All of those ridiculously positive articles extolling the merits of new high-speed Internet connections like ADSL, ISDN and broadband cable were bound to get to me eventually, and a few days ago, they finally did.
I decided to trade in my trusty dial-up connection for a whiz-bang one megabyte-per-second ADSL connection with Bell Atlantic. All my colleagues assured me: Once you’re on a high-speed connection, you’ll never want to go back.
But my migration from copper to fiber had a higher purpose. Hotels and airports are fitting many of their rooms with these high-speed lines in the hopes of luring the wired traveler. We’ve witnessed the rise of the Internet kiosk and the PC in every hotel room. There are many in the hotel business who believe high-speed connections represent the next thing in the lodging industry. (Some readers of this column, in fact, have said they’d gladly pay extra for a quickie connection.)
But after a truly horrible experience with my ADSL hook-up, I’m skeptical of the promises of a post-56 Kbps life, and even more concerned about the reliability of the connections in question. ADSL, which is short for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, offers download speeds starting at 640 Kbps and running all the way up to 7.1 Mbps. Costs start at about $50 a month for the slower version up to more than $100 for the swifter connections.
I opted for something in between, a choice that fit my checkbook while satisfying my need for speed. A short while later, a technician installed the new line with a minimum of trouble, and before long, I was surfing the Web at rates previously unthinkable.
Web pages popped up almost instantaneously; downloads took seconds instead of minutes; my e-mail was delivered as it arrived. With a ADSL line, your computer is always connected to the Internet – so no more dialing up and waiting to log on. I was in seventh Internet heaven.
Then the trouble started.
Only a few days after its debut, my ADSL suddenly stopped working. I tried to reconnect, even going so far as to reboot the computer, check all of my connections and restart the modem. All to no avail. I hoped the connection might start up by itself, but the following morning, the line remained dead.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Because of some unforeseeable digital hiccup in my system software, my redundant dial-up connection was disabled – meaning I couldn’t connect to the Internet at all. No more e-mail, Web pages or newsgroups.
As someone who is constantly on deadline and relies on the Internet for just about everything, being unwired was unacceptable. So you can imagine my displeasure when the first technical support representative I called told me, in as many words, that I’d have to live without an Internet connection for at least two days. I didn’t take that very well.
I asked to expedite the process, emphasizing that a hook-up was a mission-critical function, not some luxury that a 9-to-5 consumer would probably be able to live without on their home PC.
Thus began a comedy of errors that had me sitting on hold from 6:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. for two days straight. I couldn’t even leave my desk for lunch. The company representatives I reached often didn’t speak English as their first (or, I sometimes suspected, their second) language, which only added to the chaos.
Everyone had a different story to tell, a different theory to explain. One technical support employee insisted that my problems were Microsoft’s fault; another swore that the modem wasn’t working; yet another blamed the PC manufacturer.
I fastidiously followed up on all of the claims, but all signs pointed back to Bell Atlantic as the culprit. It turns out that Bell Atlantic’s ADSL network is notorious for spontaneously collapsing. Further, its technicians, when they are able to articulate themselves in clear English, are generally indifferent to the problems these network screw-ups create.
The technical support staff does not understand – nor does it seem to want to understand – the challenges that today’s SOHO set face.
I was furious. Still am furious, since as I write this column, I’m still unplugged. Thanks to a technician at my PC manufacturer, I’ve managed to re-establish my dial-up connection. But the ADSL is still DOA. And Bell Atlantic really doesn’t seem to give a damn.
This isn’t a story about Bell Atlantic or my home office connectivity troubles as much as it is a glimpse into the troublesome world of high-speed connections.
From chatting with the phone company technicians, I know that there are many others out there who have suffered through catastrophic network meltdowns, but are so busy rebuilding their post-crash lives that they don’t have the time to talk about their troubles. This is a column for them.
It’s also a column for those of you out there who are thinking about trading in a tried-and-true dial-up connection for something speedier and sexier. I’ve had the privilege of testing several of the new kiosks that are popping up in airports, conference centers and hotels, and I know I’m not the only one who spends more time configuring my settings than actually being connected.
There’s also the promise of plug-and-play when it comes to those newfangled hotel Internet connections, which more accurately are called plug-and-pray. The moment your connectivity surpasses 56 Kbps, all bets about reliability are off. You might manage to hook up at 7.1 Mbps – or not at all.
This “all or nothing” proposition may be OK for the casual user, but business travelers can’t put up with it. While the instant gratification of high-speed access is a great bonus, frequent travelers should never ever rely on a digital connection.
Ironically, the dial-up is as important – if not more important – than ever on the road.
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