Telstra cannot activate my cable Internet even after three weeks - in Melbourne !

[DanU1]

I don't know what to do! I am with Telstra for the last 24 years. We moved houses few times due to work requirements, and had Telstra ADSL2+ for the last few years. Also have mobile phones and fixed line with Telstra in a bundle. Until now the moves of the ADSL account was painless (even if sometimes it took a week for the swap. Last move was in Toorak - Melbourne. The ADSL, a year ago. The ADSL was slower than we ever had before (less than 5Mbps download , worse during evening). I assumed that it is because old telephone lines , being an old house and old suburb. Around this 25th of January I contacted Telstra to enquire if there is a faster way, and they suggested cable (I have a Foxtel subscription and the cable was already wired in the house). I accepted to swap to cable Internet and an order was raised on the spot by the overseas Telstra operator. After about two days the ADSL stopped working , as it was the end of the billing period. At the same time the Internet service disappeared from my bundle services! After about a week an NBN technician came to the house and checked all the signal and connection, and reported to Telstra that all is OK . Telstra sent the cable adaptor and the smart modem gen 2 . The cable adapter (Netgear VM450-1TLAUS) has all the lights green as they should indicating Internet connection. However there is no cable internet, and the smart modem (Arcadyan LH1000 ) when starting tried to connect to the cable and then swaps to the contained pre-activated SIM mobile data (which is slower than my ADSL of before). I called telstra activations (1800 135 103 option2) four times now, with nothing changing, wasting at least 8 hours from my time in total with the overseas operators who just follow their script and can do nothing. Every time they tell me to wait for another 24...48...72...hours, progressively longer. Nothing changed so far, my Internet service has not appeared in my services bundle list, registering at 'register.bigpond.com' fails (error0007) , and my 'high speed' cable Internet cannot start. I raised complain SR1-1906300455323 on Thursday 7 February - nobody contacted me, despite being now 6 working days ago. I really do not know what to do to fix this problem. Any advice or intervention would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for any help.

One more thing - NBN is not available yet here, the NBN website says that it will become available in April-May 2019.

[Iain_T]

Hi DanU1, 

Thanks for contacting us and sorry for the issues with your service. I can understand the frustration this would cause. I can see the complaint made is open and I have asked your case manager to call ASAP. This may be 2 to 5 business days though.

Please let us know if you have not heard from them in this time. 

[DanU1]

As I mentioned, I have waited already six days to hear from the 'case manager'. I just cannot believe that it is so difficult to connect to cable internet when all the infrastructure was in place from the beginning. Also I do not understand why a Telstra technician cannot be sent to the house asap to fix this problem directly (after more than three weeks of this order still being 'In Progress' with no Internet available, but saying that Internet service connected on 29 January) !!!

[DanU1]

Hi , just to close this , finally today 19 Feb the cable internet works. I have no idea still what was the problem . Possibly it was a Foxtel cable issue - but it shows the huge disconnect between these overseas customer service centers and the physical reality on the ground - and the thousand and thousands of really unhappy Telstra customers who have to put up with it.

[DavoCB]

Hi DanU1,

Thanks for the update. It's great to hear your Cable Internet now works.