I think there’s a potential business plan in all this.
We moved a few days ago into our new offices, which we are sharing with CO4 Computing. Last week we had an (unnamed) internet DSL company put in a connection. We tested it on Sunday, and it was working perfectly.
By the time we actually moved in, it had stopped working. It turns out that the unnamed internet service provider above actually uses phone lines (in this case something called a dry loop, which is basically a phone line without a phone number attached to it) that they lease from [insert big phone company name here]. Some technician at the [big phone company] had decided that there was something wrong with the dry loop, and had randomly disconnected it (without – I might add – letting the DSL company know).
At the point in writing, we’ve been trying to get the DSL company to fix our internet connection for three days. The problem, of course, is that they are totally reliant on the phone company’s technicians in order to do this. The phone company won’t tell them what they are doing to resolve the problem, and furthermore won’t let them know a timeframe either.
In the meantime, I’m being stonewalled by the DSL company as well.
We also looked into going directly to the phone company (unfortunately they’re the only ones who have lines going into this building) in order to get internet service from them. Apparently there’s a two week delay before they can install it. That’s minimum two weeks, not an absolute timeline.
For home internet, I can get a technician at my door within two to three hours. For business though, getting a new internet connection takes two weeks, and fixing a broken connection can take days. I’m puzzled as to why anybody puts up with this.
Probably because any alternative is worse. Although you can always threaten them with moving to [insert name of big cable provider] and see what happens. They may, however, tell you to go ahead.
The main issue is that there’s only one company that has lines going into the building. Typically other companies want somebody to pay if they have to dig a trench from the road to the building.