Wireless Woes

So much for the broadband order being processed and activated 10 days after Thursday. After speaking to a neighbour last night (who incidentally has recently moved her from Coventry), it seems that there's no more ports available on the local telephone exchange for ADSL broadband and they're not likely to upgrade capacity for another year.

I rang Optus this morning, the ISP who I had registered with asking them to clarify. They told me they had no way of checking this until my phone line is activated on Thursday and the application begins processing. So I then tried ringing Telstra Wholesale who are responsible for the phone line, but their switchboard just kept putting me through to the ISP. Twice. Even though after the first time I specifically told them I didn't want to speak to the ISP I wanted to speak to the people who are responsible for exchange. When finally they did put me through to the right number I was left in a queue for at least 30 minutes before I gave up and put the phone down.

I tried looking on the web via my phone but I couldn't get a web connection. After speaking to Vodafone (I can't even be bothered to go into the problems we've been having with Vodafone Aus over the last few days) it turns out that may PAYG package doesn't include web. So I had to purchase an 'Extras pack'.

I tried navigating to the Telstra Wholesale pages on my phone but it was like pulling teeth so I gave up in the end and we drove to our local shopping centre to use the internet kiosks.

Anyway it turned out that yes, there are no more available ports on our local exchange, and the same is true of much of Brisbane due to the massive growth it is experiencing (probably due to the thousands of Brits that are descending here at the moment).

There's no Cable in this area either so that left me with only one choice - 3G data card.

At least I'm up and running on the internet now from home, even though I am restricted to 1Gb per month usage and the maximum speed I can get out of this thing is 200kbps - half the speed of basic ADSL. It's ok for surfing the web but I guess I have to forget bit torrent downloads for a while. I also need to test Skype as I'm not sure if I have enough bandwidth to make VoIP calls back home, never mind using the webcam that we purchased before we left so our parents can regularly see Lauren.

If I'd have known this was the situation with broadband beforehand I probably wouldn't have signed the tenancy agreement, I would have looked elsewhere.

Oh well, I'm sure I'll adapt.

Besides that, everything else is good. Mind you, we had our first day of rain today - they didn't put that on our visa!

We've nearly finished putting the house together, only one more bedside table to put together. I've also applied for a couple of jobs. I'll ring round the agencies tomorrow to suss them out. I'll also catch up on my e-mail tomorrow and reply to those of you who have e-mailed me. Sorry I haven't replied yet.