Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Death to monopoly!!!


Just returned from extended holidays back home. (Merry christmas BTW). But anyway- I'm pissed. Why? Because of broadband internet. Or the lack of it to be more precise.
OK to make long story short- only few weeks ago the national telecommunications provider (and still de facto monopolist BTW) Telekom Slovenije managed to extend optic fibre network (neccesarry for broadband internet) all the way to my home village. "Great" - you'd say. "Great"- that was what we all said- finally we'll be rid of those squeaky painstakingly slow analog modems. But as always with this situations the milk went sour. Almost to fast. The only internet provider, that started signing in users was SIOL (owned by Telekom BTW). "Great!" - my parents said- they always wanted to have more channels on their TV without the need of expensive satellite dishes - SIOL offers 120 channel digital TV together with their broadband internet. Now, troubles started as soon as I made inquiry. "Sir - SIOL TV only comes together with 1 Mbs broadband internet and IP phone number- only in a package called Paket trio". "But... I only need SIOL TV, and 256 kbps broadband internet. No new phone number.". "Sorry sir, it's either all or nothing". "What about if I take smaller package- can I than upgrade just for TV?". "I'm sorry".
OK, I said, so I'll pay little something more, so my parents can enjoy 120 channel TV, together with all the joys of the broadband internet. When they called me that early wednesday morning, on the 21st December to tell me one of their workers would come to plug us in, I was rid of my doubts- at least they do it fast!!!
So, imagine my surprise when I came home last saturday, and I connected TV to the ADSL modem and there was no picture? "OK." I said. "At least they have 24h support desk". I called, and I managed to talk to someone after just 15 minutes being on queue. "Yes sir. I'll have one of our technicians look into it. No problem.". And some technician obviously did. Because after few hours not only that TV wasn't working- neither was internet. So I called again. No such luck as getting the operator. So- next day- christmas eve I finally managed to get someone. Who told me that it must be problem with infrastracture, and he'd let know someone on Telekom. Needless to say- 4 days later no sign of any technician, and no sign of internet. Serve me right. Next time I won't rush into things. And neither will I pay any bills before someone finally moves their butts. I mean- I know it's holiday season. I know things are bound to go wrong at the start. But I do think, that even f***** monopolists should show some basic friendliness together with a true will to help. Or am I just simply to naive?

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