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Thread ID: 54028 2005-02-02 10:52:00 Orcon's Bitstream woes Greg (193) PC World Chat
Post ID Timestamp Content User
320809 2005-02-02 10:52:00 I've been using Orcon on and off for about six years, and prior to signing up for their bitstream adsl service late last year have always raved about their services.

However lately they've been pretty crapola and I'm on the verge of going to Xtra's 2Mb/196Kb service. That'd be a shame because the 50 bucks per month I pay is in my comfort level.

But... I, along with all Orcon Bitstream customers I suppose, got the following email message from Orcon this evening:

"We have recently been receiving many calls and emails from BitStream customers regarding their connection being slower than they had anticipated. This is a special email which we have written to help clarify the situation and reassure you that we are doing all we can to resolve the problem for our valuable customers.

We will start by giving a brief, non-technical overview of the problem and what we are doing to fix it. For those of you who are interested in the specific technical details please read on further for a more thorough explanation."

Full message copied here (www.zu.co.nz)

The fact that Orcon are honest enough to concede/admit the issues is almost enough for me to want to stay with them. I'm delaying my ISP transfer for maybe another week before I decide.

Personally, I think that Orcon bit off more than they could chew by offering uncapped bandwidth to their Bitstream customers. The leechers will obviously have screwed it for the rest of us. 		Greg (193)
320810 2005-02-02 11:23:00 Lately however, the massive popularity of our uncapped BitStream plan among heavy users has lead to excessive demand being placed on the circuit connecting us and Telecom. This is what is causing the speed of BitStream connections to be slower than expected.
Well what the hell did they expect.
Poor planning on their part I think 		bartsdadhomer (80)
320811 2005-02-02 12:26:00 Well what the hell did they expect.
Poor planning on their part I think


Yup. Orcon shot themselves in the foot. Idiots. 		Greg (193)
320812 2005-02-02 13:19:00 But, as Greg said, you have to admire their honesty - and the way they've tried to give customers an easily-understood explanation.. Laura (43)
320813 2005-02-02 19:27:00 The Orcon advisory suggests that, the technical reason for the slow down is the connection "pipeline" between Telecom and Orcon. Apparently this is Telecoms end of the deal and theirs to rectify.

I take from that, that it's first, a Telecom provisioning issue and, consequently an Orcon customer relations issue. Orcon would appear to have very little control over the matter, other than encouraging Telecom plus providing adequate fascilities and staff at their help desk.

I think you will find, when this is analysed some way down the track, that UBS has been promoted and implemented around a very clever marketing strategy. Unfortunately for Orcon, it's not their strategy ;)

Edit:

PS. When someone or something prefaces a statement with, "to tell you the truth" or "to be honest" or "honestly" or 'Gods honest truth" or "wellllll Milord, truly it was like this", with few "I" words but lots of "they" words, it's probably spin, spam, PR, duck shoving or outright BS. Desperation time, in other words folks. 		Murray P (44)
320814 2005-02-02 19:31:00 They haven't been helped one bit by Telecom, of course. But then, like you say, what should they have expected?
Telecom don't want to give much away in terms of bandwith and reasonable caps (I mean, you can only do so much traffic with a substandard "broadband" speed of 256/128), so they were always going to shoot themselves in the foot with their offerings.

I'm on Bitstream and have noticed considerable crap performance recently on bittorrent, although not to the extent that I'd want to change ISPs for an inferior monthly data allowance. The poor latency has even adversely affected web surfing. 		manicminer (4219)
320815 2005-02-02 19:37:00 I can see Telecom looking pretty smug about all this at Orcon's expense. They hold all the strings at the moment and certainly won't be bending backwards to assist Orcon's woes.
Unfortunately it looks like Orcon will get the bad reputation and lose alot of customers, perhaps to Xtra's (and Telecoms) gain. It's all win for Telecom at the end of the day. But we all knew that anyway. 		manicminer (4219)
320816 2005-02-02 19:41:00 "we are planning to release a range of data capped plans in the near future that will help to bring on many lower-data using customers to balance out the network.".

So it's goodbye to uncapped data plans then. Predictable I suppose. 		manicminer (4219)
320817 2005-02-02 23:02:00 "we are planning to release a range of data capped plans in the near future that will help to bring on many lower-data using customers to balance out the network.".

So it's goodbye to uncapped data plans then. Predictable I suppose.

If that happens in the near future I'll be a happy customer. I can appreciate the uber Internet users wanting 10 gigs or so per month; but more than that should really be user-pays.

eg I'm online about 18 hours per day with work and play, and haven't ever gone above 3 gigs in a month.

Greg = happy with capped plans. It's performance we need, ie quality vs quantity 		Greg (193)
320818 2005-02-02 23:17:00 people should beable to customize their plans to suit their specific needs Mirddes (10)
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