Internet

For the last few months our internet connection has been getting progressively worse. It has been frustrating, not only because we were busy with many other things, we needed to do our online driving practice tests, but also to keep in touch with people, read news and so on. We have a second phone line which works over IP but without internet, that doesn't work. We are also supposed to have a TV decoder for paying channels but without internet that also doesn't work. If the decoder is connected and there is no internet, the tv won't work either, so we have not installed it in view of our current situation.

At the start, the internet would cut out around 8am and sometimes come back around 10 or 11pm. We spoke to other people in the village and they told us this was normal. So we thought, ok, we can live with that, even if we don't think it's normal. The connection slowly became worse, with the outages increasing in length. The tone on the phone was also worse and I could hardly hear anyone calling in.This was no longer normal.

On contacting Orange (French Telecom) and explaining the situation, they asked us to try a few things, and then decided to send a technician. The technician arrived and we explained (again) the problem and he told us - this is normal. He didn't look at anything or do anything.

So 2 weeks later the internet was even worse and we ended up with no internet whatsoever, so it was time for more serious action. The only way we could connect to the Internet was by engaging the phone as if we were going to make a call and then as soon as we finished doing what we were doing, disconnect and the Internet connection would immediately disappear.

Contacted Orange again and they asked us to change the filter, change the phones around and if that didn't work, they would send someone. "They" happened to be two lovely older technicians who looked at all our cabling. They found a few problems - so we're not mad - an old line with bells, apparently from an old phone system, which may interfere with the current system, a birds nest of cables in the loft which looked like a plate of angry spaghetti. The internet worked, but the phone didn't sound much better. But they left, we were happy - for 5 minutes and then the internet connection disappeared. Back to the same old tricks.

Called Orange again and they decided it might be the Livebox (router). So we arranged with our friends up the road to collect it from Limoux (as no driving for us!) and spent a while installing it. Finally we finished at 1am and did some work on the internet. All seemed to be well. But the next morning it was back to its usual self, with the red light flashing like mad and no connection at all. The phone trick was also starting to be unreliable.

So I formulated a condensed series of events for the next call from Orange - they were going to call us this time, after the installation of the new Livebox. I was going to tell them that as Orange was not able to provide all the services we are paying for we feel they were not keeping their side of the contract and they should have checked before selling us this package that it would actually work in our area - basically Orange sold us a lemon. But when the lady called she was so sweet (they saved her for this moment) and she was very understanding and said they would arrange for a specialist technician to come out the next day.

The technician called and said - bonjour, we have found a small problem on your line - I found this quite funny as each time we rang Orange they "checked the line" and found nothing. So I asked him to repeat it and he said yes, there is a problem on the line.

He arrived today - without smile, without greeting, and started taking apart what the other lovely guys did last week. But what happened today? We had a thunderstorm at lunch time and somehow that got rid of a lot of gremlins in the system and the internet worked perfectly for over an hour - blast - they finally send someone specialised and the thing works! But I should have relaxed as it was short lived - as soon as he started moving things around, the connection disappeared. Wouter showed him what we had to do to get internet. He found the whole thing strange too.

The time spent on sorting this out has been significant and I can well understand people getting upset with helpdesk assistants on the phone who try to establish the details of the problem. But for now we have internet and I will be interested to see whether or not it is still working tomorrow morning.