Dotage and Broadband

I might be considered to be in my dotage and I might still be deaf as a post. I'm hoping that the latter will be remedied next Monday (the former being incapable of a remedy) and that the 1½ litres of warm olive oil in my right ear and the Otex in my left ear will have done the trick and the nurse can syringe my orifices successfully. Until then I can't even hear the keys being struck on the laptop. 

However, I am really peed off today. I was up at 0630 with the intention of having a really productive day. After having abluted (which, rhymingly, is the ablative absolute) I started checking my emails. Then my broadband started dropping again. It's been doing this for ages and it's very annoying. I tested the speed when it came back and it was 4mbps download. I'm supposed to get about 30mbps but I've NEVER had more than 23 and I consider 15mbps pretty good as a rule. 

It was 7am. wotthehellarchiewotthehell why not waste some time seeing if I could get something done about it. I have had a Vodafone mobile phone since 1990 and have always been very satisfied with the service and value for money. When I started with Vodafone Broadband a few years ago it was great. Any problems (the line blew down one day for example) you picked up the phone and instantly spoke to someone. Forget it. You "speak" to chatbot or noone. (which given that I'm temporarily deaf is probably a Good Thing). However the algorithms don't contemplate the possibility that one may be having a sporadic fault so after ¾ hour of fruitless going around in circles it offered me the opportunity to speak to someone.......and then closed down. 

However when I tested my speeds again they were the best for months and, so far, my connection hasn't dropped out for over 30 minutes. 

As a post script I should add that I have discovered that if I put my earbuds in I can actually just hear someone on my phone so can at least communicate on the mobile phone if absolutely necessary. 

SID 62. Commercial Loyalty

I have been a customer of  BT (British Telecom) and it's predecessor the General Post Office for the last half century give or take a week or two. They have provided my landline phone service and my broadband. I have very little to complain about these days because the service is pretty good and fairly reliable given the ancient final delivery infrastructure ie the clapped out cables down our road. However they are expensive. 

I have been a customer of Vodafone since 1992 for my cellphone/mobile phone when it was actually difficult to have a contract directly with Vodafone because they marketed through intermediaries. I still have the same base number I was issued with then.

BT have gradually, and sometimes not so gradually, increased what I pay for my service. They keep telling me how good my package is. My package is a landline and broadband. I make no calls on my landline. If I did I would be paying considerably more.

Vodafone, on the other hand, have given me a better deal year on year either increasing what I can use or decreasing what they are charging me.

Vodafone will now provide broadband too over my landline. They will charge me about £30 per month less than BT. 

The contract will start on my birthday. Happy Birthday.

Bye bye BT. 

Communications: An Update

About a month ago I posted about the trials and tribulations of communications via broadband here on Lewis and the feeling of frustration with the seeming insensitive incompetence (am I being too hard?) of BT. Well things have changed.

Shortly after my post a neighbour sent me a message saying that we (the three houses at the end of the township) could now get hi-speed broadband. Her son popped over to show me the actual message on his laptop. Within a few hours I had ordered hi-speed broadband from BT and been given this morning as the date for the engineer to install it and make the necessary changes at the 'green box' and the exchange.

The many (and I mean many) messages by text, email and phone reminding me that I had to be in this morning to receive the engineer were greeted with some scepticism by friends and family who have had such messages but not had the promised visit.

However by mid morning I had hi-speed broadband. Whoopee.

Within an hour, however, I had no broadband and no telephone. What's the opposite of 'whoopee'?

Long phone call to Laura at BT (very helpful), and many texts from, BT and I eventually got a call mid afternoon from a (different) engineer saying that he had mended my line between the green box and the exchange and all should now be hunky-dory. And so, this evening it seems to remain.

Instead of 1.6 Mbps I now have 32 Mbps. 

Long may it continue. Now, perhaps, I'll be able to read a blog and make a comment without having to wait ages for every stage to load. 

Why BT have told my other two neighbours  that they cannot get it remains one of those interminable BT mysteries which I really hope will soon sort itself out.

BT (British Telecom)

Warning: This post contains what might be considered a boring rant. 

Yet again I received a missive from BT after I arrived home from holiday. It is not the first such missive so I didn't get my hopes up too high. Which was just as well. 

After having jumped through the hoops that BT has managed to created when one does log in to bt.com/upgrade-now I discovered that for over twice the price that I am now paying I could have ......... wait for it ....... The speed I'm getting now (when I'm actually getting that speed)  which is between 1 and 2.5 Mbps. 2.5 not even 25. That's an improvement because last time I complained that my speed was down at between 0 and .5 Mbps when they tested it they got .9 Mbps and told me that that was all they were contracted to provide.

Now despite Jeremy Vine (who on his BBC fee alone can doubtless afford high-speed satellite broadband wherever he lives and it will doubtless be a tax-deductible necessity for his work anyway) uttering the inanity that people in the country live there 'because they want to get away from broadband and things'  life today relies in so many ways on having access to the internet. 

As we get older and the more remotely we live the more communication ability we require not just to keep in touch with people (which is a very important part of our physical and mental health and for which Skype and Facetime and the like are a real blessing) but for our everyday requirements even in dealing with the government where almost everything is now done on line.

Interestingly since I wrote this I decided to have another go at the upgrading procedure:

Now I don't know about you but my gut reaction is that 'Up to 17Mbps' may be strictly accurate but is totally misleading in that 3.5 (my previous offer said 2.5 which is the maximum that I can get and even then it tails away a lot) is nowhere near that. I should add that a engineer for BT Openreach said that I should get 8Mbps with no problems. However the line between the Green Box (where the fibre goes up to) at the top of the village about 750 metres away from the house is probably in a poor state of repair except for about 100 metres where it has  been renewed when my phone went off.

How do the rest of you fare and is anyone else still with BT? I've been with them since I bought my first house. I understand alternatives are now available here but until quite recently Sky and others refused even to countenance provision to my number.

Interestingly today I have discovered that my next door neighbour is eligible for fibre broadband.

Let battle commence.

Thankful Thursday: Work

Okay it's no longer Thursday and I don't work (for a living) any more. However I thought of this post yesterday (which was Thursday when I started this post) and was working (though not for a living) all week at my son and daughter-in-law's house to be (which is now almost ready for habitation) together with my son and various tradesmen. 

One of the things about working with other people is that BBC Radio 2 seems to be the default acceptable radio programme of choice (for non-UK residents Radio 2 is a popular light mixture of music and chat). One of the presenters is Jeremy Vine. So far as I can gather he indulges in a sort of pop journalism. Until last Thursday the words he had uttered had passed over or through my head without any of them stopping. On Thursday the subject of internet availability arose and my ears pricked up. The Government is to pump another couple of hundred million £s into making fast broadband available in remoter areas. Apparently I now have what BT regards as superfast broadband (If I'm lucky I have 2.5MbPS which is half of what I learned Netflix regards as needed for to watch a movie) so this is a subject close to my heart. 

And then the words that will forever lead to me holding the aforementioned Mr Vine in contempt. Paraphrased "If you live in a remote area why would you want or should you have broadband internet anyway. I thought the whole reason for living in a remote area was to get away from such things." Now I am realistic enough to know that he was being deliberately provocative but he carried on espousing that line of thought until I eventually went to work out of earshot. 

Then it occurred to me that there are probably millions of people in Watford who now believe that philosophy and will vote for independence from the Remote Areas thus ridding themselves of expensive members of the population who are such a drain on their taxes. Mind you we'd probably end up in the urban areas taking their jobs.

Happy Christmas.

BT Broadband - Again

Yesterday I actually managed to get a reading for my broadband speed which even BT would have to admit is exceptional and unacceptable (and theoretically impossible).

If you live on Lewis (and I'm sure many other places) then the chances are that the eternal cries of all the companies selling broadband at speeds we can only dream about will irritate you. Firstly let me say that I am grateful that I have broadband and a mobile/cell phone signal at all. Many do not. However my tussles with BT are reasonably well documented. Since my last series of visits from engineers about a year ago my broadband has, usually, been working. The speed wasn't great at about 1 Mbps. A few months ago the telephone exchange was upgraded to fibre and my speed went up to 2.5Mbps. Whoopee.

A few days ago I lost it completely and then it returned but intermittently and at about 0.24 Mbps.

Yesterday after a telephone conversation with a neighbour a hundred yards away when I could hardly hear her I decided to bite the bullet and have a conversation with someone in India.

"Hello. I would like to report a fault. I have no or intermittent and poor broadband but it may be my telephone line because I can only just hear you and there is a huge amount of crackling on the line."

"You have come to the right person, Sir, I will sort your problem."

Move forward 17 minutes (he had agreed that the readings he was getting were showing that my speeds were poor) during which time I had to ask him lots of times to repeat himself because the phone line was so bad (his English and diction were perfect) he asked me if I was having difficulty with the phone line.

The upshot was that he then tested the phone line and it is faulty. It will be repaired by the 3 June at latest.

Thank heaven I have back-up satellite broadband which, last night, was giving me 27 Mbps.

I'll be back tomorrow with something more interesting which isn't a gripe.