A week ago my broadband
service flickered a bit at 8.15am, died completely at 9, revived
briefly at 11 then died again, taking the phone service with it.
Remembering the procedure from times past, I dutifully removed the
cover from the main OpenReach socket and plugged a phone into the
test socket. Nothing.
I contacted my service
provider, TalkTalk. “I've lost broadband and phone,” I
explained. That was a mistake; I should have just said “I have no
dialing tone at the master socket.”
“Is the power light
on your router illuminated?”
“Yes, but I have no
dialing tone at the master socket.”
“Is the broadband
light on?”
“No, and I have no
dialing tone at the master socket.”
“Please insert a pin
in the router to reset it... Do you now have broadband?”
“No, but that's not
surprising as I have no dialing tone at the master socket.”
 |
| I didn't believe it either! |
“Do you have a spare
router?”
“No, and I have no
dialing tone at the master socket.”
You have to feel some
empathy, I suppose. Probably most of the faults that get reported are
traceable to wires falling out of routers or TVs, or grannies
pressing the wrong buttons.
“Please stand by
while I conduct a line check....”
Sounds
hopeful..............
“There is no fault on
your line. The problem is in your home.”
(Thinks...) “What?!
You're joking.”
A further exchange of
text messages failed to dissuade TalkTalk that the problem was not
with my router.
One week later...
TalkTalk's Brightspark
engineer – a friendly guy
called John – presents himself at my door at 7am. I'd quite
forgotten that such a time existed, but it does.
“You
have a problem with your router?”
“No,
There's no dialing tone at the master socket.”
(By
now my loyal readers may be picking up a trend here.”)
John
the Brightspark removes the cover from the OpenReach socket and plugs
in his phone.
“You
need the Openreach engineer.”
Really?!!!!!!!!
So
now,after that brief encounter of the First Kind with TalkTalk, I
await OpenReach. I've been warned to prepare for a l.o.n.g wait.
How
reliant I had become on Broadband! I've lost iPlayer (a great loss),
Google Home has fallen silent and the only Internet access to my PC
is achieved by tethering it to my mobile. Within 3 days I'd used up
my data allowance and had to buy another £5.50s worth, so I
certainly won't be trying to access anyone's byte-hungry photo albums
for a while. Thankfully, TalkTalk are routing all my incoming calls
to my mobile without charge, and these I can receive so long as I'm
sitting in the right place in one of two rooms in my house where I
get a mobile signal. Easy!
Faced
with this mind-boggling interruption to my daily life, there really
was only one thing to do. I rummaged through the dusty shelves of my
book collection and extracted Agatha Christie's Sparkling
Cyanide. Iris has found the note
from her dead sister and is now being befriended by that sister's
widower... a shady character if ever there was one.
Please
don't tell me who done it.
Update 26th February
Broadband was mysteriously restored this evening, so 'proper' Internet access and digital TV are mine again. I still have no phone dialing tone but can easily cope with that – mobile for occasional calls and Skype for longer ones. Indeed, I often wonder why we bother with a BT phone service at all. I'm now catching up on friends' Flickr updates and some nice photos of a new ukulele group.
Update 26th February
Broadband was mysteriously restored this evening, so 'proper' Internet access and digital TV are mine again. I still have no phone dialing tone but can easily cope with that – mobile for occasional calls and Skype for longer ones. Indeed, I often wonder why we bother with a BT phone service at all. I'm now catching up on friends' Flickr updates and some nice photos of a new ukulele group.
