My ISP's woes
What kind of sound would you like to wake up to? BhoopAla rAgam? Wake-up bugle notes? The tweet of a warbler here and the coo of a cuckoo there? The landline’s dial tone will do nicely for me, thank you.
In the last three weeks the phone has been dead and / or the broadband (ISP: BSNL, enabled by an ADSL Ethernet modem / router) was not ops, so there was frequent enforced abstinence from the Web. The routine read: no dial tone/ no adsl link - register complaint at 1500 (BSNL’s universal helpline) - then call local NIB helpdesk or the server office direct, then wait.
At these times, I'd remember Indrani’s phobia predictions and Raji’s ISP experiences, while catching up with offline and ‘home’ work. After several hours or several days, the phone’s dial tone and the modem’s blinking lights would gladden the heart for - pardon the repeat - several hours or several days. Then my 1500-dialing fingeritis would afflict me all over again. Yesterday was one such. A neat Net conference was going on, and the link was severed by an unknown hand…. Out went the 1500 complaint and the heels, by now well trained to cool rapidly, froze.
In this case it turned out that the ‘unknown hand’ was actually the menacing arm of a JCB. Where we live, the Trichy Road is being four-laned, and for the 67th time in 68 days, the underground cable was severed. Out on a walk in the evening, we glimpsed the familiar faces of the local JTO and the linesman, standing over a wide pit where a couple of workers were busily trimming, joining and jacketing colorful fibre optic cables. The weary but smiling JTO listed out his woes: 200 connections affected this time, his team ‘lage rahe’ and, how, in a 100 metre stretch, the JCB’s arm continued to wreak havoc despite BSNL’s requests. And shared with us a glimpse of times to come - in a month’s time the sewage department is due to commence the laying of pipes, "…and I might as well set up a tent here and stay put…”
PS: Between the time I drafted this entry this morning, offline, and now, as it goes to press, the ADSL link misbehaved only thrice, and I registered my complaint twice.
In the last three weeks the phone has been dead and / or the broadband (ISP: BSNL, enabled by an ADSL Ethernet modem / router) was not ops, so there was frequent enforced abstinence from the Web. The routine read: no dial tone/ no adsl link - register complaint at 1500 (BSNL’s universal helpline) - then call local NIB helpdesk or the server office direct, then wait.
At these times, I'd remember Indrani’s phobia predictions and Raji’s ISP experiences, while catching up with offline and ‘home’ work. After several hours or several days, the phone’s dial tone and the modem’s blinking lights would gladden the heart for - pardon the repeat - several hours or several days. Then my 1500-dialing fingeritis would afflict me all over again. Yesterday was one such. A neat Net conference was going on, and the link was severed by an unknown hand…. Out went the 1500 complaint and the heels, by now well trained to cool rapidly, froze.
In this case it turned out that the ‘unknown hand’ was actually the menacing arm of a JCB. Where we live, the Trichy Road is being four-laned, and for the 67th time in 68 days, the underground cable was severed. Out on a walk in the evening, we glimpsed the familiar faces of the local JTO and the linesman, standing over a wide pit where a couple of workers were busily trimming, joining and jacketing colorful fibre optic cables. The weary but smiling JTO listed out his woes: 200 connections affected this time, his team ‘lage rahe’ and, how, in a 100 metre stretch, the JCB’s arm continued to wreak havoc despite BSNL’s requests. And shared with us a glimpse of times to come - in a month’s time the sewage department is due to commence the laying of pipes, "…and I might as well set up a tent here and stay put…”
PS: Between the time I drafted this entry this morning, offline, and now, as it goes to press, the ADSL link misbehaved only thrice, and I registered my complaint twice.
Comments
Post a Comment
i appreciate that you have some thoughts to share, and are taking the effort to do so.