Finally connected!

After 3 months of having no internet connection at home and having to live in internet cafes, I'm finally connected back to the digital world. It's been hard and I cannot imagine how we all did it before the digital age.

I would have been connected a month ago if only BT (British Telecom) have done their job efficiently. Those two words together makes the whole thing worse.

Initially I couldn't get and internet connection because the flat I'm living in doesn't have a phone line. I was told that I'm able to get fibre optic connection in my street so I went to Virgin Media to get connected. After waiting 10 days, I still have not heard anything back so I decided to go to a Virgin shop to ask about it. The man behind the counter told me, and this is his exact words, "If you have not heard back from Virgin Media for 10 days then I would say it is most probably not possible to get connected to Virgin Media at your flat." WTF?! Aren't you at least going to call me and tell me that it is not possible so I don't have to keep on waiting? But being British...it seems to be the culture here let's put it that way.

So I have no choice but to go for an ADSL line with BT (and like Telecom their kinda like a monopoly and everyone hate but need them). So I ordered a new BT line on 25th May. I got confirmations straight away so I thought it was good. They've scheduled engineers to come out here to install the line on June 11 only to find out a day before that they "moved" it to the 26th! So I complained obviously...the operator said the order was somehow cancelled. I said fine cancel that and open a new one. I ended up with two accounts with them which I'm still trying to sort out even after talking to 3 phone reps.

Last wednesday the engineer finally came to install the line (you were 1.5 hours late BTW and you left your amplifier!) and last thursday I ordered my ADSL. My ISP is O2 and they are great 90% of the time (only 90% because they keep on barring my mobile phone without good reason but that's another story). A day after ordering I got my wireless router and another day later I'm connected! WOOHOO!

I'm still testing speed. I took out the Ultimate plan which is up to 20 meg speed but the max speed I got to date was 9.7 meg download so I may lower my plan and save GBP5. We'll see how it goes.