[LINK] VoIP and internet services

[David]

Hi Carl,

On Saturday, 27 April 2019 12:21:04 AEST Carl Makin wrote:

> Our current ISP is AussieBroadband (https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au <https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/>) and I have to say they are excellent.  [...]  Definitely recommended.

I've already been looking at Aussie Broadband and I'll probably migrate there after that recommendation.  My only reason for having a separate VoIP provider is that it allows trying-before-buying, but AB's VoIP services should be fine if their internet services are very good.

> Like many people I suspect the fixed phone is becoming somewhat obsolete [...] and it’s the contact number in lots of places that I can’t remember.  Since we make very few outbound calls the cost is quite low.

I tend to make long outbound calls.  It's often convenient to divert the "official" fixed number to somewhere other than my mobile too, and functions like "call back on not-busy" are useful.

> You are not restricted to .id.au <http://id.au/>, you can really use any domain you want.  [...]

Ahh, I'd assumed the old domain rules were still strictly enforced, and I'll investigate that further.


>> I doubt these issues were forseen when the original FTTP strategy was changed to the current mess.
> 
> Probably not, but these issues aren’t really NBN level problems.  Domain names and email accounts are levels above what the NBN was ever meant to provide.  The NBN is really just a pipe to your ISP and they don’t care what you push through that pipe.

My understanding is that NBN Co. was the legal entity responsible for owning and maintaining the original network design up to and including the network terminating device (NTD) on the wall of each premise.  This provided a clean point of demarcation between NBN Co.'s responsibilities and those of the user, but there's no such point now in the case of FTTN.

As an example of how this fails, my own FTTN access degraded so badly over a period of a week or so it was almost useless, but seemed to vary from useable to useless over hours.  However my ISP was unwilling to log a support call because they'd have to pass a charge of $275 back to me if Telstra found no fault with the line on the day (and the ISP's reputation would probably suffer).  What might constitute a "fault" was unspecified of course.

So I had to fiddle around with an alternative modem to demonstrate the problem still existed.  What was interesting was that a Chinese manufactured NetComm router performed better for a while than an expensive DrayTek router with a much higher performance spec.  All this took days.  Eventually a call was logged and the fault fixed.

I think a properly designed network shouldn't rely on the users for diagnostic services.

David L.