ADSL Connection (solution)

[Adam Tworkowski]

A quick word of caution with dealing with Bell and ADSL testing:

Be very cautious about letting Bell technicians into your premises for 
testing.  An $80 charge magically appeared on my phone bill when a Bell 
technician came to test my ADSL connection.  There was a problem but the line 
but due to the techs documentation it was a hard fight with several managers 
to get the charge removed.  It was eventually removed as the managered 
"agreed to disagree" and heavily marked up the trouble ticket and warned me 
that this contest would greatly affect my ability to contest billing issues 
in the future.

Some of this was my fault.  Read on if you want some details:

-Adam had Nortel 1 meg Sympatico service for 5 years (note -- not the same as 
ADSL.  Just because Nortel I meg modem works on your line does not guarantee 
that ADSL will)
-Adam gets royally frustrated with blocking of port 25 layered on top of 
previous frustrations such has taking four days for Sympatico tech to 
"escalate" trouble ticket to Bell tech at CO who needed to reset a card.
-Adam obtains used ADSL modem privately and cancels Sympatico and signs up 
with ADSL provider.
-Service switches over but no modem sync.
-ADSL provider is called and they arrange for Bell to examine issue
-technician shows up with fancy handheld modem / line tester.  says he can 
reach the CO.   He says line is fine and asks Adam to test ADSL session
-Adam tries to make ADSL session (of course it still won't work)
-Adam foolishly mentions that he bought modem privately and doesn't know for a 
fact that it works, it is only "know to be working".
-Technician goes to vehicle to get Alcatel modem still in shrink wrap
-Modem does not sync.  Technician calls into CO and asks them to switch the 
line to "maintenance mode".  Modem syncs.  
-Bell technican makes notes including that customer was uncertain of modems 
functionality and swiftly leaves.
-Adam goes upstairs and fires up pppoe and connection has been fine ever 
since.
-Adam receives bill for visit reminding himself that  he has paid $10/month x 
12 months x 5 years for a freaking modem rental and how things would have 
played out very differently if you was still a Sympatico customer.

If I was smarter it would have went something like this:

-Adam says "no you can't come in -- do you testing from outside"
-Adam says "that's nice, the line is good and you can sync with your fancy 
hand held modem but show me a sync with a modem that you would have left for 
me *if* I was a Sympatico customer"
-Adam says "no, you can't come in...I'll get you an extensions cord..."
-Adam asks "what exactly did you have the technician at the CO do?  What is 
"Maintainence Mode"? Oh, you mean there is no full ADSL in my area yet.  But 
Sympatico has been advertising that Sympatico HSE *is* available in my area.  
Oh, so it *is* ADSL service but somewhat degraded.  Oh, you mean I will never 
get close to 1.2M until there is fiber is in my area? Cough"
-Adam says "that's nice, it looks like the modem is syncing but prove to me 
that the connection is usable"
-Adam says "no you can't come in...go get your laptop"
-Adam says "what do you mean you don't carry a laptop...how can you 
unequivocally tell me that the connection is good when you haven't seen it 
for yourself"
Adam says "hey, why don't I give you a break and use my equipment to finish 
your testing so you don't have drive off to find a laptop.  You wait 
outside...yup it seems to be  working now"
-Adam says "good day" taking full notes explicitly noting that Bell technician 
was not provisioned with sufficient equipment for testing.




--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml