How dare Telstra Clear sell their new “Big Back Yard” product when they can’t even service existing clients?

After around 3 hours on the phone my home PC is back on line, after nearly a month swithched off. Inexplicably the DNS  had spontaneously morphed to another number, or Paradise changed its requirements, if I correctly understand the helpful technician who cracked the problem. It was at the end of 1.5 hrs of me fiddling with the modem and router and various settings, under phone directions.

Poor guy. I could hardly bring myself to talk civilly. My first attempt to get thru to Telstra Clear last Wednesday ended when I hung up after more than 40 minutes of music and intermittent reassurances that a “technician would be with me as soon as possible”

Next attempt was aborted on the warning that the delay would be 73 minutes.

Next morning it was 61 minutes.

Today the delay warning at 11-22am  said 2 minutes. A technician replaced the music at 11-37 am. He would not believe that I’d started my first contact attempt at around 10-34am and had a similar 15 minutes of postponements before the first technician contact, despite the warning telling me to expect a delay of only 3 minutes.

Turkish communication service was eye-opening. It perhaps illustrates the “leap frog” theory that technology will advantage poorer countries without a big legacy investment in ‘steam technology’. Internet access in Turkey was far better than anything we found in Greece. Enquiries to the mobile provider were instantly directed to competent English speakers.

Every hotel we stayed in had fast free wi-fi. Many had a separate service for each floor. These were not international chain hotels. They were little family owned affairs, 2-3 star, the biggest having no more than a couple of dozen rooms.