Bloody technology

[emma_in_dream]

So the NBN is rolling out in my area. Is it a good idea to try to upgrade? Or will it just all end in tears and enormous cost? (Eg. my parents’ experience where their phone bill increased significantly and Telstra outsourced workers had to spend 8 hours trying to get it to work and yet it still falls over repeatedly.)

Comments

[pedanther]

Eventually, around 18 months from now, they're going to decommission the current system and you're going to be faced with the choice of NBN or nothing. But that's 18 months from now, so don't feel you have to rush into it.

After the NBN was rolled out here I ended up waiting around a year, for one reason and another, before I switched over, and I don't know if that meant the local contractors had time to figure out what they were doing, but I found the installation painless and the NBN connection hasn't given me any aggro. (There was some paperwork hassle afterward, but that was due to a very specific set of circumstances that is unlikely to occur to anybody else.)

One thing I learned only after I'd started the process that might be helpful to know beforehand is that if you currently have an internet provider separate from your phone provider (e.g. Telstra phone but iiNet internet), you have to pick a single NBN provider (switch your internet to Telstra or switch your phone to iiNet or give them both the chuck and pick somebody else to do it).

[emma_in_dream]

Right, will probably move to iinet but will put it off for as long as possible. So many people I know had troubles with the NBN.