Web fit for a snail

By Melissa Meehan
INTERNET is at a creeping pace in Pakenham, leaving residents with an often slow connection or no connection to the world wide web.
Pakenham resident Don Whelan says his is almost unworkable as soon as the clock strikes 4pm until 9pm.
“Obviously, it’s when the kids get home from school, and then their parents,” Mr Whelan said.
“My internet works fine any other time, but from the end of school ’til later in the night it’s barely at a crawl.
He said he had made many complaints to his provider, who, in turn, told him it was a case of the system in Pakenham needed to be upgraded.
They have since promised him that it would be upgraded in November, but already half way through the month Mr Whelan said he had seen no improvement.
Many residents are forced to pay a premium price for wireless internet because of the lack of available internet ports in the area – and wireless connections were often slower than the broadband connections.
Michael Palombieri said he had a wireless connection from both Telstra and Optus and couldn’t believe how slow and unusable it was in a town the size of Pakenham.
Denyale Juffs-King said Telstra had said it was a congestion problem.
“The further away from the tower, the slower it becomes, but they told us that the new towers are being upgraded this year.”
After calling Telstra nearly every day for two weeks, Nicole Zinnow said Tesltra finally told her that they were upgrading the line and that users would experience no or slow internet until the end of December.
The News contacted Telstra for comment on the issue, but at the time of print had received no response.