/karen/

The great internet saga

Sunday, 08 February, 2009

It has been about a month since we moved in to our new place and we still do not have landline internet. We do, however, have mobile broadband, which Ben decided to get last year for work. The drawback is that only one of us can be online at any one time, and the speed is as slow as dial-up.

It's not like we haven't been trying. (To put it positively,) We have been trying. Very hard. It's just that telecommunications seem to have become absurdly complicated since last we had to deal with this issue. Now, I'm sure there are lots of great deals out there for personal and household internet use, but you must bear in mind that Ben runs his business out of our house, so a 5GB limit isn't really going to cut it; we need something more.

The story so far:

• When we moved house, Ben said he would take care of the internet connection.
• He wanted to get naked DSL and VoIP.
• After doing much research on the internet about the best plans prices, he found that in our new place, we could not get naked DSL without first signing up with a phone company so that they would put a phone line in. (I don't understand why; to me, it looks like there's been a phone line in our flat.) Err, doesn't that make it clothed DSL? Apparently after one year, we could then opt for naked DSL and VoIP, which is what we wanted. So we signed up with Optus on the cheapest phone line plan we could find.
• Optus couldn't install our phone for two weeks for some reason (probably having something to do with the Christmas/New Year break. They finally got it connected about two weeks ago. What's weird is that they rang Ben's mobile and asked him to test the line. Why didn't they just ring the line??? Anyway, it worked fine, but then it died an hour later.
• After another call to Optus, they agreed to send out a technician who came over, looked at our phone port and then fiddled with stuff in the Switch Room (ooh, I know where it is now!) to get it working.
• Great! Phone line works! Now to sign up for internet!
• Stilly internet company (who shall remain unnamed but will henceforth be referred to as “SIC”) advertised one plan, but when you went to sign up over the internet, that plan was not in the list of options.
• Ben rang SIC and couldn't get through. Ben emailed SIC and did not receive a reply. Or rather, the reply came through two weeks later and did not even answer his question.
• Ben found a PDF of the application form, which he downloaded, printed and filled in. I took it to work to fax it to SIC (ooh, how old school!)
• Half a week passed by. Then SIC informed us that they can only do broadband internet on Telstra connections. *Smacks head*.

As Paul reminds us, the world is full of frustration. It's just that I feel like I've received more than my quota this month.

Current:

Blinks:

Feeds

• Full posts
• Full posts and del.icio.us feed
• Excerpts only
• del.icio.us feed only
• All comments

Social media

• Flickr
• Last FM
• LibraryThing
• Listal
• Ravelry
• Twitter