This is, alas, the kind of service one can expect around here. Verizon wasn't amazing? But they were at least an RBOC. The outfit they sold their New England landline operations to a few years ago, not so much, and the company that bought them last year, evidently even less so.

In a way, I get it. Because of the "common carrier" rule, they have to provide and maintain the physical plant here in their service area, but other signal providers (like the one I get my phone service and DSL through) can use it. This means that when someone like me has a problem with the physical line, when they send someone to repair it, they're helping their competitor. They're required by law to do so, but on an intellectual level, I can understand why there is something less than a fanatical level of motivation to get it done in a timely fashion.

OTOH, the whole reason they (or I guess technically their predecessors, now) lost me as a customer in the first place was because the services they were providing on this copper were bad and overpriced, so...

I've probably told this story before, and it's been so long that I may be misremembering some of the file details now, but basically: Back when Verizon still provided the land services around here, this house's original POTS and DSL service was through them. I actually had the EPU web server here in the house and operated it myself. To do that I had to be a "business" customer, because it was the only way to get a static IP address.

When Verizon sold their New England operations to FairPoint (hereinafter "FailPoint"), they didn't include their IP address blocks. Evidently no one at FailPoint noticed this or realized why it was important. (I am assuming Verizon's people knew full well, and did it on purpose to fuck their successors. They didn't spin off the ghost of NYNEX willingly, IIRC, it was part of a judicial quid pro to get approval for some other merger they wanted more.) Which meant that on the day of the handover, I, and presumably every other former Verizon DSL customer with a static IP, suddenly found myself without a working route to... well... anywhere, because I was using an IP address that belonged to a different provider.

OK, fine, stupid shit happens when you're messing around with backbone routing, I remember that from when I worked in network ops for Big ISPs. All FailPoint needs to do is assign me an address that they do own, and then I have to do a few things on my end, and job's a good'un. Pain in the ass, but no big deal.

They didn't have any.

They hadn't realized they would need them.

Their NOC strung me along for weeks with this shit. Oh, hang in there, we're getting some, don't worry. Normal service will be resumed shortly. Annnny day now. We've just hit a couple of teeny tiny little snags. Nothing major. ICANN is a harsh mistress!

(In fairness, ICANN is a harsh mistress, and often a moronic one. And in fairness to them, after their predecessor organizations handed out massive blocks of IPs like candy in the early days, they did have a pretty awkward bed to sleep in when the Web really took off and IPv4 addresses suddenly became an Obviously Finite Resource. But I digress.)

I put up with it for as long as I could stand, then eventually concluded that not only was I sick of their excuses, but also, they weren't going to be any better to deal with even if they eventually got it working; so I bailed to a competing regional provider, which I'm still with today, and presumably will be until and unless someone gets fiber working in this helltown.

BUT they, or now their successor company, still own the copper. And so.

>Here's hoping they get their shit together sooner rather than later.
>In the meantime, is there anything we as a community can do to help?

I can't think of anything offhand. There probably isn't anything anyone can do until and unless Consolidated pulls its finger out. Even if I switched providers again (and this is not my current provider's fault), the physical link is down and won't be coming back until they fix it. The only alternative would be to change to a different medium, and the only one I can think of that works around here is that jaw-droppingly expensive satellite service that used to come bundled with DirecTV, so that's not happening.

(Well, and theoretically switching to a more expensive data plan on my cellphone, but using that as my household Internet link is a clunky field-expedient thing in the first place.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

And with the unemployment thing coming to an end soon, a more expensive plan really isn't viable in the first place. Dammit. I hate logic sometimes.

Short of us all chipping in to get you a dedicated hotspot and a heap of data for use with same (which would pose the same problems, I'm thinking, as the current arrangement), there's not much else I can think of...

	-={(Astynax)}=- "Liberté, Egalité, Gritté."

No... no they won't.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

"Philly is never gonna vote Trump. The fuck do we want another grotesque swivel-eyed giant orange hateblob for?"

Hasn't the man suffered enough recently without being subjected to that?

>"Philly is never gonna vote Trump. The fuck do we want
>another grotesque swivel-eyed giant orange hateblob
>for?"
>

Gritty's really more of a rage-blob than a hate-blob, but this is clearly not the place to explore that further.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "This Space For Rent."

Craig

All things considered, I'd trade the win record for all but one team in my area for a cancellation of misery in things that count.

Peter Eng
--
The Storm, in case you're wondering. Huskies, Seahawks, Mariners...not my biggest concerns.

My freshman college starting weekend, a bunch of us went to a Phillies game, sitting out in the bleachers.

We got mentioned in the paper because, as the game got dumber and dumber, we started chanting "Let's Go Flyers!", and people around us picked it up until the entire area behind center field was chanting it.

This was many years ago, but still, that's a sign as to how it can get there.

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

Craig
(I know this because I'm a fan of the Philly teams...)

I love you.
--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

Full disclosure, I didn't coin that, I just swiped it from the Internet zeitgeist swirling around Philadelphia's incarnate id.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "Adjust affections accordingly."

Since I work from home, I could conceivably work for about two weeks before running into that 8GB limit, should I be forced to use the hotspot wi-fi. (I'd want a dedicated hotspot for that, to free up my phone, but that's neither here nor there.)

The only hitch is that they don't offer month-to-month plans; the shortest period you can sign up for is three months at a time, and the rates go up after the first three months - presumably to "help" you to decide to pay for the year-in-advance plan.

5Gb per month data, with everything not used saved up, free calls and texts, 50 SEK per month, which is 6 bucks about,and I can change whenever.
The only issue I have is, they don't do e-bills.

That plan didn't seem all that bad, honestly,compared to many I've heard of, US and other countries.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

Did somebody say Ghost of NYNEX?

It is indeed quite magical and lovely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Sweden

And while the accent is ATROCIOUS, the technical proficiency in English is high. All welcome, more or less.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

Big ups to the tech who, I believe, wrangled the whole thing solo. It can't be easy being a phone tech in this frozen hell in winter.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

The department lines between wire guys and I.T folks was non-existant so if camera needed to be put up at -30; oh boy, I get to drive the bucket truck and hope my hands don't freeze if I have to take them out of my gloves.

Coldest weather I was in was around -70 to -80 with windchill. Forgot my gloves to start my rig, and from the time it took me to walk to the exploder, start it, and walk back, I couldn't feel my hands.

DaemeonX

I don't think I really want to reward Elon for ruining astronomy.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

It is my firm belief that billionaires should be stripped of all assets and made to work on the lowest rung of their wealth source. In Elon's case, this means being shoved in his parents' emerald mine and told to start digging.