Land Line Less

We’re getting rid of our landline. I know that millions of people have done this already, but there was a landline here when we bought this house, and we’ve just… kept it.

No longer.

The eventual arrival of fibre in our residence meant that we no longer needed a home phone line connection and could move to VOIP. And while I was adding up the cost benefits of making that switch (I worked it out to be a saving of about R150pm), I came up with a third plan: no house phone line at all. The cost benefits of that one are even better: it costs nothing to not have anything.

Who knew?

Anyway, the long and short of it is that we’ve cancelled our Telkom line and they’re going to send us a final bill and cut us off very shortly. If I understand the process correctly, they’ll then send us some more bills and I have to go and shout at them in their posh new walk-in centre in Cavendish.

Some ridiculously poor customer service will then ensue, with a distinct lack of returned phone calls (to our cellphones (or… er… not)), and there will some more shouting from this end.
Anyway, we should be all sorted by July next year, with the threatening letters from misinformed debt collection agencies tailing off by the end of 2022.

I can’t wait. It’s like we’re living in the future.

 

It’s back

After 11½ days, our phone line and internet have been restored.

All hail the technicians who slaved for literally minutes outside our property to make this happen. It’s taken so many “escalations” through various agencies that our connection must be so high that it’s in danger of getting taken out by passing aircraft.

It’s been an irritating, frustrating and eye-opening experience. I’ve learned a few things. Here they are, in no particular order.

We use the internet a lot at home. A lot.

Are we dependent on it? No, not quite. We survived, but only really because we knew that it would come back at some stage. And only then because emails could be written at home and then sent at work. If there had been no outlet like this, it would have been very difficult.

This goes for the kids too. Their school (correctly) assumes that its students will have access to the internet at home. Homework is set appropriately. And so last night, after her music lesson, my daughter sat in the school car park doing her (online) maths homework via their wifi.

It’s simply too expensive to operate on mobile data for any prolonged length of time. Look, mobile is fine for the little things, but then the little things lead to bigger things and suddenly, you’re R200 down after 30 minutes and that’s before you’ve even thought about music or video downloads or streaming. Or blogging.

I know a lot of people, especially in South Africa, don’t have the luxury of the internet at home. Much like electricity and running water (for the moment anyway), I do recognise how privileged we are. But as I mentioned somewhere when we were going through loadshedding – you adapt your life to having these things. When you suddenly don’t have them, you are far less able to cope than those who didn’t have them in the first place. As Phil Collins once quoth:

We had a life, we had a love 
But you don’t know what you’ve got ’til you lose it

I have a lot of catching up to do. Mainly music to download, videos to catch up on, but also pictures to upload, articles to read. Updates to update.

According to one source (because there were differing accounts as to what went wrong), our outage was due to copper theft. I was therefore looking forward to getting our fibre connection sorted. That was until I found that the copper thieves often nick that too, not realising that it’s not copper. Ugh.

I’m disappointed that it took so long to fix. And I do wonder how much longer it would have taken if I hadn’t chased and harried and generally badgered Afrihost and Telkom. It’s been a pain. I’ve been a pain.

I’m not home just yet (writing this during an incubation period on my experiment). But I can hardly wait until I am.

Have I Got Hues For You

UPDATE: On seeing this, I realise the photo is a bit fuzzy. But then, so is the dog. Accuracy abounds and needs must.

I had a wonderful Isle of Man related quota photo lined up for today, but the will have to wait, because we’re struggling with internet connectivity today.

The reason for this outage can be seen in the photo below. Attached to the front end of the dog (I’m no expert, but I think it’s the other end from the kinked tail) are the teeth that chewed through the Telkom junction box, effectively cutting us off from the rest of the world.

“Least said, soonest mended,” he seethed.

image

The photo above, with all its lovely hues, was taken this morning in Tokai Forest. Tokai Forest was still full of (other people’s) dog mess. Everywhere.

Before we had a dog, I figured that there must be some technical or logistical reason why dog owners didn’t clean up after their pets. Now that I am a dog owner, I realise that it’s just laziness, a lack of responsibility and a complete disregard for other people.
I suppose that it’s good to have that clarified, if nothing else. Tossers.

But while we’re on that (rather distasteful) note, does anyone know how long it takes for a Telkom PZ50 switch to “pass through” a beagle, please?