BG> Paul, are you having any obvious problems with your lines lately? Some of
BG> my recent calls have been fucking atrocious, and today's was no exception..

RS> Have you tried blowing in Optus's ear
RS> about their local phone call service yet ?

BG> No, but it can't be too far away now.

Dunno, its since been revealed that the cables aint enough,
there is some suggestion that the addition of the hardware to
allow the phone calls over those cables at the inner end will
take a while before they will be able to offer a local phone
service to too many, like something like the end of the year.

Corse, how much of that is Telstra porkies is another matter too.

BG> We've had them installing cables locally for a couple
BG> of weeks, so with a bit of luck, Optus' local calls will
BG> turn up a bit sooner than the recently mooted 12 months.

Hopefully.

BG> If I can eliminate the copper between here and the
BG> exchange, 90% of my attenuation problems should disappear.

Yeah, tho its an open question how well
their system will handle the 33.6K type stuff.

RS> Corse that would be REAL bleeding edge stuff right
RS> now, but with that decent USR capability to measure
RS> the lines themselves, could be very interesting indeed.

BG> Can't be any worse than the current lines.

It can actually, if they deliberately limit the bandwidth.

BG> Bloody hell, some calls to Paul connect at 28800,
BG> while others are as low as 16800 lately, and this appears
BG> to be completely unrelated to the time of day, too.

Yeah, but thats not that likely to be the line having changed, more
likely just the usual problem of those two modems not liking each
other much, maybe the rather fucked line probe data causing atleast one
of the modems to do what doesnt actually makes sense on that session.

RS> Main problem from your point of view is that the weekday offpeak
RS> rates are much more expensive than Telstras for mail runs etc.

BG> True, but by the same token, Optus also GUARANTEE that their
BG> bill will never be dearer than the equivalent bill from Telstra,

Only for ONE month tho, not in perpetuity.

BG> so it might be worth considering taking them up on their offer.

Yeah, you can certainly choose to deliberately gouge them for that
month. In fact they pay you double the difference if they are higher.
@EOT:

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