Slow broadband problems admitted to by Optus

A user who signed up for the Optus Naked DSL service base on the telcos claim that his broadband connection would only be slowed down to 128Kbps once his download limit had been reached, which would be fine for basic internet and email access, has made a complaint over problems with the throttling of the service.

The issue he found was that every time his download limit was reached his broadband connection was consistently reduced to 64Kbps, which was half the rate being claimed by Optus.

The user wrote “According to Optus’ Standard Form of Agreement (SFoA) the naked plans are supposed to be shaped to 128k when the data limit is reached. They are not, however. Optus shapes all plans (7GB, 15GB and 30GB) to 64k. They also provide the 64k figure to their tech support staff as I’ve had this repeated back to me a number of times, until I got through the tedious process of click by click to get the rep to read section 4.2(e) of the DSL Direct Pricing Table. I’ve been told that Optus senior technicians are aware of this and are working on it, but they have no idea how long it will take to rectify and affected customers just have to deal with it.

He also added “I raised this issue over a month ago and was given some ‘bonus’ data to return my service to full speed as a fix. I started on the 7GB, ran it out and got 64k. Upped to the 15GB, ran it out and got 64k.  Upped to the 30GB, ran it out and got 64k. Surely it can’t take 5 weeks to change the shaping setting on the routers from 64k to 128k?”

In response to this complaint Optus explained that it had never intended to offer 128Kbps once the download limit was reached by its customers and that it had made an error in its documentation.

The company stated “Optus can confirm that its Standard Forms of Agreement (SFoAs) on the Optus website incorrectly stated that customers on the Naked Broadband ‘My 7GB’, ‘My 15GB’ and ‘My 30GB’ would be throttled at 128 Kb when the data allowance was exceeded. The SFoAs should have stated the throttling speed as 64 kb for all plans,” the spokesperson said.

All customers using the Naked Broadband ‘My 7GB’, ‘My 15GB’ and ‘My 30GB’ plans will now be contacted by Optus and be given the option of cancelling their Optus contract without penalties or cancellation fees said Optus.

In response to this Optus have apologised for any inconvenience caused by this mistake and have now corrected its documentation.