I’ve got phone troubles. Apologies if you’ve been trying to ring my home land-line phone. You would have heard the first two long tones of a dial-up modem, then fading away and disconnection. On my handset I see “Check tel line”.

I must admit it’s very convenient for the two robot charity calls I get every day. It automatically hangs up on them, the pests. They never give up, even though I never answer them.

Anyway, I’ve called iiNet Support and I’m just waiting for them to call me back on my yuppie phone. Useful things, those, at times. I made a big mistake by installing Facebook on mine, though, and I’m plagued by notifications. I’ve uninstalled it. Same for YouTube. These are incredible time wasters.

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OK, iiNet have called back and I’ve enrolled my voice in their computer for future voice verification of my identity. Amazing.  They heard the fault when they rang me, so they’ve scheduled a technician to call around some time in the next week. Seems to me it’s an exchange fault, but it’s their money.

I also said I’ve found I can’t receive international calls (i.e. from Bali) on my “handy”. However, while I was on the line, I looked at the settings in iiNet Toolbox and found that it was set to bar outgoing international calls. My problem is incoming, but still …  I’ve changed it to allow calls and she said it can take up to two days to take effect. Really? Anyway, I’ll try a call later.

I also found the switch to allow my number to be listed with my address in the printed White Pages directory, so I’ve set that to Allow as well. That also takes two weeks.

Finally, I actually made the application to move to the NBN yesterday. I have FTTH, Fibre To The Home, available, so I get full speed up to 100Mb/s if I want it. But I’ve chosen 25Mb/s with a 250GB monthly data allowance for cost reasons, but I can change it if I want to. One reason would be to get 4K programs from Netflix, but I don’t need that.

This change means my home phone becomes a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) phone, and I’ll lose my service for 2-5 days while they swing it over. That’ll be next week some time.

So all in all, it’s all happening. Phew!

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