How to Get a Phone Connected

I think I know at least one reason for the direction of this Telstra graph

Our farm is not far from anywhere, the nations capital is less than two hours away but we have zero phone reception.  No mobile and no landline. In some ways the idea of being cut off from the pressures of life is appealing but these days communication seems to be essential. We've tried walking up the hill and waving the mobile around hoping for at least one bar of reception, we've tried a booster aerial and failed. Finally we decided to take the ultimate step - contact Telstra to get a landline connected.

Here is a handy step by step guide to getting a Telstra landline
* the total number of hours left on hold =   for my own sanity I stopped counting!

Step 1   make at least four phone calls to different numbers
before you discover that you are not getting a phone connection, but a 'pre provisioning order'

Step 2   receive a pre provisioning order number and wait

Step 3   after several months of no action call to find that your order number has been misplaced and nothing has happened

Step 4   go to the back of the queue

Step 5   many weeks later, contractor arrives and begins work, says as soon as he confirms work we will have a phone.      Time frame - 7 - 10 days.

Step 6   after several weeks of no action call Telstra to discover that additional infrastructure work is required and the job will be scheduled in the future

Steps 7- 12  keep calling and waiting

the job that only took 8 months

Step 13   receive a phone call to inform us that we must be present on site for the next stage of work, and contractor will call to confirm. Explain that there is no phone reception so no use calling

Step  14  contractor gets lost, calls for directions, but as there is no reception I miss the call

Step 15  several weeks later, receive phone call from contractor asking what needs to be done, tell him we thought he would know.  He says no, but he'll go and find out.

Step 16  Exactly eight months to the day after first contacting Telstra we have a landline.