03.29.11
And… We’re Back
Summary: Return to wired connection ought to put the site back on track
After my Bad Telecom (BT) experience [1, 2, 3, 4] we’re back to normal operation*, so the IRC logs will be uploaded and published very soon, then we’ll resume posting daily links and articles (including out-of-date stuff, which was missed at the time and is important to cover). There will also be Identi.ca activity while I catch up with three ‘lost’ weeks. Microblogging is sometimes easier when ruished. Thanks to all those who E-mailed with concerns and sent condolences. It was not expected. █
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* Long story short, they deactivated and reactivated the wrong line, cutting the phone line too in the process (leading to a chain of unfortunate events).
BenderBendingRodriguez said,
March 29, 2011 at 6:00 am
Complete incompetence is normal at BT. Although i had luck of not having any business with them i heard from my friends a lot bad stories about them, and don’t even get me started about “up to xMb”. The only place you could get your real 8Mb is if you lived inside the exchange room On the other hand i heard A LOT good about O2 broadband, heard their customer service is very professional and polite. I personally had Virgin broadband and hearing bad histories about their unprofessional customer service i was positively surprised, i guess being polite often helps. Let them run through their “stupid cheat sheet (unplug/plug cable etc.), when i had a problem with the price (their fault) they not only lowered it to appropriate price but gave me a discount for couple of months so i have only good words to say about Virgin (and the speeds were always as advertised, not a BT line after all:).
It’s good to know it’s been resolved, i love your website and your professionalism and was missing your articles.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 6:39 am
The speed is actually quite high (not the highest I’ve had). Now I need to worry about them not charging me for calls made by someone else from the wrong house
BenderBendingRodriguez Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:11 am
The funny thing is that it’s also the same in Germany. My grandmother wanted to sign the account to her after her husband died. Deutsche Telekom? confirmed that she want’s the account changed to her but instead they terminated the account remotely. And after complaining they not only gave her other number but charged her for new connection and she had to be home for “installation” despite that everything was in place! They feast on older people who do not know anything about those things. I called them (haven’t been speaking german for a loooong time) but i resolved the issue, they gave her money back (for activation), unfortunatelly they were unable to give the old number back.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:43 am
…Or give her the lost time back
Hopefully I won’t have to mess with ISP changes for years to come. The experience is notoriously bad in the UK (many people take a month to switch, dongles cushion that a bit).
The good news is that my upload speeds are considerably improved now (it used to take 1.5 hours to upload a TechBytes episode) and X forwarding over SSH is vastly more responsive. It was unusable beforehand. I took the most expensive package, which is atypical for a household of one.
BenderBendingRodriguez said,
March 29, 2011 at 9:36 am
I tend to stay away from ISP’s that rely on monopolists infrastructure. The problem is that they sometimes oversubscribe the line in which case the customer gets pure crapiola at times when there is the highest traffic.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 9:57 am
In my case, it’s the only choice available.
twitter said,
March 29, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Welcome back.
The real solution to telco problems is Open Spectrum.