Totally wired
Obtaining and maintaining a reasonable internet connection in this fine country can be a bit of a challenge. Speeds vary hugely and disconnects are frequent. Calls to the help centre can be painful, and once the problem is identified as being located in the physical phone line, there is always a tendency for the TT&T engineers to assign the blame to the internal wiring of my condo; saves them from getting out of their office chairs and going to check their connections.
Mind you, maybe they have a point. This is the spaghetti at the point at which the phone lines come into our builiding:
There is a lip of a roof partially shielding the wiring, but everything gets damp when the rains come, and the box on the right is in too much of a mess for the door to shut. If a signal manages to get past this lot, then there is a further tangle of wires and connections to negotiate in the maintenance office, before a leisurely trip up to the condo unit floor where two more boxes offer interference possibilities.
My friend Nik has been having problems for weeks, and my internet has refused to achieve full connection speeds for longer than I can remember; so today action was taken. Nik went out and bought a couple of kilometres of wire and the condo technician was tasked with routing a connection from the incoming phone line on the wall, direct to our condos, bypassing the chaos of wires. My job was to stand and watch and look worried. Our condo technicians have a reputation for destroying or stealing condo property, being sacked, and being replaced with someone equally incompetent and dishonest. But the boy did good, and now I have a rock-steady connection; and some faith that my internet will keep on trucking when the rains come.
Can’t be so confident for the rest of the residents.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:10 am
Come and Play – it is windy