Telstra. A name to make one think!
Telstra Australia. A communications giant with a midget-sized mind. One would think that a company claiming to supply telephone and internet to 95% of Australia would actually be in the business of making money. Not so.
Years ago the Company had some half-witted American in charge. Apparently his only aim in life was to make as much money for himself from Telstra and as much in kick-backs as he could from the Hughes company. That’s a company which turns out some of the world’s worst junk and which this imbecile insisted on foisting of on Telstra’s Australian customers. At inflated prices no doubt. Obviously he was on a commission basis of some sort.
Since he departed, with a large, obscene, unearned and undeserved payout figure, not much has changed. There is the same out-dated thinking rampant within the organization [I use that word very loosely, of course] which still does not work to maximize income.
As a customer of Telstra using their systems for home and mobile ‘phone plus wireless broadband internet I have first hand knowledge of their closed minds and lack of incentive.
I pay a goodly figure for the wireless connection that, considering the format, is fairly fast [generally]. However, the plans for such go up to a mere 15Gb which begs the question why so little?
If one should be so importunate as to exceed the measly download figure does one have to pay for excess downloading [read uploads/downloads]? Oh no! Where would the joy be in that? In their [somewhat outdated] wisdom they slow ones’ download speed to a supposed 64kb/s which in reality is a great deal slower. I have had downloads in the order of bits/sec and not too many of them are more than 300bits/s. The frustration of being slower than a dial-up telephone connection has to be experienced to be believed.
As a one-time user of Telstra Satellite internet, an outrageously expensive connection [$69 per 500Mb d/l], I was charged some 15 cents per Mb, yes Mb, for excess usage. One does not have to have a degree in maths to work out that that equates to some $150 per Gb! Shades of usury – well actually it gives usury a bad name!
The response of Telstra to the question as to why downloads are slowed to such a miserable speed is that “….some people would tend to download more than they can afford….” How ridiculous is that and how lame an excuse? Actually Telstra send emails when one has used 50% of ones’ allowance and also when the figure gets close to total usage allowance.
Is it really beyond the imagination of those beings in Telstra who are supposed to be making a profit for shareholders to work out that people paying for excess downloads means more profit? What is the puerile thinking behind the decision to have 15Gb as the maximum download on their plans, particularly when ADSL customers have a limit of 500Gb or more! Again any download increase for wireless users would surely make for more profit. Or could it be that Telstra’s claim to be an up-to-date company providing the latest in technology for its’ customers is simply not true? Publicity blurb?
Of course if they brought out a charge for excess usage it would have to be a little more realistic than that absurd 15 cents per Mb. $1.50 per Gb or even $5 per Gb would be more realistic. Also increasing the maximum on their plans to, perhaps, 30Gb or higher would be more realistic.
Or perhaps, being an Australian company, they are quite happy to be the usual 30 years behind the rest of the world.
Whatever the reasons I suspect there are many of us to whom ASDL will always be a hopeless dream especially with the Australian Labor Party’s broadband policy [policy, really? not a word to put in the same sentence as "Labor"] which so far has resulted in people with good broadband connections getting er……. good broadband connections. Go figure.
