December 19 2006
Xtra Slow
posted by Steven Shaw at 1:17 pm
A disgruntled reader — let’s call him “Angry of Grey Lynn” — sent us the below JPG. The words in red are his response to the Xtra website’s explanation for the slower connection speeds he’s now getting.
Our favourite quote from this:
“Faster speeds cause more interference on phone lines and this, in turn, can result in slower speeds or degraded performance…”
What? Faster speeds result in slower speeds? My head hurts.
Meanwhile, their current crop of “future services” TV commercials — which can be seen in the sponsor’s slot on TV3’s Campbell Live — tease us with Jetsons-style videophone technology. Maybe that’s conceivable up in someone’s glass tower but here at home we howl with laughter at the sight of them. Over summer we’ll be playing a new drinking game — the rules are simple — you skull a beer each time you see the disclaimer “future services”. (We hope Campbell Live is having a break otherwise it’s gonna be one looong hangover).
“Angry” reckons Telecom’s recent Go Large flat-rate-no-datacap plan (whoever decided to call it that must surely be English — or at the very least a reader of Loaded magazine) was actually introduced to drop speeds so that the big T can then offer to switch subscribers to a “more expensive faster speed service we ALL USED TO HAVE!” (Click on the image to read)
December 19th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
So dial-up still wins hands down. Let me hear ya sing “56.6kps, yo, 56.6 k-p-s”
December 19th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
What Xtra also fail to mention is that they havn’t opened up their international speeds so everyone, even with faster local connections, still gets the bottleneck of Xtra’s data connections.
December 19th, 2006 at 8:29 pm
plus if like me you happen to need to connect to an xtra address via a vodafone modem, you are completely screwed, as the IT man emailed me tonight after fixing yet another email problem: Xtra decided a couple of years ago to not allow connection to its mailboxes unless via the Xtra network. So if at work you are on Xtra with and Xtra email and at home you have another ISP you are out of luck… Nearly all of the other ISP’s don’t have this annoying feature. I wonder if this is grounds for a refund from one or the other….
December 20th, 2006 at 5:50 am
My experiences have been less than pleasant. Ever since the whole Telecom disaster my broadband has been disconnecting every 10 to 15 minutes. It then proceeds to reconnect.
On Sunday this started happening every 3 to 5 minutes. I’ve been struggling with the Xtra helpdesk since (roughly) early October now to try and resolve this, have purchased two brand new routers, filters, and so on as per their instructions and we’re no closer to solving this.
I know symptomatically it behaves exactly as when I unplug the modem from the wall socket. The logs, the lights, everything is 100% the same.
Yet, Telecom keeps on telling me it’s my router. $300 later, I’m still convinced it’s on their end; but they seem unable or unwilling to diagnose.
Anyway, a moot point. I’ve initiated a shift to Telstra Clear. If the problem is still happening there, they can yell at the idiots at Telecom/Xtra to fix it.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
January 7th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Well well well.. All i can really say is…
FUCK XTRA YOU MOTHER FUCKERS! UNBUNDLE THE FUCKING WIRES! I’m TRYING TO BLOODY GAME HERE! AND I CANT AT 100kb/s and i’m on the fucking fastest plan.. godamit.
February 3rd, 2007 at 7:27 am
I’ve just changed to Xtra broadband from ihug broadband and now definitly have a slower dowload speed when it was advertised and supposed to be faster, this must be a breach of the fair trading act? must ring the consumers institute for advice
February 3rd, 2007 at 7:29 am
My point is that it cant be the wiring to my house and must be Xtra’s system
March 10th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
One of my biggest mistake in my life is change from other ISP to Xtra. My life stop a every 5 minutes. I noticed the problem from the 1st day I switch.