For the last ten days or so, and for about another week, I have been and will continue to be semi-unplugged. Unplugged because my pay-by-the-month internet connection was disconnected a while ago, by some insonsiderate person pushing the wrong button at my internet service provider, but only semi-unplugged, because I have at least been able, thank goodness, to revert to the previous pay-by-the-minute arrengement which preceded my current although currently interrupted arrangement.
I am, therefore, able to link to particular places on the internet that I already know how to get to quickly, such as to this blog posting which I did for the Adam Smith Institute, in which I explain the effect of my present internet miseries, but I am not, as I explained at greater length in that posting, comfortable about just going a-wandering. I can switch on, go somewhere, download it, switch off, and read it. But, I deeply fear switching on, going somewhere, reading it, going somewhere else, reading that, looking something else up, deciding to write something, looking up other stuff, deciding to write something else and making a start with that, . . . you get the picture. It might not cost all that much, especially at the weekend, but in sad old Britain where local phone calls still cost, it could cost me a whole lot too much for comfort. If I did the sums, I might well decide that my state of only semi-linked-ness is a false economy, and that I should just plug myself in regardless and do whatever I feel like doing. But I do not want to have to be worrying.
So, this has been what Americans call a “learning experience”, or what we know on this side of the pond as a considerable nuisance or words to that effect.
However, the particular combination of circumstances – not being permanently connected, but still being able to connect temporarily – has provided me with something you seldom experience in life, namely the contrast between two important stages in my life, with the full knowledge of what both states were like. It really has been a learning experience. The difference between merely being temporarily connected to the internet and able to peck at its mere surface, guided by specific recommendations from others, and being permanently connected to the internet and able to roam at will with no further cost penalty was, for me, all the difference, when I first made the jump from the first state to the second. It was when I finally made this switch that the internet finally made sense to me. I was already blogging, a little, but this was when the blogging penny really dropped, because at this point I stopped having to worry about it. This was when I got myself, I gradually found out, a new job. I had spent the eighties getting established as a “desktop publisher”, and the nineties getting ever more bored with being a desktop publisher. Finally, I had reached the next stage, and I am now enduring again what the previous stage was like. I imagine it as like having got happily married, but then being temporarily deserted by one’s wife or husband, in other words an entirely different experience from never having been happily married in the first place, because you know exactly what you are missing..
Getting anything done at all is hard, like wading through treacle. You would be amazed at how many of my current activities – laborious, playful, or, as most often, a mixture of the two – turn out to be improved and informed by me being able to connect to the internet. Hardly any piece of internet writing is not the better for me being able to look something up, connect to something, throw in a tangent to something, even just look up the spelling of something. (Given that I used the internet constantly, I also used it as a spellchecker for complicated names. Yesterday morning, I spent several pence finding out how to spell Cecil B. DeMille.) Often some links at least are essential. I have spent most of the last week trying to puzzle out what it would make sense to write about, apart from writing about what the last week has been like. I have written more than usual about sport, because sport doesn’t matter, and if you do not include all the links that you should in a piece of writing about sport, what the hell. It’s only sport.
Sadly, however, my two favourite sports teams, the England cricket team and the England rugby team, had a very bad last few days, just when I really needed them both to excel. England lost badly to India this morning at cricket, and catastrophically to France in Paris yesterday at rugby. Do your own damn linking if you want the gory details. (On the other hand, how about – and here I will supply a link for this is worth a few pennies of any cricket fan’s money – this?!?!? I found out about it via Ceefax!)
I thought that reading books would provide solace, but books provoke writing, or should, and writing requires links. Just reading no longer seems good enough, and neither is writing in a state of unpluggedness. Maybe these activities should suffice, but they don’t.
You can imagine my feelings about junk mail. Receiving it is bad enough. Paying extra to get it is something else again.
In desperation I am now getting out more. I have invited myself to supper with various friends this week, and on Thursday I will be visiting my aged mother. And I will do various other things of an out and about nature. But it’s not the same.
Ah Brian… when an american says ‘it was a learning experience’ they say it with the same tone and meaning as a returning Battle of Britain pilot who gets out of the cockpit and says ‘We had a bit of a bother up there’.
They can’t just switch you back on? Why not?
Brian,
You have two steps to follow to sort this temporary problem:
1) chargeable local rate numbers:
Most ISPs have a geographic alternative to their 0845 dial up numbers. Look it up here and see if you can find it.
You may also be able to find it (cheekily) by finding out how to use your dial up connection from abroad – your provider will have to fess this up on being asked.
2) Free local calls.
Ditch BT. Go for something like TotalUKtalk via OneTel. Unmetered calls to landlines.
That should do it.
PG
The trick with broadband ISP’s is to find one good reliable one and stay with them, regardless of the TalkTalk, TotalTalk, BulldogTalk and other assorted gimmicks offered by ISPs desperate for your business. F2S and Eclipse are still the best IMO – if only because they actually help you, as opposed to companies like Demon with their new improved Lahore-based technical support lines. Worst mistake I ever made was shifting away from F2S to the truly dreadful Bulldogbroadband, but its a mistake I’m rectifying at the moment.
The other method of getting online while your ISP resolves any issues is to buy a basic wireless device (£10-£20 from most computer shops) and leech off someone’s unsecured wireless network in range. People with belkin54g networks in the UK never seem to have WEP password or MAC (not as in Macintosh) filter protection, for example.
Why should he have to do all that – as helpful as those suggestions clearly are? Why don’t they just switch him back on? One of the most advanced telecommunications countries in the world and they can’t just switch him back on? They can switch you back on within a couple of hours in Mexico. What’s more, in Mexico, the helpline is free. Further, they even have an English Service helpline whose techies are all completely fluent in English.
Switch to Pipex – they’re ace. If I had to go back to 56k, I would surely die!
Here in the Wild West (Reno, Nevada, USA), I use cable modem service from Charter Communications. There was a shaky period last year, but they’ve settled down, and service is now generally uninterrupted. It’s good to be connected all the time.
Verity,
I am guessing that Brian’s interrupted service was a DSL service. Since DSL service rides on BT’s wires any change in service needs to go through monopoly BT and they insist on all sorts of hoops being jumped through by the reseller and the customer. When I moved between two UK addresses I found it impossible to maintain uninterrupted DSL service. There had to be a 7-10 day cut-off period whilst they ‘tested the line’ even though the previous occupant of my new house had had DSL. I also could not close my old account and open a new account (10 days before I moved in) at my new house because this would have meant that I had terminated my old account before the minimum one year subscription was up and thereby faced an early termination charge.
Market failure?
Resident Alien:
Market failure?
No: It’s another failure of state control. The problems you (correctly) list are BT’s. BT isn’t yet really exposed to a market. So, no, this isn’t a market failure: this is a hangover from state control that has not been fully expunged.
The state needs to pull the plug (sorry, awful pun) on the protection afforded to BT.
Resident Alien – Yes, I realised we were talking about DSL! It’s almost instantaneous to switch in Mexico. I was on dial-up when I first moved here and I switched to DSL online. Admittedly, it took them three days to deliver the modem (but that is the stated delivery time, so it wasn’t late – unlike everything else in Mexico), but then I was immediately online. I pay roughly £19 a month. How does this compare?
Well, try this for a story.
Okay, when I moved last year, the following happened. I moved into a flat, and there was a telephone socket in the wall. I plugged a phone into the socket, and got a dialtone, and if I tried to dial a number I got a recorded message telling me that the phone line was not currently active. I called BT, and asked them could they connect the phone. They looked it up in their database, and said that no, they could not do that but that an “engineer” would have to come to my flat and do something or other, and that there would be a £70 fee for this service, and that I would also be subject to a 12 month contract with BT after the phone was connected. And the next appointment I could make for the engineer would not be for two weeks. I stated that since the previous tenant had moved out recently, and that the phone line to the exchange was obviously fine, I found this utterly absurd, but they pretty much just told me that that was the way things were and there was nothing I could do about it.
About a week later something deeply curious happened. Just for the sake of it, I plugged my ADSL router into the phone socket, and to my complete astonishment the light came on saying that I had an ADSL connection. I turned on my computer and found that I was connected to the internet. I didn’t know how or why, but I rejoiced.
However, this was gone the next morning. (I later discovered that the previous tenant had used the same ISP as I had previously, and I assume that the router connected and logged in with my id and password, which were okay since it was the same ISP. Presumably the ISP disconnected it due to the fact that the previous tenant had left). Back to waiting
As for my phone, I was not of course told the exact time that the engineer would come, but I was told that he would call me half an hour before he arrived, so on the appointed day I went to work, ready to head home again when I got the call. However, he called me when I was on the tube to work, and for some reason I didn’t get a notification that I had voice mail until two hours later. I was thus informed that I had to wait another two weeks.
Okay, two weeks later. I finally did get my phone connected. At least I had dialup. I then called my (Virgin.net) and told them that I would like my ADSL connection set up at my new address. A few days later I received an e-mail stating that their tests of the line indicated that it was not suitable for ADSL. I thought that this might have had something to do with the recent connection, so a week later I called them again. They again claimed to do a test and told me that my ADSL line was not up to speed. I didn’t believe them, as the same ISP had provided ADSL along the same line to the previous tenant. I tried a couple of other ISPs, who told me that they could not find my number in their databases. I suspect that what I was waiting for was for the news of BTs connection of my phone to get out to the world, so I kept trying a number of ISPs. Eventually I tried OneTel, and they told me that they could provide me with ADSL, and they were as good as their word, connecting me a week later. However, although I was paying them for 2Mbps, they only provided me with 512kbs. They are still only providing me with 512kbps although I am paying for 2Mbps. A couple of attempts to suggest to them that they might want to provide me with the advertised speed have resulted in rather rude responses stating that if I want my speed upgraded I am going to have to extend my contract to 12 months from today (rather than 12 months from when I was connected) as this is their upgrade policy, even though 2Mbps was clearly the speed advertosed when I connected.
At this point I should really threaten my ISP with nuclear annihilation if they do not give me what they advertised, but after being without any ADSL at all for two months, I am just grateful to have something.
Michael – What a nightmare! But how do they get away with it?
I’ve just had a notice that my comment is waiting to be approved again. This is definitely no fun.
Brian – When your service is finally up and running, sign up for a broadband VOIP and never pay another single long-distance penny to BT.
Verity: I think it is called “a monopoly”. The only way I can presently get broadband is via BT’s wires. If I purchase my ADSL from another provider, they still have to use BT’s wires. They are probably also using BTs equipment in the exchange, too. (Some don’t, but this local loop unbundling is in its early days). Many people in the UK can get their telephone and broadband from a cable company, (and I would have signed up for this if I could have) but my building does not have cable.
The funny thing is that for actual telephone calls, the monopoly is gone. On my last BT phone bill, I noticed that the number of calls I made for the month was precisely zero. The combination of mobiles and Skype is perfectly adequate for me. The only reason I have a fixed line phone is because I have to in order to have ADSL. (I also wish to pay BT as little money as possible because I hate them),
I have Broadvoice VOIP and I can call 21 countries and talk for as long as I like for a subscription of US$21 a month. It’s incredible. I have my virtual number in Houston, where I have so many friends, and as local calls in Houston are free, they can call me on my virtual local number and chatter away as though we’re calling across town.
Although this offer isn’t available in Britain, Broadvoice does have a presence there. I think they offer you unlimited national calls for a small monthly consideration. I didn’t like the idea of Skype because of that headset you have to wear. Broadvoice is just a (dedicated) normal telephone.
I agree that BT is loathesome.
Michael,
Apply for a low-user rebate. They are aimed at low-income, elderly people but BT are so ridiculously useless at organizing anything that you will probably be able to get one – I did.
Okay, two weeks later. I finally did get my phone connected.
I think I see why cellphones got so big, so fast, in the UK.
Is BT service the norm for euro telecoms?
In Mexico everyone, by which I mean absolutely everyone, has a mobile phone.