State of the Phones

Analog landline or any kind of xDSL?

Don't they complain because of non-working internet access?

Still real analogue POTS out here beyond the towns/cities that the NBN covers. I did see a Telstra ute outside the exchange when I went to town today. I didn't have time to stop and ask what the story was and they were gone by the time I got back. My landline's still not working, it's still just making the hang up "boop, boop," noise when you pick it up, which is one of the exchange's familiar failure modes.

I doubt anyone's using dial-up over the landline, but I do have trouble with the mobile broadband modem I use for my home internet dropping out since the 3G switch-off, yet not half as bad as with phone calls for some reason. Even though the mobile phones all support Telstra's "new" 700MHz "4GX" band, which my old modem doesn't.

Other locals use satellite internet but that was unreliable too back when I used it (and I hear it still is). Perhaps Starlink is better, but it's too expensive for me anyway.

At least in the US and in Russia hundred thousands of people still seem to use that. Are you close enough to get DSL?

Which mobile providers are used? Elsewhere you imply Telstra for you, but is it also Telstra for all other parties involved?

Don't You Guys(TM) have W-Fi Calling? We're back in The Netherlands, but also here in some indoor locations, there's (too) little signal. So for example when we're at our daughter's house, our phones switch to Wi-Fi Calling on her Wi-Fi. No problem. If your phone and provider support Wi-Fi Calling, there at least would be no problem on your end.

The only dsl in Australia is VDSLx

when the govt forced this NBN s*it onto everyone, rural exchanges even had their ADSL2 turned off, they move them to LTE or satellite for broadband, which Kev has already said aint that crash hot and jams most ISP's helpdesks - that is why rural folks get to keep POTS (city dwellers and major population areas with access to VDSLx and Fibre, dont have POTS, they expect your internet to work in blackouts and use VoIP or mobile coverage) so they can make reliable calls - well, except when the exchange itself fails obvoiusly like this one.

Mobile coverage is next to useless here, they put towers in the most stupidest low lying areas, I personally live 45 minutes from the CBD of Brisbane, and neither I or any my neighbours can use mobiles inside the house (until I upgraded my modem and enabled wifi calling a couple years back) nearly everyone has to go outside and be lucky enough to get 1 bar in the yards.

Is this "boop boop" like a busy signal except one tone loud the second noticably softer?

The boops are all the same tone/volume. You get about 16 and a half after picking up then it goes dead except for a hiss (which is the exchange's other common failure mode).

Yes, that person and most others I call use Testra or a Telstra network reseller. I'm using ALDIMobile, and the nearby tower is covered in their sub-set of the Telstra network. I'm starting to wonder if Telstra's really still better than Optus (also Vodaphone since they're apparantly using the Optus network now) since 3G was turned off though. Coverage maps are clearly outright lies.

My phone doesn't, and the person I was calling doesn't have WiFi at home. I'm also not sure whether the old 4G mobile broadband modem that powers my home WiFi is magically better than everyone's new phone models, or it's something to do with the two-way data streaming which makes 4G fail in low signal (since the phones often say they have signal/bars, yet calls drop out once started/answered). I never do any two-way streaming over my home internet like for a phone call, and it's easy to ignore short pauses during web page loading or downloads that would cause words to be missed in a phone conversation. Logically my WiFi _shouldn't_ be any better since both are using 4G.

Well, nobody I know anyway.

As Noel said the NBN covered places that had DSL so POTS was turned off in those spots. Only dial-up was ever offered out here, even though I'm not that far from the exchange.

Actually I am working on an outdoor antenna for the 4G modem (in fact with the modem itself moved outside too for less coax losses), so WiFi calling or VOIP might be worth investigating once I've got that working.

That sux, a little known fact, since its gone, long gone, I can say this, ADSL1 worked out to 6 km's from an exchange rock solid, of course telstra failed the QT over 3.5/4 km's, and that was 1.5/256 days, I'm sure if they tested it again when opened up to 8/1 they could have got 1.5/256 out to 8 km's, but they never tested that AFAIK, so they rather keep folks at those distances on dialup, they figured less fault reports, and their ADSL2+ dslams failed over to ADSL2 then back to ADSL1, so they COULD have had better internet at far greater distances, evne if tehy had those folks agree the service was best-effort.

But NBN are just as f***ed, we live like I said 45m north of CBD, NBN been around since what 2013... and only late last year they rolled out fibre here... It was getting so frustrating I considered setting up a couple mikrotik dishes from the office to home, but that storage king building accross the road from office was a bit too high and close, ahh well.

They finished the job yesterday and it's finally working again. It's nothing new really with the exchange, there were a few years where it would be broken for days after every power outage (even though a hiss on the line while the power was out suggested that the backup power was working). The problem is that now, without

I still have a landline (running off Optus NBN). After a power failure, the internet comes back, but not the landline. So I have to call Optarse support and get them to reset at their end. Usually the cubicle drone has no idea about this, so have to ask them to get their N+1 to fix it.

fttn or fttp? Is the phone totally dead or any noise, do you get dtmf if you hit a button?

No tone - the phone LED on Optus modem doesn't light up. Probably a firmware bug in new modem. The old modem used to recover from power failure okay. And on FTTP.

Computer Nerd Kev snipped-for-privacy@telling.you.invalid> wrote

Bullshit

The plug has been pulled on the copper pair landline service

Still works fine on the internet service

They are in no hurry to fix the landline because the plug is being pulled on the copper pair landline service and has been replaced by a phone service on the internet service

Computer Nerd Kev snipped-for-privacy@telling.you.invalid> wrote

The NBN covers more than just towns and cities

Then you need to get a new one

Vodaphone does not use the Optus network now and I know that because a mate of mine uses Vodaphone and gets and awful result with it that he never got when he used the Optus system previously