Consumer advocates are calling for information about National Broadband Network (NBN) outages to be made public after several reports of problems around Wagga.
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Residents complained of weeks without any service, no phones during blackouts and confusion among older customers.
Riverina student Ben Ceccato said he jumped at the chance to connect to the NBN when it rolled out, only to be told he couldn’t weeks later.
“When you go to the website it says I’m eligible, but when the technician came out he couldn’t connect it,” Mr Ceccato said. “He tried another unit and it worked, but he wasn’t allowed to put it in. The NBN has absolutely failed me, internet is a basic requirement of study and I have to go to my parents’ house to do my homework.”
There are an estimated 15,000 homes in Wagga alone that can connect to the NBN and thousands of them have already come online, but The Daily Advertiser was unable to find out how many have complained because of the way the service is provided.
NBN Co operates the network and acts as a wholesaler to service providers like Telstra and Optus, which then sell plans to customers. Anyone with a connection problem needs to go to their service provider, with any network problems being sorted out between the provider and NBN Co.
A spokesman for the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) said there were bound to be issues with the rollout of the NBN due to the scale of the project, but the rise in complaints was lower than the rise in active services.
“We hear from consumers regularly about faults, delayed connections and other issues they experience while switching over to the NBN,” the spokesman said.
“NBN complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) rose by nearly 100 per cent in 2015-16, which is to be expected as the network continues to rollout.”
However, it is unlikely customers will ever see a “network status” website, such as the ones operated by electricity retailers.
An NBN Co spokeswoman said it was a wholesaler and as such, information about performance and network outages would only be provided to service providers. The size of the project meant it was “not unrealistic for complaints to occur, however, we work very hard with our retail partners to fix issues quickly”.
The NBN was one of the pillars of Rudd Government policy, a massive infrastructure project designed to replace the 100-year-old copper phone network, but the equally massive pricetag and delays in the rollout led the Abbott Government to take a cheaper option that some technicians blame for the number of complaints.
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