Since moving to Dereel in July 2007, I have had extreme problems maintaining network connectivity. I've tried:

• Telstra “BigPond” “NextG” wireless. It would have been OK except for the record-breaking incompetence of Telstra's “support” staff, which ultimately led to me cancelling the service.

• IPStar satellite, supplied by a variety of ISPs who kept giving up and selling to the next. The last was SkyMesh. The support, both from IPStar and SkyMesh was appalling, though not as bad as Telstra. The link was extremely unreliable, and of course there's no way to eliminate the satellite latency, something that politicians conveniently ignore. Ultimately SkyMesh terminated the service because they weren't prepared to investigate the problems I had been experiencing, claiming that this was a modem problem.

• I was so desperate that in October 2010 I tried going back to Telstra. Once again, they compensated for a well-functioning network with terminally brain-dead support people.

  An example: I complained about lack of SMTP connectivity. The “support” consultant didn't understand. I asked for his supervisor. I had to explain that this was a network connectivity issue, that it had nothing to do with the software I used (postfix), and that postfix is an MTA, not a client. I later discovered that he had entered the complaint as:

  T VoIP not working: Wants to configure postfix email client using outgoing and incoming mail server mail.venus.com.

  There's almost nothing in that text that is more than a vague representation of the truth. Finally the Telstra people determined that they didn't support my operating system, and they refunded everything I had paid.

• Currently I have been connected with Internode's NodeMobile Data service. How is it working? Parts of it are excellent. But it's still not reliable enough, not as reliable as the Telstra network connection. It's not clear where the problem is, so I'll first confirm beyond any doubt that it's not my problem.