Mad Broadband [Part 2]
Well, it has been a busy Saturday and a lot has been happening.
My two friends Ron and Dick have more or less moved in to help me. Herself is making the cheese on toast to keep us fed.
Ron and Dick did some forum posting about my plight and there has been a very kind response. I didn’t know so many people cared and I am touched and flattered. Thank you all.
Ron’s good friend Michele sent us some figures that proved that I have not been lying all along. Apparently Michele has been keeping records of how fast I connect to the Internet. Why she should do this just for me, I don’t know. Ron will explain no doubt. Thank you Michele anyway. You sound like a nice girl.
So we wrote a rather gruff letter to the company and enclosed the figures. We explained that they couldn’t possibly be telling the truth and that they should get things fixed straight away. Or else…….
We didn’t get a reply.
Dick apparently knows of another case like mine. They complained of a bad connection and our foreign friend came out to them and apparently they [our foreign friends] used exactly the same technique as they tried on me. The gentleman who lived there was at work at the time, and his wife believed them. She told them to take the equipment away, if it was no good. I believe he wasn’t too happy when he came home that evening and found he had no broadband.
Now, this morning an interesting thing happened.
Ron and Dick are still here. We made a night of it. Herself is getting a bit cheesed off with the cheese on toast making, and is begining to complain about all the empty beer cans.
Anyway, Ron and Dick were running some tests.
They ran one at around half eleven. There were sharp intakes of breath.
Dick told me I was getting 1meg down but nothing at all up. I was tempted to say that I am used to getting nothing up, but we’ll keep the talk technical here. Anyway, he said this was very bad. He said it looked like it was all over.
But then he ran another test and nearly passed out.
We revived him, and he told us that the signal was excellent. Well, not perfect but more than adeqate. He said it was 1.5 meg down and 1.2 meg up whatever that means.
So Ron and Dick are jumping for joy. I said it mightn’t last. They said it didn’t matter, because it proved that I could get a decent signal even after all the messing around that the company did, and that all their excuses had fallen flat.
So maybe they have fixed the fault at last?
Or maybe they undid whatever it was they did in the first place?
Or maybe they are beaming a special signal just to me?
Or maybe the CIA intevened because they didn’t want to lose track of me?
Or maybe they did read yesterdays mail?
We’ll have to wait ’till tomorrow when I can phone the company and find out what is going on……
Footnote to the above:
I have just received an invoice for next month’s service. Oh! Sweet irony!!
If it’s who I think it is… I think you’ll find that Michele is actually a man… but I’m sure he’ll accept your compliments none the less! 😀
Oh dear! My apologies Michele!
my opinion remains unchanged.
You’re a fine man, a gentleman and a scholar.
This again proves my point about the intricacies of wireless broadband (see my comment to your other post).
A radio signal is always subject to external influences. This can be the weather, objects blocking the signal, magnetic interference, the position of the moon whatever.
You are on the edge of your providers coverage area. This means that the slightest bit of interference will knock you of the network. When you connect the connectivity will most likely be good. However the service is not stable and cannot be guaranteed because no-one has any influence on the conditions that will bring your connection down.
Your provider should not have sold you a connection/service in the first place but this being Ireland they were as greedy as the next person. However the negative press has been so bad that they were forced to make some improvements to the service.
This means servicing smaller coverage areas in order to provide a guaranteed quality of service (google “microcell” to see what I am referring to).
I just hope that this will be followed by more microcells to increase the geographical availability of their service.
Well actually I don’t as this will means more compretition for us…
😉
E.
“A radio signal is always subject to external influences. This can be the weather, objects blocking the signal, magnetic interference, the position of the moon whatever.
You are on the edge of your providers coverage area. This means that the slightest bit of interference will knock you of the network. When you connect the connectivity will most likely be good. However the service is not stable and cannot be guaranteed because no-one has any influence on the conditions that will bring your connection down.”
Ah! But I am in perfect line of sight. There is nothing obsructing the view [trees or otherwise]. It is essentially a view from one side of a valley to the other. And nothing has interfered with the signal before. I have connected in fog, snow, blizzards, sunshine, hail, high wind [all in one day :)] and have had no problems. There is no interference.
OK, what distance are you from the mast/tower.
Again, please understand that I am using standard wireless networking theory as the basis for my explaination.
As I am not au fait with the exact details I am making a number of asumptions.
Then again in my experience the logic of most Wireless Broadband providers business decision puzzles me to no end…
However you say that there is no interference. How do you know that? Interference is not always through tangible sources. You obviously have some intermittent problem at the base of this all. Judging from what I’ve read I really think that your ISP has raised the requirements for what they consider a “servicable level ” of connectivity. You seem to not meet their revised requirements hence they are telling you that you are outside their coverage area.
This idiotic confusion would not have happened if they had been realistic in their service offering to begin with.
E.
E.
None of this would have happened if they had handled things correctly and professionally.
I have asked my pal Dick to write to you directly because he knows a bit more about these things.
The Irish Internet Association are running a broadband survey http://www.iia.ie I am sure they would like to hear from you!
I have similar problems with my broadband connection. It only works at night!?
The IIA have heard from me now!!!!!!!
As for your connection only being at night; maybe they are trying to tell you something? Like, get back to work? Or maybe you could work the night shift and sleep during the day?
All this technical stuff is getting too complicated for me. Bring back the postman, and the sliderule.