West Australians are less satisfied than ever with our telephone and internet providers, with record numbers reaching out to the Telecommunications Ombudsman last year to help fix their problems.

There has been a big national spike in complaints about the National Broadband Network, the Ombudsman’s annual report revealed.

In WA 13,623 people needed the Ombudsman’s intervention on intractable issues in the 2016-17 financial year — up by almost 50 per cent on the previous year.

They include 6003 problems with bills, 4982 complaints of service faults and 1913 issues with connections. Eight of the 10 Perth suburbs with the most complaints were in key marginal seats, including key government battlegrounds of Pearce, Hasluck, Swan and Canning.

The spike comes after three years of declining complaints from WA to Ombudsman Judi Jones’ office.

The report does not detail the number of NBN complaints from WA, where less than half of the 506,000 households reached by its network have bothered to switch over.

But almost 27,200 Australians complained about services delivered over the NBN in 2016-17, a jump of 160 per cent from the previous year.

The Ombudsman said that not all of the complaints could be fairly laid at the door of the NBN Co because of its complex relationship with internet service providers, home systems and the remnant copper network.

About 60 per cent of NBN complaints came from customers connected to the national network and related to alleged faults in the service.

NBN chief executive Bill Morrow said that less than 15 per cent of complaints were directed by the Ombudsman to the Government-owned company.

“We are working with retail service providers to improve these figures,” he said.





media_camera Greenwood resident Mark Mullett is finally getting high speed internet using a wi-fi connection.



In WA, some customers are not happy because they cannot get access to the NBN and the super-fast internet it promises. Others can, but are not happy with what they are paying for.

Put those two groups together and there are a lot of unhappy people longing for a faster connection.

Mark Mullett has given up on the NBN arriving at his Greenwood house. After eight years battling to get improved service from the old copper network, the industrial scientist has given up and moved his family home on to a wireless-only provider.

Mr Mullett said the situation had gone beyond a joke, until he found a wireless provider he could trust.

media_camera The NBN has delivered the improvements many were promised. Picture: Sharon Smith.

He could not download data for work. His wife, a schoolteacher, could not communicate with her students.

His children, both studying, were occasionally forced to use his mobile phone as a wireless “hotspot” to complete their homework.

The speed he gets on the wireless network is not close to the speeds promised by the NBN, but it would do for now, he said.

“I couldn’t afford to upgrade the copper to my house out of my own pocket, so I don’t know the NBN would do us much good anyway,” he said.

Julian Richards was an early convert, signing on for the top NBN plan available the moment it arrived in Beechboro.

He was promised download speeds of up to 100 megabits a second and was getting less than 17mbps when the service arrived.

Despite spending more than $1000 on new modems and on improving the wiring in his house, internet speeds are still only half of the theoretical peak under his first plan.

Fortunately, his ISP allowed him to downgrade his plan to reflect the the actual speeds it was delivering, to save a few dollars a month.

When he asked the NBN what it would take to replace his old copper with fibre, he was charged $660 for a quote with the actual cost likely to run into the thousands.

A month later, it has to still deliver on even that.

“Essentially I’ve thrown away $660 on something I probably can’t afford anyway,” he said.

Originally published as WA's NBN complaint hotspots