[LINK] Churning broadband from Telstra?

[Saliya Wimalaratne]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 01:21:24PM +1000, Karl Auer wrote:
> We just "churned" our broadband from Telstra Bigpond to iiNet. I rang
> today, a week or so after the event, to double check that the Telstra
> side was finished, gone, no more charges.
> 
> Glad I did.
> 
> The Telstra BigPond account was still active and was still costing us
> each month. Now I don't know if iiNet failed to carry out some step or
> other, but this is definitely a trap for young players.

Hi Karl,

Churn means transferring a working last-mile ADSL service from one 
provider to another. This isn't the same thing as Rapid Transfer, which
is essentially doing the same thing in less time between participating
ISPs on a Telstra wholesale service.

In either case, changeover should be almost instantaneous when it is 
actually done - put the new credentials in the ADSL modem, and when the
new session goes up it hits the new ISP's LAC/LNS - your session never
sees the old ISP. 

When a 'losing' ISP receives a churn notification on an ADSL service,
they are supposed to do whatever they need to (e.g. finalise billing)
as of the churn date. The entity that operates the physical ADSL 'tail'
notifies gaining and losing providers.

In your situation "Telstra Wholesale" should have notified "Telstra Bigpond"
of the change, alerting Bigpond to stop billing. You shouldn't have been
charged _unless_ you were inside some type of contract (which I'm guessing
you weren't). 

> PS: To their credit, Telstra backdated the account closure to the last
> date I used their ADSL.

Which they're required to do, of course. The only people that _don't_ 
get the protection afforded by various state and federal legislative
instruments, ACMA Codes, and the TIO are ISPs, ironically :) :)

Regards,

Saliya