‘Bizarre’ case in ultrafast UFB work

everything you currently control with a desktop or an app, from home heating to ordering pizzas to booking flights to filing your GST.

It also unbundles the internet from keyboards and the written word, literally giving the disenfranchised digital voice.

Amazon’s already sighted this wave and is surfing it, from its Amazon Fresh ‘‘dash’’ wand which allows you to yell out shopping list items as you realise you need them, to its Alexa voice platform.

Alexa powers Echo – an inhome digital speaker you control with your voice. In 2014 Echo delivered shopping lists, in 2015 it expanded to reordering past purchases by voice, and now it allows you to order new items.

If you needed any more proof of the disruption in store, three months ago Alexasite won the Disrupt New York Hackathon. Alexasite lets designers change and update websites just by voice commands, and in doing so suddenly put a bunch of people out of work.

One of Dylan’s best songs is Subterranean Homesick Blues .It features the great line ‘‘you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind’s blowing’’.

Just as Dylan’s voice changed the direction of music, the digital spoken word will change the direction of the internet.

The question is, will it leave you behind? If you’ve got an app that doesn’t work via voice, if you’ve got a business that relies on on-screen advertising around search, or if you’ve got a company that preys on the disenfranchised, then you’d better start working on a plan B.

Mike ‘‘MOD’’ O’Donnell is an e-commerce manager and a professional director. His Twitter handle is @modsta and he reckons Highway 61 Revisited is the best Bob Dylan album. Broadband customers are being advised to stick up for their rights after a 71-year-old woman ended up having to climb on top of a hot water cylinder to plug in her phone.

Derek Pullen, manager of the Telecommunications Disputes Resolution (TDR) scheme, said the ‘‘bizarre’’ case, in which ultrafast broadband (UFB) equipment was installed in an inaccessible hot water cupboard, was an extreme example of a wider issue.

Some technicians were tending to install UFB equipment where it was convenient for them, not best for customers.

‘‘I think people feel they are obliged to accept where the technicians think the placement should be,’’ Pullen said.

‘‘The message I want to get out is ‘you are the customer’ and you should be the one deciding, perhaps with a bit of advice.’’

TDR highlighted the case of the 71-year-old woman in its annual report, but did not identify her or the UFB company involved.

The installer persuaded the woman to buy materials from a hardware store and let him install her UFB Optical Network Terminal (ONT) in her hot water cupboard.

She was told to put a blanket on the cylinder for the modem.

TDR said the woman’s landline stopped working after UFB was installed and, in the course of troubleshooting the problem with her internet provider, she was asked to climb into the hot water cupboard and onto the cylinder so that she could plug in her landline.

‘‘The customer contacted the TDR service. She considered that she had been mistreated by her provider. She felt that the ONT was in the wrong place, especially if she had to plug her phone directly into it to get it to work.’’

Pullen said the case was one that stood out among the 2619 customer complaints the TDR handled in the year to June. ‘‘It was an unusual one – a little bit bizarre.’’

But TDR had also dealt with cases where ONTs had been installed in garages – again probably for the convenience of installers.

A more common problem was installation where the wi-fi connection was poor.

UFB installers are generally paid for the job, rather than their time.

Chorus is the country’s largest UFB network company but spokesman Nathan Beaumont said he was confident the hot-water cupboard job hadn’t been one of its installs.

Chief executive Mark Ratcliffe downplayed the number of complaints Chorus had received and said it required installers to reach a pre-installation agreement with householders about where equipment would be placed.

He likened that process to a negotiation. If customers wanted ONTs installed in a place that was logical for them but difficult for the installer, then the installer would ‘‘just work that through with the customer’’.