Internet black holes blamed on Telstra - Sydney Morning Herald

As you debate the merits of the super-fast national broadband network, spare a thought for the thousands of Australians who can't even get home broadband.

When Tanya Levin, 41, moved to Thirroul, north of Wollongong, she was told there were not enough ports for everyone to have broadband and she would have to wait until someone moved out before she could get ADSL, the high-speed service faster than dial-up, but which still uses a telephone line.

The national broadband network will not arrive there for at least another year. "This is insane. I live in a suburb that has multi-million-dollar houses but we're playing musical chairs for ports?

"I have to wait for someone to die or move before I can get broadband? I'm embarrassed on an international level for all of us."

Others, such as Ian Cox, in Newcastle's western suburbs, are told they are unable to get wired broadband because they live too far from their exchange.

Peter Lambert now lives at Edgeworth in Newcastle but has previously lived nearby and could not get ADSL. He is forced to use a slow, expensive and unreliable wireless service.

Telecommunications analyst Paul Budde said the issue was a "Telstra problem" because the company refused to upgrade certain exchanges, which other telcos could not control.

He said the issue was more pronounced in the outer suburbs of the big cities and in regional growth centres, which are making do with creaking broadband infrastructure. Politicians had not put enough pressure on Telstra to resolve the issue. He said that because the problem was geographically widespread - and thousands, but not millions, of people were affected - the problem was going unnoticed, which made it more difficult for those involved to put pressure on Telstra.

Telstra said it continued to upgrade infrastructure but had to prioritise areas "and that comes down to traffic volumes".

Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Simon Cohen said that unlike a standard telephone service, an internet service was not regarded as essential by law and his office had ''a limited role in dealing with matters where a consumer complains that there is no internet access in their location".