ajft

The gravy train has pulled in to the station, employer funded broadband will end, financial tightness has them by the goolies. Everyone was very polite about it, but still I was given two and a bit months to find a new ISP. The good news is that it gives me an incentive to finally be rid of BigPond, Australia's least favourite ISP — or maybe its just the devil you know, you only ever hear bad things about the one you're with.

Drowning in a sea of choices I rolled the metaphoric dice and came up with Internode, they seem to offer what I want, along with many others, but they also came recommended by a couple of friends. A great deal of filling out of forms occurred, an order was placed, a confirmation email was received, including this gem:

...

You can track the status of your order online by visiting http://statuscheck.internode.on.net/

You will need to enter your ADSL line number (03xxxxxxxx), and your Internode username (xxxxxx).

So I tried to track the status of my order online:

Sorry, we could not locate your entry in our provisioning system at this time.

Either you have not entered your phone number or username information correctly, or we have not yet entered your order into our electronic system.

If you have sent your order to us in the last few days, please wait another day or so, and then contact us if your order is still not appearing here

So you can check your order status online, but in true Aussie fashion, only “after a day or so.”

So I wait, while the churning thing churns...

Updated: 2010-Feb-18 — I could check my order's progress within another couple of hours. Things are looking promising.

Updated: 2010-Feb-22 — email arrives with some very comprehensive information telling me that “churning is underway” and all the details I'll need to configure my ADSL router. Ten minutes work that evening to reprogram the Speedstream 6520 and power-cycle it and I'm on the air on a new ISP, with six times faster ADSL. Impressed.

From some browser tabs I'd left open over the weekend, here is a speed test I ran on the Bigpond ADSL 256/64 service I use:

Aarg! On Tuesday I rang Bigpond up and was promised a return phone call within an hour or two, on Wednesday I lodged the same enquiry via email and was promised a response within 24 hours, then today, 48hours later I get an email telling me stuff all, and that I should call them on the phone!

Four paragraphs of advertising for their incredibly expensive 3G wireless network service and then:

Due to the complexities of ADSL with Home WiFi and the limitations of email, it is best for you to call our help desk on 133 933 option 1 option 1 option 2 and talk to one of our support staff for further assistance.

Emailed them back giving the details again and explaining the hassles I have with trying to ring them.

Later in the evening I managed to ring them, then get through to the right people, then, miraculously, I even managed to find out how to get Vista to talk to a Bigpond-configured ADSL router. Yay.

One small drawback — the WEP key and admin. password that were written into the front of the notes wouldn't work, so along the way I had to perform a complete hard reset of the Speedstream 6520 and re-enter all my details manually, losing the port-exceptions and all the security settings that were in their previously. I guess I can recreate the port exceptions from the software I use, but since the security settings were all made intially by the Bigpond setup CD I'll have to make them up!