Telstra who have a “shocking” customer support and billing reputation now want to start installing consumer TV’s and PC’s in the home. They are also set to move into the home installation market up against CEDIA members and installers by offering fibre network upgrades.
Earlier today the Company, who’s CEO David Thodey, has admitted that Telstra delivers a “poor” consumer experience unveiled a suite of services in an effort to deliver a one-stop shop for home computer home entertainment and network problems.
The service that will compete directly with services offered by Dick Smith, Harvey Norman and JB Hi F will also see customers of custom installers offered services such as rewiring homes and apartments with fibre cable to the installation in the future of security, home entertainment and automation devices.
The new program is all part of a new range of packages aimed at lifting the falling revenues of the national carrier.
Called Telstra Plus Premium the new support package which will cost between $99 and $269 an hour and will provide remote or on-site technical support to help consumers install and upgrade software and hardware devices.
Telstra staff will repair virus-infected devices and connect notebooks, PCs and iPads to a home network. They will also install entertainment devices.
“The multimedia world means that customers have more devices and all these devices are interconnected and they are all networked in the home,” Telstra chief operations officer Michael Rocca said.
“Today there is no one that offers the whole range of services so we just want to be a one-stop-shop for our customers to provide these services.”
The Australian newspaper said that National Electrical and Communications Association recently claimed that residents and some businesses could have to pay up to $3000 a premise to rewire their homes to ensure internet enabled devices in the home – like IPTV – can fully exploit the potential of 100 megabit per second internet speeds.
“As either the NBN rolls out, if it does roll out, or if a fibre solution happens, it means that the work we do in consumers’ premise becomes more strategically important for us.Over the next 12 months we will be developing more and more services as we go along and that will include some of those Ethernet installations.” Mr Rocca said.
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