Weekly rant 2

Well, it's that time in the week for my weekly rant but this week I don`t have much to complain about.

That is apart from possibly my Internet provider. My Internet connection has a habit of stopping for no apparent reason. When I complain to my provider it usually restarts straight away, which makes me think they are manipulating it. However when it does not come back on straight away or they ignore my messages as has happened a few times, I threaten them with stopping my payments … then it works again within minutes of my call despite having been offline for almost 24 hours. So what is going on there, I ask myself?

I did ask them for an explanation this week after it happened again but they ignored that message despite having asked me a few moments before to install something on my phone. Luckily, I do not have to rely on them entirely but it does make you wonder about how the whole Internet system is controlled.

In Spain for instance companies provide you with basic Internet access, which is so slow it is almost unusable being only good for emails as anyone who has ever tried to get information from a high street business will know. Even the staff at my local Orange shop in Fuengirola only had the the slow connection so that on occasions customers would be queuing out onto the street, waiting to be served. You can of course have 4G high speed (soon 5G OMG) at a price. (Advertised all over the Orange shop, ironically:)) However when your limit is reached you pay the earth for an extra 1GB of data, which feels more like a penalty fine and if you complain they say ‘well, you still have basic Internet’. OH REALLY!

It is all about speed and they can adjust that at will just like turning the knob on a cooker. The higher the speed the more expensive it is for them and for you. They can save themselves money by adjusting your Internet speed, maybe hoping that you will not notice. Of course there are a number of other factors that can affect the speed but I did read somewhere that Internet providers do try and save where they can and if that means switching off someone’s connection for 24 hours I have no doubt they would do that too.