«

~misfit~ wrote:
> wogers nemesis wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 19:28:16 +1300, -=rjh=- wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Chris Mayhew wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>I also note that when people complain about Orcon, other people
>>>>don't jump to their defence any more, maybe they are just sick of
>>>>defending Orcon or maybe they think the complains don't deserve
>>>>defending against.....
>>>>
>>>
>>>I used to defend them, but I can't do that any longer. It is around 5
>>>months since the UBS debacle started, and there are still problems
>>>with it; totally unacceptable.
>>>
>>>News and email don't work reliably; and their autoresponse now says
>>>it takes 96 hours for a human to see email sent to customer support.
>>>That is almost a whole work week. It is quicker to send them snail
>>>mail (and I might do that).
>>
>>I tell everyone I know that Orcon is crap. Those TV ads just **** me
>>off. Time to cancel the credit card payments me thinks, they can just
>>send the bill by snail mail .. I might even open them one day ..
>>
>>Thier own web based forums are a joke to read.
>
>
> I know I've been slanging Orcon off a little myself recently but you have to
> look past the end of your nose. They can only move on what they get from
> Telecom and frankly Telecom, having the NZ government by the balls, can do
> what it likes. And it is, it's sabotaging the bigger players out there and
> it's working. Slagging off Orcon is like shooting the messenger, a
> satisfying and easy way to ease your frustrations. I know, I've been doing
> it. Ultimately it's wrong though.
>
> Face it, we're powerless and Orcon isn't in a much better position when it
> comes to Telecom and it's tame politicians.
>
> I applaud Orcon for having those forums. How many other business' would be
> as honourable as to provide a forum for their customers to tell the world
> that they are dissatisfied? If that was Telecom they'd have shut them down
> long ago.
> --
> ~misfit~
>
>
>
> ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
> http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
> ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----
Well they aren't really telling the world. It's pretty hard to actually
find the forums.

While I agree that Telecom is the root cause of the UBS problems it
doesn't explain their crap SMTP servers (ok, may be fixed now, but I
gave up and haven't gone back), the broken virus scanning (which now
seems fixed) the totally crap NNTP, total lack of help desk, Usage
issues, I could go on ..

Simple fact is, you can't blame Telecom for everything.


--

"~misfit~" <> wrote in message
news:421b448c$1_1@127.0.0.1...
> J.wilson wrote:
>> "~misfit~" <> wrote in message
>> news:...

> http://www.idg.net.nz/news.nsf/0/1D3...A13?opendocume
> nt&pub=Computerworld
>>
>> I read this which sort of explains Orcon's problems and learned that
>> UBS is Unbundled Bitstream Service but exactly what's
>> different about it from adsl?
>
> Firstly, that article is from November last year and the situation is
> actually worse now. That's when I got onto UBS and, although it wasn't the
> bee's knees, it was better than it is now.
>
> UBS is wholesaled access to Telecom's ADSL service. It's a compromise they
> foisted on the commerce commision instead of unbundling. Basically, before
> UBS there was Jetstream/start, a package put together by Telecom that
> other
> ISP's could on-sell and put 5% on top of. Everything was equal except
> Telecom was making the bulk of the profit, it almost wasn't profitable for
> ISP's to provide jetstream except to stay in the market.
>
> The commerce commision decided that this was anti-competitive behaviour
> and
> tantamount to a monopoly and were going to force Telecom to open up it's
> lines to anyone who wanted to use them, refered to as "unbundling the
> local
> loop", allowing other ISPs to handle supplying their own ADSL and
> bandwidth
> without telecom having anything to do with it, other than charging them a
> small fee for the use of the copper.
>
> After Telecom licked the commerce commision's balls and gave them a few
> thousand ipods they capitulated and decided instead that Telecom had to
> "unbundle" just the ADSL packages, not the whole of the local loop.
> Essentially this means that Telecom still provides all the bandwidth to
> the
> ISPs but they are no longer selling their extremely profitable little
> "jetxxxxxx" cash-cows that essentially kept us in the dark ages. Enter
> Unbundled Bitstream, or UBS. Telecom sell it in bigger chuncks than the
> 'ready to eat' jetxxxx packages and the ISPs are allowed to onsell it
> however they like.
>
> However, Telecom, being the totally amoral blood-sucking parasites that
> they
> are, realised that, although they were compelled to comply with the
> commerce
> commision's ruling, they could **** around for ever and a day providing
> the
> service, all the while quoting non-existant problems. They also realised
> that the commerce commision only said they had to provide the service,
> they
> didn't specify anything like how reliable it had to be or if it had
> reasonable latency etc. Telecom, to preserve it's market share (It's own
> offerings don't suffer from *any* problems that they claim plague the
> service they have to provide for others such as Orcon) have essentially
> made
> sure that UBS is a distinctly third-rate service. It's got so bad that
> Orcon
> had to change it's terms and conditions of use, as quoted here, to reflect
> the absolute rubbish service they are getting from Telecom and protect
> themselves.
>
> So, to answer your question, UBS *is* ADSL but just not provided directly
> from Telecom. (ADSL simply stands for Asynchronous Digital Subscriber
> Line,
> asynchronous as the 'up' speed is usually different from the 'down'
> speed).
>
> Incidently, we would never have seen these 2MB packages from Telecom if
> UBS
> hadn't came about. We'd still be paying through the nose for 128KB.
>
> So my great-sounding deal that I signed up for has turned out to be a
> lemon,
> hardly better than dial-up as far as download speeds go and far worse than
> dial-up as far as latency goes. For three times the price.
>
> You'd think that Telecom would buy me a drink or give me some flowers.
> Even
> whisper sweet nothings in my ear. I usually like a little romance before I
> get ****ed. And poor Orcon are having to bend over and spread for Theresa
> and her strap-on. They tried to offer the punter a really good deal and
> aggressively advertised it, only to have Telecom firstly change the rules
> on
> them (no advertising fixed IPs and no uncapped packages) and then take so
> long to provide an unacceptable service that Orcon is getting some of the
> worst press (especially here) that you could possibly get. All because
> Telecom are playing their "bleed the public for all they can bear" games
> again.
>
> I'll shut up now, it's late and, insomnia or no, I have to get *some*
> sleep.
> --
> ~misfit~

Thanks for that, Misfit. I'd gained the impression that it was
something better than adsl.

Chris Mayhew <> wrote in
news::

> I also note that when people complain about Orcon, other people don't
> jump to their defence any more, maybe they are just sick of defending
> Orcon or maybe they think the complains don't deserve defending
> against.....

I was very unhappy with Orcon till last week, but my speed has improved
drastically and I am now reasonably satisfied.


Note:
I don't use Orcon for Usenet, I pay for Easynews and get a much better
service.

I don't use Orcon for E-Mail, the company that hosts my website provides up
to 50 POP accounts for me.

I don't game online, so latency is not a big issue.


But I wont defend them on this group because it is obvious that those that
use their E-Mail or newsgroups and getting a sub-standard service and the
latency for games is crap.


--
Mark Heyes (New Zealand)
See my pics at www.gigatech.co.nz (last updated 20-Jan-05)
"There are 10 types of people, those that
understand binary and those that don't"

MarkH <> wrote:

>Chris Mayhew <> wrote in
>news::
>
>> I also note that when people complain about Orcon, other people don't
>> jump to their defence any more, maybe they are just sick of defending
>> Orcon or maybe they think the complains don't deserve defending
>> against.....
>
>I was very unhappy with Orcon till last week, but my speed has improved
>drastically and I am now reasonably satisfied.
>
>
>Note:
>I don't use Orcon for Usenet, I pay for Easynews and get a much better
>service.
>

I use a paid new server as well , Octanews

Just as a matter of does Easynews use NNTP port 119 as it's default
and has the header download dropped to less that dial up over the past
few days??

J.wilson wrote:
> "~misfit~" <> wrote in message
> news:421b448c$1_1@127.0.0.1...
>> J.wilson wrote:
>>> "~misfit~" <> wrote in message
>>> news:...
>
>>
http://www.idg.net.nz/news.nsf/0/1D3...A13?opendocume
>> nt&pub=Computerworld
>>>
>>> I read this which sort of explains Orcon's problems and learned that
>>> UBS is Unbundled Bitstream Service but exactly what's
>>> different about it from adsl?
>>
>> Firstly, that article is from November last year and the situation is
>> actually worse now. That's when I got onto UBS and, although it
>> wasn't the bee's knees, it was better than it is now.
>>
>> UBS is wholesaled access to Telecom's ADSL service. It's a
>> compromise they foisted on the commerce commision instead of
>> unbundling. Basically, before UBS there was Jetstream/start, a
>> package put together by Telecom that other
>> ISP's could on-sell and put 5% on top of. Everything was equal except
>> Telecom was making the bulk of the profit, it almost wasn't
>> profitable for ISP's to provide jetstream except to stay in the
>> market.
>>
>> The commerce commision decided that this was anti-competitive
>> behaviour and
>> tantamount to a monopoly and were going to force Telecom to open up
>> it's lines to anyone who wanted to use them, refered to as
>> "unbundling the local
>> loop", allowing other ISPs to handle supplying their own ADSL and
>> bandwidth
>> without telecom having anything to do with it, other than charging
>> them a small fee for the use of the copper.
>>
>> After Telecom licked the commerce commision's balls and gave them a
>> few thousand ipods they capitulated and decided instead that Telecom
>> had to "unbundle" just the ADSL packages, not the whole of the local
>> loop. Essentially this means that Telecom still provides all the
>> bandwidth to the
>> ISPs but they are no longer selling their extremely profitable little
>> "jetxxxxxx" cash-cows that essentially kept us in the dark ages.
>> Enter Unbundled Bitstream, or UBS. Telecom sell it in bigger chuncks
>> than the 'ready to eat' jetxxxx packages and the ISPs are allowed to
>> onsell it however they like.
>>
>> However, Telecom, being the totally amoral blood-sucking parasites
>> that they
>> are, realised that, although they were compelled to comply with the
>> commerce
>> commision's ruling, they could **** around for ever and a day
>> providing the
>> service, all the while quoting non-existant problems. They also
>> realised that the commerce commision only said they had to provide
>> the service, they
>> didn't specify anything like how reliable it had to be or if it had
>> reasonable latency etc. Telecom, to preserve it's market share (It's
>> own offerings don't suffer from *any* problems that they claim
>> plague the service they have to provide for others such as Orcon)
>> have essentially made
>> sure that UBS is a distinctly third-rate service. It's got so bad
>> that Orcon
>> had to change it's terms and conditions of use, as quoted here, to
>> reflect the absolute rubbish service they are getting from Telecom
>> and protect themselves.
>>
>> So, to answer your question, UBS *is* ADSL but just not provided
>> directly from Telecom. (ADSL simply stands for Asynchronous Digital
>> Subscriber Line,
>> asynchronous as the 'up' speed is usually different from the 'down'
>> speed).
>>
>> Incidently, we would never have seen these 2MB packages from Telecom
>> if UBS
>> hadn't came about. We'd still be paying through the nose for 128KB.
>>
>> So my great-sounding deal that I signed up for has turned out to be a
>> lemon,
>> hardly better than dial-up as far as download speeds go and far
>> worse than dial-up as far as latency goes. For three times the price.
>>
>> You'd think that Telecom would buy me a drink or give me some
>> flowers. Even
>> whisper sweet nothings in my ear. I usually like a little romance
>> before I get ****ed. And poor Orcon are having to bend over and
>> spread for Theresa and her strap-on. They tried to offer the punter
>> a really good deal and aggressively advertised it, only to have
>> Telecom firstly change the rules on
>> them (no advertising fixed IPs and no uncapped packages) and then
>> take so long to provide an unacceptable service that Orcon is
>> getting some of the worst press (especially here) that you could
>> possibly get. All because Telecom are playing their "bleed the
>> public for all they can bear" games again.
>>
>> I'll shut up now, it's late and, insomnia or no, I have to get *some*
>> sleep.
>> --
>> ~misfit~
>
> Thanks for that, Misfit. I'd gained the impression that it was
> something better than adsl.

You're welcome. It could be if Telecom allowed it to be. Well, not better
per se as it is still ADSL, but better value, as the commerce commision
intended.
--
~misfit~



----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

Chris Mayhew wrote:
> ~misfit~ wrote:
>> wogers nemesis wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 19:28:16 +1300, -=rjh=- wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Chris Mayhew wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> I also note that when people complain about Orcon, other people
>>>>> don't jump to their defence any more, maybe they are just sick of
>>>>> defending Orcon or maybe they think the complains don't deserve
>>>>> defending against.....
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I used to defend them, but I can't do that any longer. It is
>>>> around 5 months since the UBS debacle started, and there are still
>>>> problems with it; totally unacceptable.
>>>>
>>>> News and email don't work reliably; and their autoresponse now says
>>>> it takes 96 hours for a human to see email sent to customer
>>>> support. That is almost a whole work week. It is quicker to send
>>>> them snail mail (and I might do that).
>>>
>>> I tell everyone I know that Orcon is crap. Those TV ads just ****
>>> me off. Time to cancel the credit card payments me thinks, they can
>>> just send the bill by snail mail .. I might even open them one day
>>> ..
>>>
>>> Thier own web based forums are a joke to read.
>>
>>
>> I know I've been slanging Orcon off a little myself recently but you
>> have to
>> look past the end of your nose. They can only move on what they get
>> from
>> Telecom and frankly Telecom, having the NZ government by the balls,
>> can do
>> what it likes. And it is, it's sabotaging the bigger players out
>> there and
>> it's working. Slagging off Orcon is like shooting the messenger, a
>> satisfying and easy way to ease your frustrations. I know, I've been
>> doing
>> it. Ultimately it's wrong though.
>>
>> Face it, we're powerless and Orcon isn't in a much better position
>> when it
>> comes to Telecom and it's tame politicians.
>>
>> I applaud Orcon for having those forums. How many other business'
>> would be
>> as honourable as to provide a forum for their customers to tell the
>> world
>> that they are dissatisfied? If that was Telecom they'd have shut
>> them down
>> long ago.
>> --
>> ~misfit~
>>
>>
>>
>> ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet
>> News==---- http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the
>> World! 120,000+ Newsgroups ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms -
>> Total Privacy via Encryption =----
> Well they aren't really telling the world. It's pretty hard to
> actually find the forums.
>
> While I agree that Telecom is the root cause of the UBS problems it
> doesn't explain their crap SMTP servers (ok, may be fixed now, but I
> gave up and haven't gone back), the broken virus scanning (which now
> seems fixed) the totally crap NNTP, total lack of help desk, Usage
> issues, I could go on ..
>
> Simple fact is, you can't blame Telecom for everything.

Yes you can!

I've actually never had a problem with their SMTP servers (and I've been
using them as my primary accounts ever since they offered free email) and
I'm yet to notice a problem with the AV scanner (although I have my own AV
implimented on my machine which works on a while-list system).

NNTP is inexcusable, I'll give you that one.

Helpdesk and usage issues. I'm not sure what you mean by usage isues but
helpdesk is definately Telecom-related. A few thousand people ringing up at
once to complain about latency will impact the helldesk.
--
~misfit~



----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

~misfit~ wrote:
> A few thousand people ringing up at
> once to complain about latency will impact the helldesk.

you don't need a few thousand users ringing to overflow a helpdesk...
say 50 helldesk operators, average call time of 4 mins.

and 100 callers all ring almost instantly.
the first caller will have to wait for 0-4 mins, the last one 4-8
mins(probably more), not to mention anyone who joins the queue after
that last one.

This assumes that all calls are done in 4 mins, should the average be
any more than this(bitchy customer calls normally take longer), and it
just keep being piled up... so call volume become so unpredictable, that
throwing more staff at the queue is about the only option, and where do
the funds come from for this?

It is a PITA to say the least to run a call centre, and very very stressful.

J.wilson wrote:
>
>
> Thanks for that, Misfit. I'd gained the impression that it was
> something better than adsl.
>

ROTFL - it *is* better - for Telecom

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 03:42:43 +1300, ~misfit~ wrote:

>You'd think that Telecom would buy me a drink or give me some flowers. Even
>whisper sweet nothings in my ear. I usually like a little romance before I
>get ****ed. And poor Orcon are having to bend over and spread for Theresa
>and her strap-on.

Most eloquently put. I think I see the beginnings of a writing career
here

Adam.

Adam wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 03:42:43 +1300, ~misfit~ wrote:
>
>> You'd think that Telecom would buy me a drink or give me some
>> flowers. Even whisper sweet nothings in my ear. I usually like a
>> little romance before I get ****ed. And poor Orcon are having to
>> bend over and spread for Theresa and her strap-on.
>
> Most eloquently put. I think I see the beginnings of a writing career
> here

LOL, what can I say? I was on a roll.
--
~misfit~



----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
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----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----