[plug] Telstra ISDN fee

[Alex Polglaze]

G'day Adrian,

>           Telstra recently have seen fit to upgrade my local exchange
> (Mt Helena) to xDSL. Yay! Fat pipe for me!
> 
> The problem is that in the interim, while xDSL wasn't available we used
> ISDN. This has been install a little over 2 months. Telstra now want
> $125 to remove ISDN before enabling xDSL on the line. They'll then
> charge again to enable xDSL.
> 
> They do forgo some of these charges if you sign up with PigPuddle ^dw
> BigPond. Oh, how kind of them.
> 
> I want a SDSL 512 connection with Arachnet, my current dialup provider.
> I keep my static IP, free WAIX and its the same provider as work's.
> 
> Any suggestions on how to proceed in the most economical fashion?

We had a similar situation here last year, where they would install ADSL free if 
the reason that you were using ISDN was that ADSL was not available at the time.

The catch was that you had to sign up to Bigpond. If you wanted to stay with 
your current ISP, then you had to pay.

We took the matter to the ACCC and basically the answer that we got back was 
that it wasn't a misuse of their market position and there was nothing the ACCC 
could do about, useless pricks.

I can give you copies of the correspondence if you wish, but I don't think there 
is any joy there. So I can't help with any other suggestions.

Alex Polglaze