SBC - YOUR Telephone Company

SBC is frenetically advertising DSL DSL DSL, Yahoo DSL everywhere I look. Brian and I tried to get DSL 3 1/2 years ago when we moved into this house. I can't remember what they told us except "yes" initially and "no" when we complained it wouldn't hold a connection and they sent someone out to take a look.

I don't remember the why behind the no. So we looked into cable. At that time, this area was serviced by St. Louis' secondary cable company (which was later bought by Charter, about 2 years ago), and it did not offer cable Internet service. So, we were pretty much outta luck, this being early 2000. We got a 2nd phone line so that we can both do work/play online at once. Yes, sometimes we IM each other from different parts of the house. I digress.

Time passes. Dial-up SUFFICES, but we both get into this blog thing. As you probably know, sometimes it's a go-down-the-blogroll festival of link opening into new windows. This takes forever to load in 56k (which is a farce - I connect at 23.6 usually). You can read Meryl giving it a good gripe since she was blogging away from home due to Isabel. I keep thinking, "honey, you have NO idea."

Back on track. One of these SBC Yahoo advertisements made its way into our home, and it planted that little advertising seed, you know, like it's aiming to do. So we called, or submitted it on the Internet - I'm not sure which came first. They call us back, leave a muffled message on our answering machine. I call the next day - Thursday or Friday of last week, and I spend 30 minutes on the phone with smarmysalesrep, who says, "Yes, ma'am, Ms. Noogle (note the two Os - bad bad), we can get that for you. I don't know WHAT they were talking about." He signs me up. Our nifty modem came in a box Monday with the go-live date of, um, tomorrow. I accidentally attributed the wrong phone number to the order, so Brian calls on Monday and clears that up.

Yesterday, I receive a call from the contractor who would be doing any necessary beforehand work to ensure this'll work. He has some bad news. That phone line isn't copper; rather, it's fiber optic, and that's a "no can do" with DSL. He's trying to hook that to the original number, though, and so ever-hopeful Heather says, "No, wait, that's the WRONG phone number. Try this one" and gives him the new. He calls me back today - same deal.

To do DSL with this kind of set-up, the technician informs me, requires some sort of remote station. And, that's slated to happen, oh, about 2005.

Okay, people. This the year 2003. Our technology is amazing. AMAZING. Look at new computers today - mine's so ancient (almost 3 years now) that I have no idea what's out there. And, seeing that mine's perfectly functional, even for a session of Asheron's Call or two, it'll be, oh, a few months before I seriously look at upgrading some of the pieces. My point, though, is LOOK AT THE ADVANCES IN THREE YEARS. I know they're there. Some of the servers at work have a GIG of RAM. GIG! (Sorry for yelling, sorta.) What's SBC advanced? Um, it can PRINT MORE ADS and not provide any more service.

Zounds. Feel the acid. So, I've flipped the switch in my head that says "something more than dial-up." Seeing as we dropped cable on its sorry ass in June, that's kinda out of the question. At least with Charter. Ah, but there is another, as Yoda would say.

Maryland Heights, my municipality, for some reason has TWO cable companies. Most of the rest of the metro area is only serviced by Charter. So, I call Cable America today and get the hook-up. The funny part? The whole thing is LESS expensive (when you take away my dial-up account) with the Internet access and a similar cable package than what Brian and I were paying with Charter.

Pblllllht on SBC.

hln

Posted by hln at September 24, 2003 07:19 PM | RANT | TrackBack