Telstra has promised a bug fix this Thursday to customers upset with the patchy performance of its T-Hub next-generation fixed telephone system.

On Saturday The Sydney Morning Herald quoted an online reputation management consultant as saying that the T-Hub was sent to the market too early — “with technological flaws that should have been remedied during the testing period”, based on a study of references online to the device.

In a blog post yesterday, Telstra’s executive director of Fixed Voice & Broadband Products Craig Turner said the telco recognised that not all features had met every customer’s expectation from day one. Contrary to the Sydney Morning Herald’s report, he said, Telstra was listening to its customers on the matter.

“For instance, you have told us that from time to time T-Hub’s screen freezes, applications close unprompted and that the web browser intermittently runs out of memory when loading complex web pages,” said Turner. “From this Thursday (16 September) we will release our next software update for T-Hub which will reduce the instances in which customers experience these issues.”

Turner also said Telstra would continue to introduce new features and more improvements to the T-Hub — for example, in the coming weeks, the telco will introduce the ability to initiate a call from a White Pages search result as well as adding in a larger range of internet radio stations to the device.

Customers with faulty batteries and power adaptors have also been encouraged to return them to Telstra for replacement.

“Finally, we’re aware that some people have described T-Hub as a competitor to theiPad or as an alternative to the PC,” said Turner. “This isn’t the case and customers should expect a web browsing on the T-Hub that’s more akin to browsing the internet on a mobile phone than browsing on a PC.

A number of respondents on Telstra’s blog congratulated the telco for recognising the issue.

“I was relieved to see that we were not alone in experiencing problems with our T-Hub,” wrote one customer. “We are on our second one and it has the same problems as the first – freezing up, screen not responsive, needing to be rebooted at least once a day.”

The T-Hub was launched in April as a significant initiative from Telstra designed to build in smartphone capability to the traditional landline telephone. The device features an 18cm touch screen that not only allows users to make and receive phone calls, but also to receive and send text messages, browse the internet, play music and radio stations, view the latest news, sport and weather and organise events with an in-built calendar.

Telstra sells the T-Hub for $299 upfront and has sold about 50,000 of the devices so far.

Image credit: Telstra

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1. Brett Jones
   Posted 14/09/2010 at 6:06 pm | Permalink | Reply

   I,m now on my 3rd T Hub. The first 2 had power adapter faults and the third had a communication problem with a Thompson gateway modem. I did manage to build 1 working unit out of the 3 only to have the screen freeze and the base station lock up. I would like to endorse this product but find it difficult to do so. Maybe telstra will have better quality control with the next generation t hub?

2. Tobias
   Posted 15/09/2010 at 8:11 pm | Permalink | Reply

   I have yet to walk into a non-Telstra store where the demo T-Hub is not either frozen or rebooting, or doesn’t become so after a few seconds of playing around with it. It’s a mystery to me that Telstra ever sold any of these things at all.

3. Anon
   Posted 07/10/2010 at 7:17 pm | Permalink | Reply

   LOL T-Hub is a piece of Crap !
   I walked into TelstraStore to demo it and it crashed in 10seconds !!!!!

4. matt
   Posted 17/10/2010 at 10:55 am | Permalink | Reply

   i believe the T-hub is made by Sagem in France. They call it a Tabee. Hopefully they can fix these issues.

5. susie stevenson
   Posted 12/12/2010 at 4:30 pm | Permalink | Reply

   disappointed with my t-hub,kept freezing then the charger wont charge-faulty,now have to wait for the recovery bag to come so i can get it replaced-get your act together telstra

6. arthurdyster
   Posted 22/12/2010 at 8:45 pm | Permalink | Reply

   my T-hub was inadvertanly turned off and when switched on does not light up the page.
   How do I adjust this, please ?

7. Anthony
   Posted 27/01/2011 at 6:11 pm | Permalink | Reply

   I bought the T Hubb back in April 2010 and was willing to put up with (well not really) the constant rebooting but now it has just frozen on the page with the message please wait until the system starts up. I would have paid twice as much for this system if it had actually done what it was meant to. Now its another trip back to the Telstra shop. Its a very poor mans i PAD of which i also have one and love.

8. Darren
   Posted 02/11/2011 at 4:26 pm | Permalink | Reply

   I liked my T-Hub so much, within and hour of setting it up I bought a second one on ebay. Another hour after that my brand new T-Hub froze. I re-set it then it froze again, and again, and again. My second hand ebay T-Hub turned up in the mail. I set it up and what do you know !!! It froze within a couple of hours. T-Hub is rubbish and I warn everyone NOT TO BUY ONE !

9. Rebecca
   Posted 17/11/2011 at 2:06 pm | Permalink | Reply

   We are currently on our 4th T-Hub after returning the last three after freezing, refusing to re-boot, the alarms not going off in the morning…….YOU NAME IT. This current one let us down this morning by not waking my husband for work, AGAIN. I have just rung telstra to tell them to KEEP their T-Hub and demanded a refund. Telstra were very obliging and apologetic, but I suggest not buying one for a while until they come up with one that is reliable!

10. Ricky
    Posted 17/12/2011 at 8:36 am | Permalink | Reply

    The entire t hub brand should have been recalled 12 months ago. My phone states out of range when it is less than a meter away from the modem

11. ryan-linda
    Posted 19/12/2011 at 1:59 pm | Permalink | Reply

    is a piece of crap,freezes like every one elses,but the worst part is ours rings every 30 seconds and when you pick it up no one is there but a dial tone,told telstra of this problem,and weve been waiting 2 weeks now for the problem to be fixed then today were told wait at least another 5 days,to anyone thinking about 1 of these boxes DONT bother.