I don’t know if I ever mentioned this, but we live in the country. The only “facility” we can comfortably walk to is the group mailbox. Everything else is at least a 10 minute car drive away, more like 20 minutes for most services. It has a lot of upsides, like plenty of fresh air and trees and privacy. But they come at a cost, and one of those costs is poor Internet service. For those of you not living in Canada, the whole telecom industry is regulated by the CRTC, or Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. They hand out licences and make sure there is no monopoly in the industry. That is the rhetoric anyway. Bell Canada has had pretty much a monopoly on home telephone service ever since it was invented. Of course when cable and cell phones arrived, Bell lost some of their customers, but they were still the only game in "town" in rural areas, where installing a new physical network was beyond the financial capacity of anyone but Bell. Governments both at the Federal and Provincial level have been promising better Internet service for rural areas for many election cycles, and Bell has been finally getting around to installing fiber optic cables in our area. I am sure it is very costly. We have been customers with Bell for over 40 years. Landline, satellite TV and Internet (DSL). They used to offer rebates for bundling of services, but when they realized they really had no competition (and we had no other choices), these rebates started to disappear. As they proceeded to install the new fiber optic cables, neighbors around us started switching to “Fibe”, and we kept expecting to get a flyer or something to encourage us to switch, but nothing! A few weeks ago, our old DSL Internet connection started getting very slow and spotty, so much that I eventually called Bell to complain about it. The person I talked to tried to get me to switch for “only” more money per month, but I refused and insisted I just wanted what I was already paying for. He informed me that our modem was outdated and was the cause of the slowness, and he would send a new one to us right away, no charge, and that all I would have to do would be to plug it in and wait ten minutes and everything would magically work. Right. One wonders why this had not been done already, as we are renting this outdated modem from them after all… I also asked for him to send me some brochures explaining the new services so we could study them at leisure (rather than listening to him rattle off the many complex options and prices) but was told they had no such brochures, and that I would find all that on line. Maybe it’s my suspicious nature, but I think they want nothing in print so they can change prices and plans at will! Anyway, we finally get the new modem, but I wait to install it until after we get back from the Lyst’ART festival, as I know how things can go and don’t want to be without the Internet just before such an important event. I read the very sketchy instructions that came with the modem and figure, with my background in IT, this shouldn’t be that hard…. The first issue is in the instructions, which refer to a non-existent document in my “package”. Must be a typo. Right. Then the instructions that say to plug the wires from the old modem into the same spots on the new modem. Except they are all labeled differently…. After a few tries, the new modem is fired up, and after a few minutes, no Internet. Disconnect everything and reconnect the old modem, Internet “fine” (same as before, not fast, but there). Reconnect new modem, still no Internet. Call Bell, talk to a young lady who, after trying a few things, informs me that our copper line is unable to support this new modem, and we need to have fiber installed, because Bell is pulling all of its copper wires in our area and it’s only a matter of time until our service no longer is offered, Including our landline! I inform her that I am less than happy to hear this, as we have many power outages and the landline is the only thing that will work. She doesn’t now when this “improvement” will happen, only that it inevitably will. When asked how we were supposed to be informed of this, she says that emails are being sent out. I remind her that not everyone has email or smartphones, and she remain unimpressed. I also inform her that the young man who sent us the new modem should have known that it would not work with our current line. She then informs me that there is a note in our file to change us to fiber, which I certainly never asked for. Not clear what is going on, but it smells very fishy. I tell her that I am not pleased, and that this is not the way to treat long time loyal customers, that I will be returning the modem, and that we will be looking for another provider. I can almost hear her say “good luck with that!” So yeah, “country living”. Not always great! Some might think that it’s time that we caught up with the times, but I would argue that not everything new is necessary, and that in any case, customers, especially older ones, should be treated with more respect. P.S. I consider myself computer literate. I feel for a lot of the other older adults who aren’t and who have to put up with this stuff!
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AuthorMy name is Claire Bureau. Archives
March 2023
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