Telecom a failure in communication

MARK DWYER

Julianne Stolte is angry and frustrated she has not been able to get a reply from Telecom about her faulty telephone connection.

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Telecom is under fire from a New Plymouth woman frustrated by ongoing problems with her telephone connection.

Hurford Rd resident Julianne Stolte said she has been having major problems with her landline for more than a year but has had no reply from the telecommunications giant.

Telecom spokeswoman Katherine Murphy blamed an internal communication problem for not getting back to Mrs Stolte.

Ms Murphy said Telecom would have a fresh look at Mrs Stolte's situation but the company was already making improvements in the Omata area.

In 12 months Mrs Stolte's phoneline has gone dead 23 times, an average of almost twice a month.

"It can vary from a few hours to a few days.

"It just dies, it just goes completely dead," she said.

When the line was working Internet access was so slow it was almost unusable, taking more than seven hours to update a anti-virus programme.

Mrs Stolte said a Telecom technician had told her the old copper lines were being overloaded by new customers connecting to the network.

"I think it is really slack. As a customer, we can't go anywhere else because they own the lines."

A petition signed by 50 residents was sent to Telecom in April but Mrs Stolte has not received a response.

"We just want to know what is going on but no one will talk to us."

She was annoyed New Plymouth broadband customers were getting service upgrades when she couldn't even get answers from the company.

"We would love to have broadband. We've got children who need the Internet, we want the telephone but we can't get it because it is something that's not available to us," she said.

Ms Murphy said internal processes had failed and Telecom apologised to Mrs Stolte.

"Getting our customer service right is something we take very seriously."

Chorus, Telecom's new network access business, had been working in the Hurford Rd area since July to upgrade and increase the capacity of the local network, Ms Murphy said.

The work is costing more than $80,000 and would allow the installation of broadband equipment by the end of the year.

- © Fairfax NZ News