The combination of new technology with the potential to save money is irresistible to me, so I have gone naked. From reading forums it seems that the main reason that people are hesitant to switch, in Australia at least, is because of the inconvenient switching process, which involves the loss of broadband and telephone a period of up to 20 working days. Here's how my switch occurred:
| Sun 10th | Ordered Naked DSL on website |
| Mon 11th | Received email acknowledgment of Naked DSL request |
| Thu 14th | ADSL stopped working |
| Mon 18th | Received email advising that telephone would be switched over on Fri 22nd |
| Fri 22nd | By 9am the phone had stopped working. When I returned from work and plugged in the modem/router at 6pm the ADSL was back. No phone. |
| Mon 25th | Received email with my new VoIP details. My modem/router/VoIP box said my account did not exist on the VoIP server, so I used a mobile phone to contact my ISP. They spent 10 minutes fixing something at their end, and I finally had a working telephone at 7pm. |
Total broadband down-time: 9 days
Total phone down-time: 4 days
As my phone now connects to my modem instead of to a wall socket, and my modem is not near my phone, I had to do some rewiring to join them. Although I had plenty of spare telephone cables I didn't have any cable connectors. Luckily, ADSL filters, of which I have a surfeit, are a suitable substitute.
The final element of this journey is to discover if I do actually save money, and I'll need a few months of data to determine that.
Warning: stop reading now if you get easily annoyed. In theory the broadband and telephone downtime could be almost completely eliminated. The physical process of switching to Naked DSL simply involves moving a wire in the telephone exchange from one port to another. My ISP has stated informally that this should be a 10 minute operation. However, the company in control of the exchange earns a lot less money from Naked DSL than standard DSL users, so it's in their interests to dissuade people from switching. They therefore have a procedural hurdle for ISPs, and therefore their customers, to cross.
- ISP sends request for wire to be disconnected. After about a week technician is sent to exchange to remove wire.
- When ISP has been informed that wire is disconnected they are allowed to apply for the wire to be reconnected to a different port. After another week a technician (perhaps the same one) is sent out to the telephone exchange to reconnect the wire.
Apparently protestations are being made to the relevant authorities, with the potential for this process to be much faster in future.