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Old 6 Apr 2019, 05:49 PM   #1
FredOnline
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: Manchester UK
Posts: 2,616
A week without broadband

Well, a week and a day, but who's counting?

I am!

A week ago yesterday (Friday), a day off work, and things to do - and that included various things I needed to check out/update etc on the internet.

But alas, there's a red light on my router where normally it's blue. Check out all the connections, reboot etc - nothing.

Sent a tweet from my smartphone to my broadband provider asking if any problems in my post (zip) code area, but nothing reported.

Did some more checking, then picked up the land line 'phone to call the provider - result: nothing, line is dead!

Where would I be without my smartphone!

Using it as a hotspot (my account allows tethering) I logged into my account and reported the problem.

After much to-ing and fro-ing, still no engineer has actually attended to my house to check out the line fault!

Frustrating, or what?

Using mobile data via the hotspot on my smartphone, I have managed the usual day-to-day stuff I use the internet for, but . . .

I have a NOW TV monthly entertainment pass (streaming TV via the internet) that was due for renewal tomorrow, but I've cancelled that - I've lost a week already so not paying out for a service I currently cannot use.

The same applies to catch-up TV (BBC iPlayer, etc) - I'm limited to what's showing on Freeview.

Now my Android smartphone wants to update (March 2019 security update = 205.8 MB), and my new large screen AIO PC keeps wanting to do the dreaded Windows Update!

I see my data allowance rapidly going down (my data plan is not unlimited), so I'm back on my Linux Mint laptop - I can at least control there when and what to update.

I have taken for granted that I have an unlimited and working broadband, and it takes something like this to realise how dependent I have become on something that is usually always available.

Note: I composed this in the text editor on my Linux Mint laptop, then connected to the hotspot and copy/pasted it into my post - hopefully saving data!
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