Fiber!!!
Last year’s stories and articles
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A year or so ago I was walking through the park down the street, and saw fiber optic cables sticking out of the ground. They were clearly labeled as such. I wondered if fiber was coming my way? And hoping cautiously that it was, of course. I was on cable modem, and had recently increased my speed (and bill) from ten megs to fifty so I could watch 4K TV. The bill jumped from fifty to eighty.
Then late last year I got an offer from AT&T—I was right, my neighborhood was indeed ready for household fiber. It looked like I could double my speed while bringing my bill down to what I was paying for a tenth of the speed! It was Saturday afternoon, and Monday I went down the street to the AT&T store.
I was cautious, knowing how dishonest corporations are these days, and expected to see fees and taxes that would double the bill.
Nope, fifty bucks! If I were still into internet gaming I could have gigabit speed for ten bucks more than I was paying for fifty megs. The installer was scheduled to show up on Friday. He got there about 9:30, right when they said he would, calling before he came.
I always wondered how it worked; how far did the fiber go? To the pole? To the box outside the house?
Nope, the fiber is strung all the way to a fiber modem, which is plugged into the network’s router, and it looks like that cable is fiber, too. It took him four hours to install it.
I don’t notice any difference in any device. Newspapers still load as slowly at a hundred megs than they did twenty five years ago on a 33.6K phone modem.
The difference is in the bill! I haven’t used bittorrent with it yet, or downloaded any huge files, so I’ll see.
The next Monday I drove all the way across town to return the cable modem. Their computer system was down! I got a receipt for the modem. I still needed to call and have them stop service.
I neglected it for a while, and the bill came. I paid it and left a note that I had returned their equipment and expected to see no more bills.
Then there was getting all the new devices on the new network, with a new network name and password. It was a lot easier than I expected, especially since if the device is plugged into the router, no password is needed. The network drive and two laptops are usually plugged in.
The “problem child” was the printer. It wasn’t a problem when I bought it, because the old router had the button to push so you could connect a device. The new one doesn’t. So getting it connected with Wi-fi required a USB cable. I knew I had one, one had come with a sound blaster box twenty years ago. I looked all over the basement and couldn’t find it.
I finally decided I’d go to the hardware store and buy a new one. I went to get one two days later.
They seemed to have every conceivable cord and cable, except a USB cable. I finally asked a clerk for help, and she had a hard time finding it, and what she found didn’t look like the USB I remembered, although the end with a tongue looked right. I bought it, and made sure I kept the receipt, because that one end just didn’t look right.
After I got home I realized that I’d bought a USB extension. And then I saw it; a cable hanging from a cluttered table. Was that it? It was, still plugged in to the Sound Blaster box.
So I looked up the manual and followed it carefully. The blue Wi-fi light had stopped blinking and was shining steadily, and that’s what signals it’s connected to the network. So I opened a document in Oo Word and tried to print a page.
The printer didn’t show up; none of the drivers or programs had installed. I opened the installation program again and studied the interface. One selection was for installing drivers and stuff.
It’s finally working correctly.
And I got another bill from the damned cable company. Needed to call them and set them straight (i.e., threaten them with the BBB and FTC).
I didn’t have to threaten them, they looked into it and are sending me a $150 check. It hasn’t come yet.
A few days after I wrote that, what looked like a bill showed up. What the hell??
I opened it, and it was a bill, except it showed that they owed me money. The day before my birthday, a check showed up in the mail.
When Will Christ Return?