[Binny]

We have been connected to one of the Telstra "Top hats" for about 2 1/2 years. For 12 months before that we were living off mobile internet and being told no ports were available.

When it was announced that we were going to be one of the first two areas in SEQ to get NBN Telstra dropped leaflets saying they were making ADSL2 available (Top Hats). I bent over and took out a contract with them as living off mobile internet was painful. As the cabinet is nearby its been pretty good, initially I was getting 24Mbit line sync, now its around 18-19 and I get at least 16 download speed consistently. For the second half of last year it was woeful during peak, dropping to about 2Mbit but it is consistently 16 now any time.

The other half of my suburb that already had cable got FTTP over time, then the federal election happened and my half got wiped off the roll-out map. Later we were marked as "ground works are under way". I just checked recently and we are again wiped off the roll-out map completely. On the map my development area is surrounded by NBN and we are a blank hole in the middle. If you go by the map even the bushes and the empty paddocks have NBN haha. I suspect at some point our top hat will be renamed as FTTN and that will be it. I hope not but I become very cynical about the whole thing.

My boss lives in a decent established suburb in the north side of Brisbane. His house is an existing house that has had ADSL before, his neighbours currently have ADSL2. Every company he tries with comes back and says no ports are available. After months of arguing with Telstra about what they are going to do about it they have told him they will not be able to do anything for at least 2-3 years! They have obviously put a spending freeze on any new infrastructure because of the NBN even if that suburb is not getting it for years. What a joke.