Unbundling teething problems

Internet provider Orcon is well under way
with its unbundling of key phone exchanges in Auckland but it hasn't been plain sailing for
early converts looking for fast broadband speeds.

The Geekzone forums are littered with tales of disappointing service and broadband outages and I've had a
fair amount of email from Herald readers frustrated with the problems.

Last night, to his credit, Orcon chief executive Scott
Bartlett laid out all the problems for me and explained what has been going
wrong in the last few weeks.

He said the ISP has been hit in three areas. Firstly, it
completely underestimated the demand there would be for the unbundled service.

"Our forecasting was just off. There was roughly three
times the level of demand we predicted. To put it mildly, its had a great
impact on customer service," said Bartlett.

In the first two weeks of the service being available,
35,000 people checked their address on the Orcon website to see if they were
able to receive it. Some 500-600 people signed up during that period.

Orcon can only handle about 40 new sign-ups on its
unbundled service a day, said Bartlett,
but is working with Telecom to try and increase the number. The heavy demand
has taken its toll on Orcon's customer service response times which has
exacerbated the problem.

Secondly, Orcon was also hit with a software glitch that
caused up to 70 new unbundled customers to have their broadband connections go
offline, something Bartlett attributes to"PPP authentication
issues".

"That was by far the worst," he said.

The problem has now been fixed.

Thirdly, Orcon has also been finding that some of the copper
lines of its customers are faulty. Bartlett
estimates around two per cent of lines have 'high noise interference'
which is killing the ADSL2 service. After some disagreed with Telecom over who
was responsible for fixing the faults, the lines are being fixed in a
reasonable period of time, said Bartlett.

A minor glitch saw users of the Orcon phone service get a US-style ring tone for several hours,
something which unnerved one Herald reader who has been listening to the
familiar New Zealand
ring tone for the last 32 years.

And broadband users considering switching to
Orcon from a broadband provider other than Telecom don't seem to be showing up
in the address database on the Orcon website. One Herald reader was told they
would not be able to sign up until Telecom refreshed its register of lines.

All of the problems and the higher that expected level of
demand have led to Orcon pushing out its unbundling plans for other exchanges
by two weeks.

"We've delayed the launch of a couple of exchanges,"
said Bartlett.

"But the speeds on the current network are outstanding.
We've had people ring up complaining because they're only getting 18 megabits
per second."

Later this year, both Orcon and Vodafone plan to roll out
broadband based on VDSL2 technology, which in theory will allow connections at
up to 50 megabits per second for people living a kilometre or less from an
exchange.

But there are real worries that the technology will cause
interference that impact existing phone and broadband services. Bartlett said there were
potential problems that the Commerce Commission is looking at.

"There's basically no one in the country who is an
expert on spectrum management. It's almost a philosophy rather than a science.
We've mainly been going on overseas experience but the issue is solely in [the
Commerce Commission's] court at the moment."

Bartlett said Orcon homes to
have 300,000 Auckland
homes in range of its unbundled service by year's end.