Noel's Muses

Of course TPG being TPG ignore my complaints about it despite my plan, which even on the last day of my service when I confirmed closure of my account with them in October 2020, *still* very clearly said static-IP plan with rDNS.

This got even more frustrating early 2020, and no, they can't blame covid for this...

The last IP change TPG thrust upon me and others in early 2020 resulted in certain inbound ports that were found to be filtered, preventing connections to some services, again, all of my complaints went on deaf ears, these morons kept saying it was my configuration, the same one that had worked for 10 years, even through their previous IP changes, and all without me altering anything (pppsssst btw TPG muppets, those ports work now that I'm with ABB and amazingly no changes were made to any firewall rules).

Of course covid made it worse trying to get that fixed, it was a joke, reduced staff and covid meant most the Filipinos were working from home, one clown who was assigned to my case was more interested in watching netflix, and complaining was pointless, even though I was at all times restrained, meaning, no matter my disgust with these clueless TPG idiots, I was always polite with them, I ended up getting a call from some other Filipino at TPG leaving a voicemail saying she wanted to talk to me about the termination of my service, which of course were idle threats from third world muppets who exceeded their authority so that went nowhere, and if they had, it would have just prompted my NBN move sooner than I planned which was never going to be with those turds.

Then, a new light shone down...

Dealing with Aussie Broadband was like entering a new reality, a bunch of friendly guys and gals that seem to care, their staff also being true blue Aussies meant no more language barriers, no more tech support staff who couldn't give a flying f##k if your internet worked or not, like I said, chalk, and cheese.

I'm pretty fussy with my internet, partly because other people rely on it, and partly from having an ICT/Telco background which has involved ISP network operations. After being forced onto NBN by the local exchange being turned off (yeah, I waited until the last week heh), and having tired from dealing with the numbnuts muppets at TPG for a decade, I declined their offer of screwing me over again and signed up with ABB.

The changeover was painless, ABB kept me informed along the way of each process, scheduled for 9am one Monday morning, around 9:15 ADSL dropped, I changed the routers login profiles I previously setup to minimise downtime and rebooted, up it all came, the static IP assigned to my account, its rDNS entries, even the phone service was active which came over from Telstra at same time, very impressed ABB and NBN, very, impressed given the typical nightmares you often hear about.

But my joy lasted only a few hours, where I noticed a fair number of dropouts, but this didn't raise my blood pressure since I've worked with countless FTTN dramas and was prepared given this lines history, and with the much lower frequencies of ADSL able to handle more noise and crud then FTTN's VDSL, I expected it.

I jumped onto the myaussie portal, and ran a line test, yep failed, set stability profile, left a few days, no real change, so I thought here I go, grab a strong coffee and be prepared to argue my way through support, re-ran the fault test, it confirmed once again it was crappy, fired off the fault request, a couple hours later I got a response confirming that they can see the failures with their tests too and will send it off to NBN - very impressed ABB, blood pressure stayed low.

NBN tech turned up a couple days later - on a Saturday morning mind you, techie Wayne confirmed a problem using his hst3000, shot off to the pillar and an hour later it was back up all good, connection rock solid since (well, apart from a failed modem firmware update a month later LOL but that's Billions bad), and given my distance I knew I was only getting midway speeds anyway, too far from the node.

The only niggly point I had was my IPv6 tunnels with H.E. stopped working and nobody could figure out why, they worked through every change of IP from TPG once my endpoint was changed, but on ABB network, no go, which is very strange indeed. But since static IP users and CGNat users are on the same hardware, I dare say its some config they have blocking it and nobody knows WTF it is, but not worry too much Aussie have their own IPv6 so what little Aussie IPv6 traffic won't need to go via Fremont Cali any more.

Further impressing me at the time was Aussie Broadband staff stayed in touch for a week or so after, making sure it was all good, and I'll add that at no time, did I pull my credentials on them, they had no idea about my background in ICT and telecoms, this impressed me, this is how they treat everyone, well, every new customer anyway, try getting that level satisfaction out of TPG or Telstra.

All ABB's NBN plans include the option of phone service, so you can take your voice number over with you, even if you don't use it, there is a $0 p/month Casual plan, no more paying for line rental or DID's, it's there should you want to use it, of course they have other calls-inclusive plans as well from $10 a month, and although the $0 Casual voice plans call prices aren't that bad, they are not the cheapest compared to dedicated SIP services, but perfect for light users or those who really only get inbound calls, and one good thing about the voice service is, as an ABB voice customer, calling another ABB voice customer is totally free!

If you intend to use FreePBX to connect to your ABB SIP service, you will want to check out our FreePBX and ABB article since ABB do things slightly different in creating your trunks, I'll show you its really easy though, and if you run your own PBX like FreePBX, on the $0 casual plan, you can get a cheapy third party voice plan that has super cheap call rates, for all your outbound calls, leaving your inbound calls and free DID on ABB.

April 29, 2022 - Please read, I guess what you could call "part 2" , TPG To AussieBroadband - Was It A Mistake (link below).

A lot of that was originally added to this post, but it became longer than War and Peace, so moved it into its own article.

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