Need advice on ISP

Alex Gardiner · October 22, 2017

Hey there. My current internet situation is terrible and i need some advice. I'm currently having some terrible internet issues.

So i live in a bit of a rural part of Brisbane. My area currently doesn't have the NBN. We can only get ADSL with Telstra. We cannot find any other ISP who do any other services out where i live.

Telstra has been useless. Recently we brought a new router as our old one died. It was a TP-Link Archer VR400 AC1200. We started to run into significant internet issues with this new router. With the old one we typically get 6mbs download and 2mbs upload which is typical for ADSL and is what Telstra has advised us we should get. This was crap in the first place but we could live with it.

Anyways it has gotten worse. http://prntscr.com/h0gew9. We currently get between 0 to 3mbs. The internet will drop out randomly or go incredibly slow. We are a house of 5 adults who all need internet for word or university and leisure activities. We advised Telstra of our issue and they sent out a technician to try and fix the issues we were having. We told them about how our last router died. The house was struck by lightning in a storm and fired the wires. We thought the lightning may have damaged the wires too. The technician and Telstra disagreed and told us it was the router and gave us a router they produce. We have issues with the router they gave us. We have sent in another complaint to Telstra. They still argue that its not the wires going to the house or in the causing the issue but we believe it is. We want to try get them fixed but the issue is Telstra owns all the wires going to the house and they wont let us touch them. We currently cannot sustainable internet and cant get much help from other ISP'S. Again we are a working family who need internet. My parents run an accountancy practice at home and run it all online and cannot work without internet. I wanted to know, Does any smart brains out there have any advice? Any temporary solutions? What we should do to deal with Telstra?

Thanks

Alex

kanesmadness · October 22, 2017

There are some Optus 4G options which have decent-ish downloads. But you're looking at around $100pm for about 140GB and the whole 4G problem.

Also whats your line attenuation like (there will be a setting in your modem to tell you). This may indicate a line problem which you can pass on the Telstra (who will more than likely ignore you anyway sadly).

Alex Gardiner · October 22, 2017

4 minutes ago, kanesmadness said:

There are some Optus 4G options which have decent-ish downloads. But you're looking at around $100pm for about 140GB and the whole 4G problem.

Also whats your line attenuation like (there will be a setting in your modem to tell you). This may indicate a line problem which you can pass on the Telstra (who will more than likely ignore you anyway sadly).

http://prntscr.com/h0glof.

I was considering Optus, but its extremely expensive.

System Error Message · October 22, 2017

mobile internet is sometimes an option if in remote area and there are no good wired ISPs.

Also did you rule out the router because some tp links arent great. many ISPs are technically incompetent. Many modems require using a specific brand of chip for compatibility. Performance with such compatibility is quite significant too. For instance i tested 3 different modems and they did vary on VDSL by about a couple of Mb/s. The modem given by the ISP was great but lacked bridge mode, As a router/hardware platform, it is decent but with basic firmware ( i hope openwrt have ported to them by now).

Make sure to use a separate router and modem, get the modem with the best compatibility (ask your ISP what brand are their DSL hardware(modem chip, not device) that they use on their side)