Getting VDSL hasn’t been quite as easy as I expected, let me tell you the story.
To be fair, we aren’t a straightforward upgrade to VDSL. We can’t afford any downtime during business hours to swap modems etc as our phones are all VoIP running over our existing ADSL connection.
But from a user’s point of view, it is just getting VDSL put on a spare phone line from a different company.
May 2011: We got the go ahead to take part in an ISP VDSL trial, however we would have to supply our own modem. So we got online and purchased a ZyXEL P-870H-51a V2 VDSL modem from the US. It took a few weeks to arrive, and by the time I got a NZ power supply for it, Telecom Wholesale were no longer letting people on the trial 
9 September: ISP tweets:
VDSL is available! $50 add-on on top of our normal packages. ($55 naked DSL + $50 for VDSL – 5GB data. for example) 0800 276 232 T&C apply ^AL
15 September: Called ISP and went to place the VDSL order. Apparently VDSL is only available as Naked DSL so we have two options, get a new line installed for ~$350 or bring one of our existing lines over. Decide to bring one of our existing lines over because we have one that we aren’t really using, but for some reason it is showing up in the database as already having ADSL on it. Will confirm that it doesn’t and call back tomorrow!
16 September: I get someone on site to trace that line back to our demarc and verify it really doesn’t have ADSL. Tell ISP to go ahead with provisioning on that number. Find out later in the day that it is going to be lots quicker if we get CallPlus to relinquish the line first, then we can just get DSL activated on that pair.
21 September: The line gets relinquished, so we give ISP the nod to put through the order. Fingers crossed it isn’t far away now!
23 September: Got a call from ISP saying that Chorus have come back asking for $400 in wiring fees, because the line hasn’t previously had DSL on it. How does that work? Signing up for DSL on a line that hasn’t had it before doesn’t cost anything. So, I request that we sign up for ADSL and then we will just get that upgraded to VDSL. ISP confirms this should be fine, although it will take longer. Fine with me.
30th September: Chrous came around to install ADSL, all syncs fine.
5th October: Notified in form of a chorus visit that VDSL has been activated on the line! Plug in our VDSL modem only to find
I wasn’t expecting good performance but I thought the upstream would be better than it is!
Back to the drawing board, will have to keep our two DSL connections and perhaps should look into EUBA 180kbps for the voice connection.
The DSL stats on our ADSL2 line next to this one are:
So the tiniest improvement in downstream but upstream is no good at all.
I’ve got VDSL getting installed at another location on Monday so hopefully that one is more successful!
