Experience of iiNet Naked and Line Faults

[tom]

Hi all,

I’m currently with iiNet ADSL2 and a basically unused Telstra fixed line. I’m thinking about moving to iiNet Naked DSL to stop paying for the Telstra service I don’t use. However the copper to my building is pretty crappy and tends to stop working a couple of times a year after heavy rain.

At the moment I ring Telstra, lodge a fault, and they fix it (eventually). If I move to iiNet Naked and lose my relationship with Telstra I guess I’d then lodge the fault with iiNet. Has anyone done this? How quickly do they respond, and do they do the work themselves or do they lodge a fault with Telstra (who own the lines) which adds another layer of bureaucracy.

Thanks

Tom

[Angus]

Been an iiNet naked customer for years, their customer service is top notch (even after the TPG takeover, but who knows how long that’ll last).

But historically any provisioning and service issues have gone through Telstra wholesale. And they’ve always been at the bottom of the rung. I’ve never had a Naked DSL connection go smoothly the first time, but they’ve always done what they can to give Telstra a kick up the arse and they’ve usually given me a 50% discount on the connection fee as a gesture of goodwill. Again though, with TPG taking over who knows what will change and when.

[The_Hawk]

When I was with Optus I would log the faults with them and they would log it with Telstra. Turn around was usually alright, especially if it was what I’d call a real hard fault (like water on the line or broken line) which they could see from helpdesk.
I then moved to Exetel who resold the Optus connection… so then it was Exetel → Optus → Telstra and it took longer but generally worked.
The real problem was intermittent faults because you ended up playing a game of chinese whispers.

In the end our line was so flakey we chose to move to Telstra directly so we kick them 1st hand to fix things and we got a much better response (again for those harder to diagnose problems).

What I say to most people who ask is this:

If everything works well and you have no issues with the line then all providers are viable and it’s down to back end contention ratios and cost.
If the line is a little dodgy, then I strongly recommend you deal with whoever owns the infrastructure (so Telstra).

NBN was set to change all that with a common provider to state of the art fibre infrastructure… now… well it’s still supposed to be a common provider in that NBNCo will own it all/lease/control it all (not sure which anymore) but how it will all actually work is anyone’s guess.

From what I understand Telstra have the maintenance contract so it will be RSP → NBN Co → Telstra to fix anything that’s FTTN in the future… but that’s off track for this conversation.

[bennyling]

Going to naked may actually be worse for you, in terms of line faults (jury’s out on whether Telstra will be better or worse on resolution).

I’m not 100% on the changes, but from what I’ve read because naked removes the current running over the line, the line doesn’t have the same protection that non-naked lines have — making them potentially more susceptible to issues.

You may wish to investigate naked further before making the jump, especially if you know your line is already particularly affected by faults.

[tom]

Thanks everyone. Good to hear the positive stories but @bennyling is the voice in my head holding me back:[quote=“bennyling, post:4, topic:1461”]
Going to naked may actually be worse for you
[/quote]
It’s a question of whether the hassle is worth the savings in line rental…

[thebookfreak58]

I think also because naked has no dial tone, sometimes techs mistakenly steal the copper pair as they are harder to pick up.