I am a little more remote than you... well, 40km as the crow flies from the coast and 25km from a large regional town here in Northern NSW but apparently that's remote for Aus. We don't get mobile telephony or mains power either. Anyhoo..

This is the advantage with privatisation, I am all for it..You have choices... Give the big T the flick. If it was Government owned, you would have unions bans on call centres operating at non family friendly hours or some other nonsense, I am old enough to remember how useless PMG and Telecom after them were... shudder. Useless as they are, Telstra is comparatively streets ahead

So I thought, why in hell aren't you on the interim NBN Satellite ? Skymesh (ISP) has their call centre in Brisbane, so you xenophobia can rest easy. I suggest you use them as your NBN Sat ISP, ring, tell them you can't get a signal with a mobile so (don't mention the Yaggi) and you should be good to go, it's what you will end up with as your NBN solution anyway, might as well get in now !

It doesn't matter if Cell towers go down, the new Gilat dishes and modems are MUCH better then last generation, I have been through several storms and not had it go down at all (as opposed to the IPSTAR hardware before it), as long as you have power (we don't have mains anywhere near us so we're self sufficient for power)

The NBN Sat is fairly fast, latency is a bitch but other than that...

More here
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/67?g=173

The author must live in a truly isolated location. I have travelled to many isolated places in Australia, and found quite a few with no mobile coverage, but they all have television. To have 4g mobile coverage in an area with no television is quite a compliment to Telstra.

As an electrical engineer I would say that the author should have obtained better advice. 4G is great, but satellite and/or dialup as backup would be well advised in such an isolated location. If that had been done the author could have contacted Telstra on an internet chat line, rather than rely on voice contact. The speed of dialup (around 33Kb/sec) is quite adequate for a chat line, and you have the great advantage of a written record, which could be quoted later. Satellite would be even better, as it would work even if the phone line went out, and if you have an emergency generator, even if you lost power. If people choose to live in these isolated locations they know they will be particularly liable to natural events such as storms and should take appropriate precautions. Cost should not be a major problem, as satellite is subsidised, and dialup is usually a free add-on if you have another service.

The NBN is not an answer, as provision to such an isolated site would be unacceptably expensive.

The provision of call centres in Australia is extremely expensive, and relocation to countries with lower wage levels is a very attractive alternative. Advocates for their retention in Australia are really advocating higher telecom bills for everyone, for it has to be paid for somehow. I never use them myself, as chat lines provide a written record.

Plerdsus I have never bitched about paying for what I get. I will happily pay a little extras for something that is good.

I do expect competent service from any provider, of any service, & that sure ain't available from offshore call centers. If it is xenophobic to expect English I can understand, them I am a proud xenophobic

I had a prepaid mobile with large mobile phone company, who had better be nameless, but who's name starts with V. I used their standard procedure to put $30 credit on my phone, only to find that the credit had not been applied.

A phone call to my bank confirmed the $30 had been transferred to their account in North Sydney. However trying to talk to some lady in Thailand, followed by her supervisor did not bring any help. I ended up being told to email them, in Thailand, a copy of my bank statement. You have to be kidding. Nothing I tried brought any help at all.

A complaint to the ombudsman brought a response from a lady in Tasmania, who could still not access their bank details to confirm my payment. After inferring I was less than truthful, she decided reluctantly to install the credit.

Cancelling the account brought a flood of promotional material, & a further bout with the ombudsman, when they demanded I pay for them to unlock my phone from their network.

A competent call centre service, in Oz could have saved them much hassle, & a customer, who now loves telling everyone what a bunch of idiots they are.

Hasbeen, you have only confirmed what I said previously.

If, instead of attempting to engage with a company representative on a VOICE circuit, you had contacted them via a chatline, you would have found that you would have had much easier and quicker access, but much more importantly, you would have had a full record of what was said, which could be copied to the ombudsman later if required. Why normal, intelligent people insist on having a VOICE conversation, which they are unable to retain a record of what was promised, continues to elude me. Owing to the number of technological troglodites in the community, the VOICE conversation will be much more congested, misunderstood, and confused than a chat line. Of course it could be that after 25 years of not teaching grammar, when almost half of university undergraduates are incapable of composing a lucid english sentence, the overwhelming majority of customers are only capable of communicating orally.

Perhaps the best solution would be for service providers to provide two plans, one using internet chat and the other using a full service Australian call centre, with the tariff of the latter being double the former.

plerdsus you might like mucking around with keyboards, great. As a one finger typist, it is not a medium I chose for my communication with service providers. If they wish to provide their service to me, they will meet my requirements. If they don't, someone else will.

Now with Westnet, I not only pay less for all my requirements, but also have people who speak English I can understand on the end of a call, & even in Oz. If one can do it, why not others?

I will continue my one man assault on any company who chooses to subject me to overseas call centers. I believe it will become a necessity for these companies to return to common sense in their business models if enough of us push them.

Reporting a fault even when connected directly to Telstra's Bigpond cable can be frustrating.

Firstly, after ringing Telstra's contact number ( as shown on monthly telephone account), you are confronted by a dumb computerised 'female operator' asking you to explain the problem in one word. But it usually will take more than one attempt to satisfy the computerised 'female operator' sufficiently to switch you through to a human operator probably based in the Philippines.

Then, after you have submitted all the necessary account ID information etc, you can say what the problem appears to be. In a recent case, the human operator was told that connection could not be made to the internet. The operator checked with the Telstra Bigpond cable network people, who advised that as no network fault had been reported in the subscriber's area, the problem must be on the subscriber's cable connection, and that a Bigpond technician would need to be sent out to repair the fault, but that could not be done until 10 days later. The unconvinced subscriber accepted the booking, but next day checked that the overhead cable connecting to the Bigpond cable on the other side of the street was intact -- it had been severed on two previous occasions by a passing truck. As there was no apparent damage, the subscriber again reported the fault. This time he was told that the Telstra network was in fact down in the area, that restoration would take 36 hours, and that Telstra would ring the subscriber once restoration was done. Although the restoration (indicated by 4 pilot lights being activated on the modem front panel) then was completed within the 36 hours, Telstra took another 48 hours before ringing to advise that the network had been restored.

Any ethical business would make an account adjustment automatically for the network downtime, but not Telstra. Telstra has to be asked for the adjustment, the adjustment has to be confirmed on the following account, and then later accounts have to be checked to ensure that Telstra does not reverse the adjustment.