Symi connectivity
Here we are heading off into the weekend again and this time it promises… What? Cooler weather, perhaps a storm, maybe a long walk – weather permitting – and possibly a visit from the Cosmote technician.
We have, of late and as I may have grumbled about previously, been experiencing internet connection problems, ‘connectivity issues’ American might call them. It’s on, it’s off, it’s meant to be 4 Mbs we get 0.03 at times, and you don’t know from one day to the next if it’s going to bother turning up for work at all. All this is very frustrating when you are trying to research online. The problem has been growing steadily worse over the last week. So, what have we done about it?
First of all I tried rebooting the box, the router thing. Then, as that didn’t make any difference, I tried plugging the internet directly into the wall socket, and did away with the net/phone splitter; then, as that didn’t seem to help, I changed all the cables and bought a new phone as we needed one anyway. I checked with our local phone shop who told me there was a similar problem all over the island, an issue with the ADSL line or something. But I plugged in the new equipment anyway… and no change.
Yesterday morning the internet connection was simply taking the ISP. It started up and then stopped. It connected again and then slowed down to slower than a one legged pot-addicted sloth, before acting like a dysfunctional college student and dropping out completely. At this point my PC even failed to find the router, which is but five feet away. And then it asked me to re-enter my username and password as if to say, ‘I’ve found something here but you gotta convince me you really want to connect with this guy, he has connectivity issues. (My PC is clearly American.) But, connect we did and all was fine for two minutes and off we went again. So, unlike me, but driven by frustration, I called the Costmote helpline. And I was very nice.
And so was she and I told her all about my issue. She asked me to pause while she checked our line. I said that I had been told it was a common problem on the island, but she refuted that and told me it wasn’t, it was just us. I wasn’t sure if that made me feel special or naughty, but she went away for a moment and did her checks. Ah yes, she agreed, I can see you have had disconnections and slow speeds, you should be at four megabytes… She went on to tell me what I knew I was paying for; I explained again that I was clearly not getting it. She told me an engineer would call my mobile number to arrange to come and check things at the house if needed and thank you have a nice day. (It’s good that she didn’t ask me if there was ‘anything else I can do for you today please sir thank you how about a product you don’t want but which I am obliged to try and sell you anyway thank you for calling the call centre today, my name was…’ Dial tone.
A few minutes later I received a text message from Cosmote (who is not my mobile provider, in case you were wondering) to tell me that they were thankful for my call and the issue reported had now been dealt with. I gleefully tried my connection speed again and found it to be down to 0.36 and 0.22 (instead of 4 and 1), so perhaps the message meant that my call had been received and looked into. At this point in time – Friday midday, I am still waiting for the engineer to call and check. As we only have one on Symi, that I know of, I shall know who to look out for but if, in the meantime, all goes dark on these pages and the blog is not updated, you shall perhaps know why. Have a good weekend.
