Moorooka,

                                    Qld, Australia, 4105

                                    20 Jan 2000                       Graham Wallace

CEO

C&W                 

Dear Mr Wallace,

                        I wish to draw your attention to the irresponsible behaviour of your senior staff at Optus -- your Australian operation.

                        It will do enormous damage to Optus if it becomes generally known in Australia that their network is not Internet-friendly.  I am on the brink of sending out press releases to all the major Australian news organizations to tell them exactly that and what are Optus doing?  Denying that there is a problem.   They are trusting in the Goebbels "big lie" technique, despite the fact that it did not do Dr. Goebbels much good.

                        When I changed my local phone service from Telstra to Optus, I began to get contact with my ISP constantly broken off -- usually soon after I had got online.  I rang my ISP to complain and as soon as I described my problem to their technician, he said, "I'll bet you've got an Optus local line". I agreed that I had and they said that broken internet contacts were a common problem for people using Optus wires.

                        I contacted Optus and their technician rang me about it.  He acknowledged that it was common for users of Optus local lines to have problems with broken Internet connections and proceeded to talk me through about an hour's adjustments to my software that were supposed to solve the problem.   That lot of adjustments did some good but not much.  I am now trying new adjustments in the hope of eliminating the problem.

                        So the technicians know that the Optus system is very difficult to use with the internet but your senior Australian staff are pretending not to know that.  I have asked them to refund the cost of all my broken connections but they refuse point blank.  Unless you can be persuaded to talk sense to them, I will have no option but to pursue my claim on them by other means -- and publicity is a good means.

                        I reproduce below their final word to me on the subject:

                        Yours faithfully,

                        (Dr.) JOHN RAY

Dear Dr. Ray,

Thank you for your e-mail of 20th January 2000. I have requested further information from Cable & Wireless Optus regarding the issues in your note. Please rest assured that this matter is being investigated fully. We will reply to you shortly.

Yours sincerely,

Graham Wallace