Given the horror stories I've heard about these services over the years, I've been dreading the switch. However, we've received multiple flyers assuring us that the switch would be transparent—well, except for having to change all our e-mail addresses to Road Runner's goofy four-node domain name. Every five minutes, there are back-to-back 30-second ads on TV assuring us that this is a good thing, that Time-Warner is fine tuning our cable service, and the cheerful jazz guitar in the background, like something from an old '40s black-and-white Warner Bros. animation, reinforces this.
Maybe someone should clue in the Time-Warner folks that you don't "fine tune" your broadband network with a #*&% backhoe.
For twelve hours, yesterday, poor Turtle was stuck at home, totally cut off from the world because everything went down. No phone, no internet, no TV. She called me on her cell phone to let me know what was happening. I brought up Time-Warner's web page, found the Customer Service phone number, and dialed. Busy.
Oh, not just all-agents-are-currently-busy-please-hold-for-eternity busy. Busy busy.
After a while, I called Turtle and found out she had a different number off one of the We Have Assumed Control flyers. After a while longer, I finally got through to a too-cheerful Time-Warner guy who explained that McKinney, Allen, and one other city that may or may not have been Plano were all without service. A line had been cut, and they hoped to have service restored today (which was, you know, yesterday).
And it was, by around 10pm.
Now, it could very well be that some backhoe operator did dig up a line, but if cutting one cable can take out the broadband networks of three entire cities, some engineer ought to be taken out and shot. I think what really happened is that Time-Warner, with all of their braggadocio about a transparent transition just decided to flip the switch without telling us subscribers. Only someone wrote a bad line of code that bollixed the whole works, and because they were so over-confident about their seamless transition that they didn't have a fall back plan ready.
I'm trying to remember if Time-Warner is still owned by AOL. That would explain quite a bit.
3 comments:
I'm the last guy to defend a monopoly, but I have to say that our experience with the coyote food service has exceeded my admittedly low expectations. It has been very reliable, faster than promised, and back when we got it set up, they were the only one of the sequence of providers we tried (in my vain attempts to avoid using the monopoly in the first place) who actually showed up when scheduled and got the job done right the first time.
Of course, the price continues to climb, but as we're over 100,000 ft. from the nearest CO switch, DSL isn't an option, and based on the horror stories I've heard on that end of things, I'm not sure I'd go there anyway.
Of course, I'm thinking of ditching the whole thing and choosing one of the six wide-open networks available to me courtesy of my wireless neophyte neighbors.
Aside from being annoyed about having to switch to a Road Runner e-mail address—I always think they look like some fly-by-night outfit, like Internet America—I'm probably making too much of nothing. I mean, it was Time-Warner I had to deal with the other day, so they apparently had managed to cut over the service without anyone noticing.
We may be looking to switch back to traditional landline phone service, though. Back when this whole digital phone thing came up, Turtle wasn't concerned about having everything all tied in to one vendor. The other day kind of put a new perspective on things for her.
I think part of my irritation about being sold to the gypsies is that I've really gotten spoiled, having cable internet. Back at the other place, we had Verizon DSL, and while it was reasonably reliable, it was noticeably slower. It was also a real pain to get going again, on those occasions when there was some sort of blip and I had to get the router talking to the CO again.
Funny you should mention trolling for access points. The evening all this was taking place, Turtle and I had just returned from a 10-mile bike ride. Since I'd been off the bike for over a week, I was jonesing to log my miles on BikeJournal.com. But no internet connection. It occurred to me that I could fire up the laptop and look for an unsecured AP to ride, as I'd done on New Year's Eve when I wanted to post a blog entry but for some reason couldn't "see" my own AP.
So I did. My immediate neighbors are mostly IT and telecomm guys, so I knew all the close APs would be hidden and/or locked down; but there was "Bobs House", which I suspect is across the border in the next development. All the usual defaults: Channel 6, no WEP or MAC filtering, SSID blabbing all over the place.
Unfortunately, Bob appears to have his internet service with Comcast—er, Time-Warner—as well. No joy.
It occurred to me, while we were without service, that it might be worth proposing a sort of treaty with the guy next door. He has satellite internet of some sort, and I'm wondering if he'd buy into a reciprocal agreement that if one of us goes down, the other would temporarily grant access to his AP.
Or I could read a book.
I have to admit with at least a small amount of shame that I was enjoying the privilege of living next door to "default" unsecured... until recently, that is, when default apparently shut down their service or at least gave it a name.
Just about the time on Tuesday when the big truck took down the power lines, I was cruising through there picking my daughter up from school. Oh! the luck! that I must have made it through before helter skelter.
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