We have been without a telephone landline and broadband Internet access for nearly twenty-four hours. Our service provider - Virgin - has a very useful notice on their website that tells us that we have a problem (as if we hadn't noticed!) and that their engineers are working to solve it.
What they don't seem to have realised is that to access their website you need an Internet connection ... so I've had to set up a local hotspot so that I can connect my iPad to my iPhone and use 3G to get Internet access. (4G would be preferable, but that keeps dropping off ... probably due to the bad weather and heavier than normal demand.)
I hope that the problem is solved soon ... but the engineers have already missed one deadline to fix it by 10.45am, so I don't have high hopes that they will meet the next deadline they have set ... which is 2.30pm.
If you are wondering how I managed to write this blog entry, I did it using my iPad/iPhone combination.
What they don't seem to have realised is that to access their website you need an Internet connection ... so I've had to set up a local hotspot so that I can connect my iPad to my iPhone and use 3G to get Internet access. (4G would be preferable, but that keeps dropping off ... probably due to the bad weather and heavier than normal demand.)
I hope that the problem is solved soon ... but the engineers have already missed one deadline to fix it by 10.45am, so I don't have high hopes that they will meet the next deadline they have set ... which is 2.30pm.
If you are wondering how I managed to write this blog entry, I did it using my iPad/iPhone combination.
You don't realise how much you use it till its gone!
ReplyDeleteRay Rousell,
DeleteAs I suspected, the 2.30pm has come and gone ... and we still don't have a landline telephone and broadband connection. We are missing not being connected ... but not as much as we might have done.
All the best,
Bob
StuRat,
ReplyDeleteHaving worked in Further Education myself, that sort of course sounds all to believable.
All the best,
Bob
I hate it when that happens. For some reason our usual experience with Virgin is that we only lose one service at a time typically broadband as I can live without the TV or landline. To be fair our service is actually very reliable though when our (not really) super hub broke down it took them far to long to realise this and get a replacement delivered.
ReplyDeleteRecently, they were anxious to replace one of our "set top boxes" and to get us to agree they doubled our speed to 200MB and cut the price. As we actually get the full download speed this was not a bad deal but what they didn't tell us is that the box now has to be connected to the internet to get the program guide, etc. even though the TV signal still comes through the old coaxial cable. As we can't easily run an Ethernet connection we now have to connect via Wi-Fi and as you no doubt know even Virgin's latest routers have pretty crappy Wi-Fi signals!
Mike Hall,
DeleteVirgin's telephone and broadband service in our area seems to break down at least once a month. Sometimes it's just one service that 'disappears'; at other times it is both.
We used to have Virgin cable TV, but got fed up paying for a service that gave us little more than we can get on Freeview ... so we cancelled it and bought a Freeview box. The signal for that can sometimes drop in strength to the extent that not all the channels are useable, but it's no worse that Virgin's cable TV service used to be and it is free.
Judging from what you've written, it's probably just as well that we dumped Virgin's cable TV service, otherwise that wouldn't have worked if the Internet access was down.
I can see why the move to 5G is being hyped so much, as that is supposed help improve overall connectivity ... but no doubt that will end up being expensive and/or not as good as everyone expects it to be.
All the best,
Bob
We were with Virgin - not anymore , VERY poor service !
ReplyDeleteThe Good Soldier Svjek,
DeleteWe would change if it was easy, but because we don't have a BT landline, no other providers will touch us with a barge pole. (We don't have a BT landline because we live in an area that was one of the first to have cable installed, and BT landlines were replaced by a service provided by Videotron. Since then, Videotron has been taken over by Cable & Wireless, then NTL, and now Virgin.)
All the best,
Bob
Just don't farm out the Life Support Systems to the Internet
ReplyDeleteGeordie an Exiled FoG,
DeleteIt could be worst. The Internet could be run by Capita.
All the best,
Bob
Hi Bob, sorry to read of your ongoing issues with Virgin, I recall a similar post previously? We had Sky Fibre broadband. TV and phone back in the UK and it was costing us a fortune monthly, almost £100.00 per month! Here in Spain every village/Town has it's own independently run 'Internet Shop' where you go and sign up. of course being Spain they are only open Monday to Friday 8am to 2pm and thats it! We went with 4g internet at 30 Euros per month, no limits, no additional charges and it's excellent, just a small dish pointing directly at the repeater mast on Monte Corona, no physical connection and they describe it as 'Fibre speed' We watch all of our Amazon Prime TV programmes through it with no problems at all, can watch BBCI player (using a service called 'ExpatsVPN' at 5Euros monthly) and run two laptops and an IPad off it. Everything just seems so much cheaper and more reliable in Spain. Hope you get things sorted quickly Bob.
ReplyDelete'Lee,
DeleteYou are right. We've had this problem before ... and received similar 'we are working to resolve this problem' promises.
It sounds as if the Spanish have a better system that we have in the UK, although I suspect that the more open terrain might help ensure good 4G connection. There are several wi-fi deadspots near where we live because the hill causes a 'shadow' ... which is why we opted for a cable connection.
All the best,
Bob