the copper line. They have told me that everyone between me and the node is having the same problem,” he said.
An Optus spokeswoman said there were a number of issues which could affect the speed a customer could get including the type of connection, the modem being used, distance from the exchange and the number of people in the area or house using the internet at the same time.
She said was work planned to increase capacity for Orange’s Optus NBN customers.
“This work is scheduled for completion by the end of January,” she said.
An NBN spokeswoman encouraged customers experiencing trouble to report it to their internet service provider.
“If they are unable to rectify the fault, [they] will escalate it to NBN,” she said.
“This is important because there can often be issues affecting a service that is outside of the NBN network, like equipment quality, software, broadband plans and how each service provider designs its network.”