Sorry to hear about this happening to you.  Similar happened to me a couple of years ago.  I lost my landline phone number of 20+ years, and had to have it replaced with another number for some reason that didn't sound very likely. After multiple calls and hours on the phone over several days, there was absolute refusal to reinstate the old service, despite being promised initially if I paid the full amount for reconnection (which I did) that I would receive a credit / refund for connection charge, and account would be reinstated along with my existing phone number.     My suggestion would be to put in claim with Ombudsman as soon as practical (within the boundaries of Ombudsmans limits of oversight) if you aren't being provided with the service that you have contracted for / or are requesting as per services offered.   You haven't requested the cancellation of your service, so you should be provided with the reason why/who initialted the cancellation, or the reinstatement of your service, possibly with compensation / credit for days without telephony (from memory there is a mandatory payment required by statue).    One thing to watch for with a prepaid service is that should your payment method fail (ie new credit card) providers have been known not to make positive contact with the account holder and the situation arises where a customer account is closed, leaving the customer with no internet/phone and no apparent option but to arrange for and pay the fees for reconnection.   This is not acceptable where the customer has not knowingly missed their payment, and likely a situation the Ombudsman would award in the customers favour, shoudl they make a complaint.  It might be worthwhile checking your account payment status. If this has happened you should be told this is the reason for the "request to close the account" which is actually an internal request to the appropriate actioner to but from experience this may not be disclosed to you until multiple calls later, wasting a lot of time and frustration.     Best of luck... ... View more

Hi TPG, Can you please advise answers to our questions below in relation to this subject (VPN / security / service), so that I may pass onto my group who are all TPG customers.  The relevant background information as per our phone conversations has been summarised below for ease of reference.    1 - Please confirm or advise otherwise that the VPN Server functionality has been removed permanaently from the TPLink VR1600 modem that we use to connect to the Internet, and that this is a permanent security upgrade for our benefit?    2 - Please confirm or advise otherwise that the removal of the system logs, and bandwidth monitoring from the VR1600 modem similarly will result in a security benefit for TPG customers?   3 - Please confirm or advise otherwise that the use of TLS1.0 protocol in any communications of the VR1600 modem is not a security concern, and that we do not need to worry about this from a security perspective?   4 - Please advise any and all actions required to be taken on customer side to ensure the continued and best possible network and customer security is provided by TPG's security team, without interuption?   5 - Please advise which modem is recommended by TPG to replace or supplement the VR1600 in regards to VPN server functions? Alternatively please advise the steps required to reinstate the VPN functionality, as built into the modem either as supplied at time of purchase, or as improved to comply with TPG security standards?   6 - Please advise the specific improvements in security that have been gained by this decision to modify the VR1600 and remove the VPN server function? This need not be a technical response, just enough for our members to know what improvements were made - they can use WolframAlfa to detail the specifics themselves.   We were a little taken aback when TPG disclosed it had modified the firmware of our modem, to remove functionality, without our consent, and at unavoidable and considerable inconvenience and expense, but the advice from your staff has helped me convince the others that this was a necessary security upgrade.  (As I convinced the rest of the group to utilise a common provided to standardise our equiment/services I do feel responsible to all of them when things like this, which really shouldn't  happen, do.)    Before we incur further cost in purchasing and commissioning new modems, and documentation updates at each property we would like assurance that this feature is permanently removed from our device/service with TPG and won't be reenabled some time after we have gone to this effort and cost.    Incidentally, at least one member has received professional advice that advises the removal is not (by itself) beneficial from a security perspective, and that it apparent even to the layperson as we are simply purchasing new hardware to replicate the feature removed from our hardware but I think I have talked him around based on the responses TPG has given, and he now wants reassurance about the permanancy of the change.    Another member received advice that the removal of the feature from our hardware is in breach of Australian Consumer Law and common law property rights. I haven't been able to convince him otherwise, I expect I will end up paying for his modem.   I think I have managed to convince the group on the need for them to pay for the new modems as increased Internet security in light of advice from TPG on this forum.  The ransomware attack we experienced in February has been a great cost to all involved and it is of some comfort that this change will be to our benefit in a security sense. We are awaiting experts report, and hopefully insurance will cover the significant costs of this attack, I just hope the lack of system logs will not be detrimental in this regard, fingers crossed!   I was told in initial phone query that TPG had faced extra costs because of Covid19 and more people working from home so have been proceeding on the implication that rather than being a service / feature of hardware which has been removed, instead we are paying for the increased security of having the VPN Server functionality removed from the VR1600 and the separate benefit of having VPN sever functionality provided by a secure method, allowing VPN necessary to working from home.    Thank you in advance.       @Anonymous wrote: Hi @gbartlett28,   Welcome to the community!   We provide the modem for all our NBN plans as they are sold as an Internet & Home Phone Bundle,currently our supplied modem/router do not support the VPN feature, we will definitely take this into consideration for any future firmware upgrades. We'd like to set your expectation that we can no longer downgrade the modem/router from previous released firmware.    In the mean time if you wish to use VPN you have option to use a 3rd party modem/router or a VPN application supplied by VPN provider.   Regards,     I had a VPN set up. I don't use it often, but when I do it needs to work because I'm not at home to fix things.   I don't recall a notice from TPG saying that the VPN functionality was scheduled to be disabled.   I want to know, under the terms of my contract with TPG, who owns my modem? If I own it, then surely TPG should not be disabling functionality without asking me.   Your solution of using third-party VPN means that I need to buy additional hardware.   What do you have to say? ... View more

Hi BasilDV,   Yrd the 1MB/8Mb /s speed is the actual download rate achievable as observed from multiple independant data sources over approx two years now (P2P, www, ftp, etc.) Speed test results are higher that this (around the 30/10 Mbps mark)   That said over the last week or so I am glad to report that actual speeds of around 30Mb/s are observed for the first time in ages! Can you please tell me if anything has changed on our account?    I cannot view the system log or traffic monitor section in Archer as these pages are (disabled?) do not load any data.    My concerns with the modem security is largely because of the it's use of TLS1.0 communications which is a broken encryption standard.  Surely this can be improved.  As per OP I recently lost very valuable data to a ransom attack after the attacker encrypted large amounts of data that have great commercial and personal value to me.  ... View more