Like many unsuspecting foreigners who tried to get their own phone line and an acceptable broadband connection in Australia, Vickie, after some research, stupidly went with Optus’ phone line. Surely as a competitor, Optus would provide all of what Telstra could provide… or so she thought. (But they do offer an online sign-up with even their cheapest plan, which is really nice to people who have a phone anxiety like yours truly. (Don’t worry, nobody else who knows about this takes my anxiety seriously either.))

Apparently, however, with Optus’ phone line you’re pretty much stuck with Optus’ ADSL plans or nothing, which, of course, the company never mentioned or hinted because they want to sell their own overpriced products. What also irked me was that none of my Australian computerphile and technophile friends who heard about my plan of getting a new connection seem to be aware of this, or didn’t think it was necessary to warn me at all. No, it’s not their fault; I just want to blame someone, okay? THIS IS MY BLOG!

Anyway… Now I’m practically down to 5 options:

  1. Continue to share the connection with the landlord’s family and let the phone line die after 12 months, all the while try not to kill the landlord’s son, and try not to let the landlord’s son kill me; or

  2. find an affordable, i.e. non-existent, cable plan; or

  3. go with Optus’ Internet plans, which is way out of budget and essentially a rip-off; or

  4. cancel the phone line for a $200 fee, sign up with Telstra for $300, then sign up with the ISP of my choice; or

  5. build a time machine and try to stop my past self from signing up with Optus.

None of which, unfortunately, particularly appeals to me.

Or maybe I really need to just GTFO of this otherwise fine country.

*Warning: This is a long, rambly rant entry. (At least I warned you somewhere!)

UPDATE: Turns out there’s an old, inactive Telstra phone line lying around in the house so I looked into this Naked DSL thing. I called the Telstra people about the line at first and the woman yelled at me when she heard that I only wanted to get Naked DSL on it (I shouldn’t have told her that; or called Telstra, even).

I later called and signed up with iiNet (the rep laughed when he heard about the Telstra woman’s response); but the Optus tech used my Telstra line instead of giving me a new one so I had to call Optus to come in and fix it again (for free; the woman on the line was also very nice and polite). iiNet then did something and said my line was activated but I couldn’t get connected. I called in again and they said there’s something wrong with the Telstra line so a Telstra tech came in (for free). Telstra tech did something while I greeted him with morning breath…

36 days later, I’m finally connected to iiNet. The waiting period was very long in my case but things have been good so far otherwise. The friends say I get disconnected on MSN every now and then, though.

Special thanks to the landlord’s son and his girlfriend for their invaluable help. We don’t have to kill each other now.