Lindsay Druett wrote:
Apparently, the service that Auckland is getting from Wired Country is just great. Why is Hamilton, being the 5th largest city in New Zealand getting such a crappy service ? Surely Hamilton doesn't fit into the TCO category.
Auckland is not perfect. There are still issues to be addressed which should improve performance across the entire system.
It's because their service people are based in Pukekohe, that means they have to jump in a car/van/train/space-plane and come to Hamilton where there is a serious problem.
But at the end of the day, that is not the customers problem. The way I would see it if I was a customer, is that someone would have come around to install an antenna, tested the link, etc, etc and therefore one would presume there would be some sort of local presence, even a contractor with a set of keys to get onto site and at least get one of their engineers on the cellphone while being his/her eyes and ears and doing what is required.
Why aren't they using you James ?
If you don't like it don't use it. I like it, I use it, I don't have that many problems with it.
I don't have it, but if I could see the sky tower, I would be beating others over the head to get to the front of the "me want tah fast intarweb" queue.
The truth of the matter is that I would dearly love a provider to be able to offer carrier class service in competition with Telecom to me. My parents are in Wellington where they are lucky enough to have TelstraSaturn running right past their door step, and have cable TV, phone line, and soon with have broadband internet. I wish the same thing was running past my doorstep right on the edge of Hamilton.
I've had lots of feedback from my customers, the LLU site, and other people I know who use Telecom and TelstraClear (where they can) simply because of their level of service. Some people believe or not would rather stay with Telecom, and do everything with Telecom because they get service, and good service, and get one bill - I have fallen over backwards myself hearing all this, but this is what I'm hearing from a lot of people. I do remember the days of the 123 calls centre where you waited an hour to talk to a human voice, but it's been a while since that has happened.
I'm not trying to promote Telecom here, I'm just illustrating to you what a lot of customers expect.
If Wired Country gave a good level of service that I can rely on with VoIP and that I can get it, I would seriously consider it.
Things will be getting better. Being one who works in the Engineering department at Ihug (I do servers, not Wired Country type stuff) along side those that do deal with the VoIP and Wired Country side of things, I know there are things that can be improved and these improvements are in the pipeline. Saying that, the VoIP (wireless) service should not be relied on to be a first phone line. If we (Ihug) are advocating that to people who are using the wireless service, then I am not very happy about it. The VoIP (wired service in Pukekohe) is much more reliable, however still relies on that magic juice from the power co. Gavin Grieve