Welcome To A Whole New World

October 22, 2003 2:34 am General

Dealing with Telecom has been less than inspiring. All I wanted from the start was a phone connection and ADSL dial up that worked. Is it too much to ask? All the utility companies in New Zealand seem to act like ISPs, in that you can chop and change as much as you like. What happened to monopolism? Confused by it all, I decided to go with the most convenient option and avoid the confusion of multiple bills coming in each month.

Spoke to a nice girl, after randomly being thrown around their phone queue system, who set me up with Xtra Jetstream Starter – a 128kb/s connection with a limit of 5Gb per month. I didn’t need broadband speed. I mean, who really does? After waiting for an engineer to come and connect me for a few days, I decided to ring them up again. Oh, I need 2 forms of identification before you can connect me? Didn’t you get our email sir? Um, no. That’s what I need an internet connection for.

So the big day arrives. I get connected. They hand me a USB modem. Wonderful. I guess I should have learned to second guess these guys by now. I distinctly remember them telling me that the modem had 1 ethernet port. Maybe it’s that language barrier thing happening again. They don’t understand me, I don’t understand them. Wanting so desperately to be like the Jetsons on that incredibly annoying ad they have on TV, I raced into town to buy a 4 port modem/router. Got all set up, to find that they didn’t submit a service order for my account. I had to wait another day.

Today I got a delivery of another starter pack, complete with USB modem. I’m still waiting on a courier to take by the first one. Stop this crazy thing!

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