- although it might have seemed like it. My absence was due to a technology fail. It's quite a saga which left us without a home phone and internet for several weeks.
I'll tell you what happened - but first for those of you who aren't Australian - a bit of history. Way back in 2009 the then Australian Labor government announced they would be establishing a National Broadband Network which would replace our ageing copper network with fibre to every home giving us internet speeds to bring us up to date. Then Labor lost the next election and the incoming LNP Coalition government said it was too expensive and instead those of us who weren't already fortunate enough to be connected would have to have a fibre to the node system with a node in the street and using the existing and less than efficient copper network for the actual connection to the house. (The LNP are still in government and have decided - now that the predicted failings of this system are obvious to all but with most households connected by it - they'll have to retrofit the whole network at enormous cost - but that's politics for you. It doesn't have to make sense.)
As I said the bulk of homes are now connected and the NBN has finally reached our suburb which meant we needed to connect before November when the current service to the area will be cut off. The NBN is a wholesaler so you have to work through a retailer which then connects you by modem to the network. I did a bit of research, found a deal that suits us and signed up. There were a number of steps to take over a couple of weeks until the NBN technician came and connected us a week or so ago - except we didn't connect. Nothing worked. No landline, no internet. The only working phone was my mobile.
I contacted the ISP which ran some tests and informed us that it was a fault with the NBN. They then arranged for an appointment with an NBN technician which took place after another week or so. A very helpful technician came today and finally we are connected.
So it's all good, isn't it. Well, yes, except our internet outage came at a bad time for us. We had a serious health problem to deal with this week and I needed to do a lot of what was associated with it - like hospital admission forms and dealing with emails from various specialists - online. This meant I had to use my mobile phone as a hotspot. As I only have a small amount of data available on my mobile plan (I don't use my phone much for the internet) it has left me out of pocket because I had to buy a lot of additional data. Sigh. At least the health problem is now being treated and all on that front looks like it will be well in the long run.
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