Naked DSL, for those who are not aware, is an impressive-sounding piece of technology that promises to free you of expensive phone bills.
In summary, since you can now run Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) phones which actually route your phone calls over the
internet rather than the phone system, the next logical thing to look at is why have a "normal" phone at all? However, today you need a phone
line to run your DSL connection over.
So, you pay say $30 to Telstra to give you a phone line, then $30-60 to your DSL provider for bandwidth, and then run free phone calls over the top of that.
See that $30 number at the start? It's paying for a phone line with the ability to make phone calls,
which you now no longer need.
Enter Naked DSL. It's just a raw phone line no longer capable of making phone calls, it is naked in the sense that all it can do is host a DSL session. Cost savings abound.
This much information you can find out anywhere else online, such as most Naked DSL provider's websites. This far I had read before deciding to save the mother-in-law some money and set her up with a connection through
iiNet - itself a nightmare but the root cause goes deeper than that.
The core problem with Naked DSL in Australia is that
Telstra techs don't understand it.
Four times now she has been disconnected by Telstra (NOT iiNet) who, when probing around in either the local junction box or the exchange for free lines to connect other customers, find hers, and
perform their standard check of whether a line is available - look for a dial tone.
But, from the brief explanation above, you will probably summise that Naked DSL
does not have a dialtone!.
So, techs disconnect her, connect some other now-happy customer insted, and move on. Our poor heroine in this story is left with no DSL connection, a DSL provider who correctly insists that they have done nothing, and, for kicks, no phone to even call and complain.
Once for this to happen is excessive - especially when iiNet insisted that the end-user had to change the modem, check all the cabling, find the non-existent MFD on site, etc. etc. This took a month and a half.
The second time I was furious, but it only took them a week to get her reconnected. Each time now it takes a few days, but to get through to them takes a long mobile phone call or two, and then a report from iiNet to Telstra, which they act on lazily, in their own time, despite it being
their techs and outdated practices which caused the ungodly mess in the first place.
Despite the cost savings, I simply can't recommend Naked DSL today. I told this to a few friends who signed up anyway. Last I spoke to one of them, the exact same thing had just happened to him...