Well I'm finally typing this blog entry out over a brand spanking new Naked ADSL2+ connection. To fill in since the last entry, the second tech (an Optus contracted one) came out on Thursday and signed off on the Telstra tech's connection. However, I still didn't have a connection: the signal to noise ratio was ridiculously low (higher is better), and the attenuation on the line was far too high for my distance from the exchange (lower is better there).

After ringing up my new ADSL ISP, Netspace, they did some open and closed line tests and got some pretty 'wacky results'. They logged a fault and another tech came out on Saturday. This guy was really good, and after suspecting and replacing a corroded contact at our end, after about 2 hours of investigation it turns out the pairs at the exchange end were jumpered wrong (no wonder I couldn't get a working service).

After he corrected that we're all good, but it astounds me that two previous techs had totally failed to pick that up.

Anywho, so the ADSL trial begins today. I'm a little disappointed at the speeds that i'm synced up at: i'm about 1.5kms away from the exchange and i'm getting about 11mb down. I thought i'd be at least a few megabits higher than that. I'll be running the cable and the ADSL side-by-side for at least a few weeks, and then make a final decision.

As things go with stuff like this, after I made the decision to sign up with Netspace, Bigpond announced that they will be 'imminently' revising their plans to be more competitive AND Internode just enabled a DSLAM at my exchange, either of which events would have made me pause before signing with anyone for ADSL. Ah well.

I stayed up last night to watch the North-London derby, which Arsenal ran out 3-0. The second goal was really special, they were still showing the replay of the first goal and just cut back in time to see Fabs scoring a magnificent goal straight from the Spurs kick-off. Watch it here. Just awesome.