NBN foul-up leaves Paddport café without phone or Internet
While NBN Co is rolling out Australia’s broadband network, the complaints keep coming in.
Some outlets aren’t getting the speeds that have been advertised while others are left without essential infrastructure.
That is exactly what happened to the Passport Café in the Melbourne suburb of Elsternwick.
It was left with no phone or Internet for four months.
And the café’s owner Helen Levin is livid that her business lost its phone service from July 20.
And the Internet, she said, was cut off shortly after that. While that has since been restored, the Passport Café still has no phone.
And she says that is hurting the business.
“I need the phone to take bookings, to take orders,” Ms Levin told the Herald Sun.
“People come in and tell me they’ve been trying to call but can’t get through.”
Originally, Ms Levin was using a small provider in iPrimus.
She switched to Telstra when she experienced problems.
She was shocked and angered when Australia’s biggest telco told her last week that she couldn’t get her original business phone number connected until December 11.
Telstra area general manager Loretta Willaton told the newspaper that an order had been placed to connect the service as soon as possible.
“Our investigation has shown that another provider has disconnected the service before the number has been successfully ported to us.”
“We have escalated the issue to have the connection date to Telstra brought forward.”
NBN public affairs manager James Kaufman apologised for the problem.
“We regret the long delay the Passport Cafe has had with connecting to the NBN broadband access network,” Mr Kaufman told the Herald Sun.
“The delay was caused by additional engineering being required.
“However, the service to the cafe is now in good working order.”
The phone number issues however were something for the retailers to handle.
As Ms Levin puts it, the lack of communication from what are basically communications businesses is deeply ironic.
by Leon Gettler, November 15th 2017
