Saturday, January 3, 2009

Giving in

I live in internet H**L. For the last week my internet has been so slow, I'm talking sometimes several minutes for one page to come up. I thought it was the weather. But when I called Wild Blue Satellite tech support I was informed in a condescending tone by the tech support person, that I had exceeded my 'threshold'. I still don't believe it but the point is that we live in a rural community where there are two options, either slow satellite or slower dialup. Of course you can get dialup for $5.00 a month with your AT&T package but you will go insane...IN SANE waiting on the pages to load.


So, I was told I'd have to wait until my time gradually built up and no one wanted to venture a guess as to how long that would be. I thought about upgrading but it's $20 more per month and it's already too much. But I realized that part of the reason I don't get to blog or visit sites is because of the slow connection. I pay $60 a month for the mid range package, which apparently isn't enough for the average person.

I was going to be proud and resist the upgrade but I could not deal with it. I had a contract waiting, quotes to order, leads and books to download, bills to pay, and email to tend to. So, NOW, I'll be paying $80 a month, in addition to the $86 a month for phone service, and $88 a month cell phone for only 750 minutes. It makes me want to wake the Governor out of a sound sleep and beg him to bring Louisiana into the age of technology.

Just try to do without internet for two days and you'll find out how dependent we are on it these days. There should be an amendment to the Bill of Rights, everyone should be able to get fast internet and cell phone communication for resonable prices no matter where they live. At this point, I'd almost give up the TV or long distance and the extra cell phone before downgrading again.

People in rural communities are penalized for living away from the city. We pay more for phone and tv, more for internet, more for gas to get back and forth to work. More for groceries because there isn't as much competition. We have six grocery stores in the three cities near us and they belong to the same chain.

Okay, so this has turned into a rant. I guess I need to call Governor Jindal and some of these politicians who promised high speed internet to all citizens no matter where they live..

Tell me about your internet, is it cable, satellite, or dsl? Go ahead make me just want to puke. How much do you pay? Or are you in the same boat I'm in.

2 comments:

Leah Braemel said...

We've talked about this before - I pay for high speed DSL, and the carrier says I should be receiving at a rate of 3500, but I'm actually downloading at about 900. As a former employee of the ISP, I also know that they won't do anything about the low speed until it reaches 400. They just don't care. They figure you've got service, be happy with what you've got.

Strange thing is there are people living in the middle of my city who can't get DSL still. Weird, huh? But my parents live out in the country are still on dial-up (they refuse to get a satellite, even for their TV). I can't imagine living without my internet these days.

The Canadian government sponsored a big push to go to wireless delivered DSL that was supposed to be used for the very remote areas here, but of course the ISPs only install it where they'll make money, in other words the cities. So the people in the country are still left in the dark.

Leah Braemel said...

Oh, and I pay $49+tax (minus 5% because I have their satellite TV as well as phone service from them) for my service which includes unlimited downloads, by the way. But that's average for our carriers - of which we have three major ones in the country.