Catching up with the rest of the world
I was rummaging through some old papers recently and I came across an interesting sheaf of papers.
It was a list of instructions from back in 1998.
It welcomed me to Club Internet, and gave me access information for my brand new Interweb account, including instructions on how to connect my modem to Windows 95 and how to dial up. It also included details of my very first email address. It even gave some hits on how to use this newfangled Interwebby thing.
Things have changed a little since then.
I have long since stopped paying them and they have long since ceased to exist as a company, though strangely enough that email still works. I even get the odd bit of spam into it.
I had my fights many years ago to get something that was just a tad faster than 56kb. They said I was in a remote location and I was damned lucky to even have dial up. Then along came a company that stuck wireless masts all over the place and I finally got hooked up at a speed that was reasonable. I had 3Mb up and down and it worked pretty well.
I ditched that company in August and went with my phone company. They have a crap reputation, but there again so does every company if you read reports on line. My download jumped up from 3 to 10 and my upload jumped down from 3 to 0.5. Fuck! I do my share of uploading and this wasn’t funny, but I had conflagrated my bridges so I had to stick with it.
A few weeks ago I rang the company and asked about an upgrade as they had stuck a fibre cabinet on the road which nicely means I can’t see now if there is traffic coming when I’m driving out of the lane. The woman there said the cabinet wasn’t live yet and suggested I phone the following week.
I phoned again the following week and the same Bright Young Thing said that yes – I could upgrade without any cost and she made an appointment for the bloke to instal the new system. ‘He’ll be there at 9am in the 8th November’ says she.
Yeah. Right.
That evening I got an email confirming my upgrade appointment for 9am on the 8th November.
Yeah. Right.
Yesterday I got a phone cal from them just to remind me a bloke would be calling at 9am on the 8th November.
Yea. Right.
This morning I was pottering about when my mobile rang. It was 9am and today is the 8th. It was the bloke wanting to know where my house was. Once I had recovered from my fainting fit I gave him the directions. I think this is the first time in living memory when someone made an appointment and actually kept it almost to the minute.
He was a cheerful chap. Ex-Greek army apparently, though I discovered that because he told me and not because he was wearing a white skirt and had pom-poms on his slippers. He pottered around, pulling wires and using all sorts of metres and gizmos. He installed a new wireless thingumajig [just when I had the old one nicely tweaked].
He’s gone now.
I ran a test.
A little bit better than 3?
And a little bit better than dial up.
I didn’t half have to wait for it though.
Sure what’s 18 years between friends?
Twill be great in allowing Herself to watch Netflix, and the grandchildren to play online games.
Nah! Netflix is essentially showing the same rubbish films that are on Sky. The point of the exercise is to save a few bob [I’m now getting fast broadband and free phone calls for the price of just the old “broadband” so already I am way ahead]. The next move is to witch to Freeview/Saorview and scrap Sky.
And if the grandkids want to play games, then that’s fine by me. â¬10 an hour sounds reasonable?
We have a box we bought in Power City connected to an old Sky dish – it gets Astra 2A and Eurobird, the subscription channels are scrambled but all the Free to Air Channels are available
It’s one of those lads I was thinking of getting. A combined Freeview/Saorview box using the old satellite dish. They cost about two months Sky rental!
That’s odd because it’s a mirror image of what happened me. The fibre optic cabinet I can see a hundred yards from my front window took them nearly nine months to hook up after it was planted. I was first in the queue when it went live and at no extra cost either, it was installed in the home. They advertised 100 Mbits download but the reality is 80. But 80 was a huge jump from 5 I had that was really 3.
If it drifts below 80 now I’m hotfoot onto Eircom to freeze my bill until they sort it out, which they generally do fairly pronto. And the amazing thing for me is that the bill is â¬5.00 cheaper a month than the old slow line I had.
I switched to broad band because the cost was cheaper than the old phone only, but I get free calls and effectively free broadband. I also save by cancelling the old broadband altogether.
I’m supposed to get 100, but it’s varying between 75 and 90. If it drops below 10, I’ll worry! And apparently I was third in the queue…
All I can say is – you lucky bastard. 12-13 down and about 3 up is what I’m used to. I just completed (almost – I’ve still got to sort out all the shit, which will take a few months, I guess) my move to Patras, and there have been mutterings about fibre optics here, but I’m not holding my breath.
When he said he was Greek, I asked if he knew you. He said he’d look you up and give you a decent connection. The things I do for people….