More than a month into this Internet mess with Wanadoo, I am on dial-up tonight. Ever since our account became active more than two weeks after we signed up for Wireless & Talk broadband in early February, the connection has been unstable at best. It’s good for 10 minutes, drops for 1 or more, then back on again, repeat ad infinitum.

This morning, I made my weekly check-up call to see the status of our account, which had been sent up to “FSD escalation”. Luckily, the tech support person I got today had a clue what that was about. But, the issue still hasn’t been resolved yet. So, I was offered a free Wanadoo Anytime dial-up account with a toll-free access number and unlimited online time.

I don’t know how they knew the PPP (peer to peer protocol) server was going to be down tonight because that’s the error I’ve been getting with the broadband router for over five hours now. They probably offered me the free dial-up since we’ve been having trouble for exactly one month. I’m also supposed to get credit for the time we’re down, but I’m not sure if I want to go through the hassle of asking for it. Everytime you call tech support, you have to pay an exorbitant phone charge per minute. I think I spent over $50 USD in February calling them.

There just doesn’t seem to be a good solution to the Internet situation here in the UK. Every ISP has people complaining about it. A few months ago, local loop unbundling (LLU) was begun in the London area so that ISP’s could own the lines instead of BT, the national phone company, and thus increase speeds and reduce costs. The migration over to the LLU system is apparently at the source of the problems. But they still dare to boast about signing up 150,000 new customers over the past year. So what if they’re not offering any service to these same customers.

Shouldn’t complain too much since there are others who have been in the lurch without any internet access for weeks and weeks. If we ever get stable broadband conection during the few years we’re in London, I will be overjoyed. Meanwhile, I’ll just wax nostalgic at 44 Kbps.

NB: Note the lack of links since it takes more time to find and load relevant sites.