Come on NBN, this is not what customer service looks like
There are more than 100 suburbs across Australia still awaiting a connection date for hooking up to the NBN. But its company exces claim there’s nothing to see here. If only that were true, writes Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson.
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If your housemate asked you to wash the dishes, could you promise to do it at some point before July 2020?
And if a bill arrived at your door, could you tell the company to expect payment when you were ready over the next 10 months?
Both instances, in my opinion, fail to observe a due date. But they’re both examples of what some very forthright representatives at NBN Co asked me to believe this week.
And I’m not buying it.
On Monday, I wrote a story about a list of 121 Australian suburbs that have yet to receive a firm connection date for hooking up to the National Broadband Network.
The list was publicly accessible, published on Telstra’s website, and each suburb was listed beside what an NBN spokesperson called “a default dummy date” of 2222.
While I initially thought this meant the year 2022, I was told it was not a typo.
This was supposed to mean there was no specific date, month, and year that households in those suburbs could expect to be ready for the NBN.
RELATED: The full list of Sydney suburbs stuck in NBN limbo
Even though the project is due to be completed in June next year, residents in these areas cannot start planning their broadband future yet.
These areas are affected because they’re due to be connected using existing HFC cable, and more repair work is needed to “optimise” the infrastructure.
As such, I wrote that these suburbs were in limbo, that residents had been given no NBN due date, and I stand by that.
NBN Co does not agree. Its spokespeople say these areas will be “progressively released to market over the next 10 months” once repair work is finished.
They argue that this means these suburbs are not in limbo, that they do have a due date (some time in the next 10 months), and I have written an article that is “factually incorrect and misleading”.
Representatives from the company phoned and emailed newspaper editors across the country to tell them so on Monday night and on Tuesday, and widely questioned my credibility as a journalist.
MORE FROM JENNIFER DUDLEY-NICHOLSON: Why I’m ‘unready’ for the NBN
But what do you think? If you were told your suburb would get access to a service at some point over the next 10 months, would you call that having a specific connection date?
Readers have been particularly scathing on this topic, but their ire has been directed at the NBN.
Some report a year worth of broken promises about connection dates, others complain about receiving slower internet speeds for greater cost, and more claim these suburbs are lucky not to get NBN service, exclaiming, “If your suburb doesn’t have NBN, you’ve won the lottery!”
NBN Co won’t agree with this assessment either, of course, but many members of the public view it as a deeply troubled project.
Even if it is fully operational by June 2020 — an assertion some telecommunications analysts dispute — it will deliver many Australians with significantly slower download speeds than they were first promised, and on a network of old and new technology.
RELATED: NBN telemarketers are lying to consumers, threatening disconnection and penalties
Maintenance costs will continue to rise, possible fixes will be discussed at length, and Australia will continue to slide down the worldwide internet speed rankings.
But, as even its original architect Mike Quigley attests, the redesigned NBN cannot be undone now. A faster, full-fibre network can only be achieved with massive — and massively expensive — future upgrades.
What NBN Co should be focusing on is not semantics, or journalists, or even vocal critics.
The company would be better served admitting errors where they’re made, taking an honest and open approach to snafus or oversights, and improving communication, fault resolution, customer service, and their pricing structure.
And if they could achieve that over the next 10 months that really would be something … and I would love to report on it.
Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson is the national technology editor.