Fri, 21 Oct 2005

Network troubles get worse

I hope to be back to normal in a week or so.

Right. A week later, my connectivity issues have gotten so much worse...

Yesterday, I was trying to do some of my neglected Debian work at my mother's house (namedly, updating some packages for GNOME 2.12.1), when the ADSL modem lost its link and didn't come up again. As it was a bit late, I just cursed the nth incident with Wanadoo and left until the next day.

Today, when I go back there, my sister asks if I can have a look, because there's no Internet. I suspect that the Wanadoo people have finally freed us and have cancelled our contract as we asked for two weeks ago. I phone and they confirm this is it. I then ask, innocently, if I am free to sign up with any other telco. They say I now need to wait, without any internet service, until the telephone line is freed so any other company can take care of it. That will happen in thirty or fourty days. WTF! I'm sure this can be reported somewhere, it's totally unacceptable.

I've had to come to my father's house, out of the city, to do the most urgent pending tasks, and it'll be a pain to do this throughout the week. The good news is that today I got a call from Telefonica telling me that my modem should arrive at home on Monday, and some other day my own DSL link will start working. Hopefully that'll happen even before I leave to my American adventure. I am sure The Acetarium will be ready for my arrival.

If you're waiting for some upload from me, please have a bit of patience because my current situation is making it quite difficult.

21:11 | [] | # | (comments: 2)

Don't expect Wanadoo, or any other provider, to tell you "Oh, you can sign-up with the competition any time you want and the service will be perfect, unlike ours". Chose you provider, ask them when will you have the service and let them fight Wanadoo or whatever over the line.

Just a thought...

Posted by Carlos at Mon Oct 24 15:38:40 2005

> They say I now need to wait, without any internet
> service, until the telephone line is freed so any
> other company can take care of it. That will
> happen in thirty or fourty days.

I had the same experience recently when I switched from Demon to Tiscali.  Asked to cooperate with a transfer to Tiscali (which ISPs are required to do in the Netherlands), Demon proceeded to cut off service while keeping the physical wire reserved and continuing to charge me.  This was more of a headache than it sounds because it took me a long time to figure out that Demon's "reservation" was the reason that Tiscali kept rejecting my application to subscribe.

Posted by Thomas Hood at Mon Oct 24 16:57:17 2005