April 12- The Sad Saga of our Internet

Since we had first arrived in Ecuador in October 2011, we have always had an internet connection of some sort. We really couldn’t do the kind of travelling away from friends and family that we do without it.

When we first moved into our condo, we went with one of the local internet companies, Gold Soft, that worked through an antenna on our balcony. It worked well for the year we had it but when we returned back to Ecuador after our summer home in Canada, we found that even though we had paid for 512Mbps we were only receiving 256- not good! After complaining our speed was bumped up to what we had been paying for but it left a bad taste with us for their service.

We had also decided that instead of paying for TV service- another story entirely-LOL- we would do streaming from our computer to the TV screen and use Netflix, MLB package, First Row Sports, Hulu and USTV- all internet accesses to TV content. Of course for that, we required more bandwidth.

The local government run phone company, CNT, would provide up to 3Meg of service for a reasonable cost, around $36/month, however you also had to buy a local phone line- no naked DSL in Ecuador. Other companies in Salinas would only provide up the 1.5Meg unless you were a business and then at a far greater cost. Please remember we are pensioners on a budget!

Eddie came with us to the CNT office to apply (thank god for our friend Eddie as I doubt our Spanish will ever be good enough to deal with this kind of stuff). The office was very modern, air-conditioned and organized. We took a number and after maybe 20 minutes, our turn came up. A very nice competent young woman took all our information and requests and told us we should hear something in 8 days. Only a few days later our landline was installed first and then several days later our internet- no problems.

For two and a half months we had wonderful internet! Always up to 3Meg, no breaks in service, good VOIP connection for my Magicjack, adequate streaming to our TV, we were happy and then……….

Yes, you were waiting for it, weren’t you? This is after all Ecuador.

On the weekend of April 16^th we had our last major rain storm and storm it was. When we woke up the entire naval base looked under water and most of the back streets had huge puddles. And, you guessed it, our internet was out!

In our other life we had been telephony engineers dealing with outside systems so we were well aware of what rain can do to copper cables. And we were patient assuming that service would be restored soon however the weird thing was that our landline was still working!

When by Monday we still had nada, we asked our friend Eddie to please go to CNT and complain – maybe they didn’t know we were out of service. As well, our internet started coming up periodically. We’d have service for 5, 10 minutes or sometimes several hours and then nothing.

An inside technician came after several more days and replaced the filters and assumed that was the problem when our internet came back up. Then it went back down while he was still here and he blamed the Magicjack connection- of course not true. We took the Magicjack off and internet was on momentarily and then back off. He called his manager to join him and help and after much checking/ discussing etc, they determined that the problem must be the outside line. An outside repair technician actually came the next day and called us on our landline while our internet was on it’s periodic up mode. Was our internet working?- yes, right now- did you give us a new line?- no, but no problem on the old. End of outside work!

Our internet continued to work for several hours and then again nothing the next day. And so it has been going on for the last 2 weeks. Uwe and I went to the CNT office yet again on April 4^th, again explained our problem and again were told that a technician would come to fix within 24 to 48 hours. Again we waited patiently at our condo both the next day and the day after and once again nothing. Are we seeing a pattern here?

Luckely our friend Lauri had her internet working – she lives in a condo two floors up from us- and we used hers every day to check in with friends/family.

On April 9^th we did yet another trip to the CNT office. Once again a polite young woman helped us, even giving a credit on our bill, and yes a technician would come today or tomorrow morning and once again nothing.

We had reached the end of our patience. Because our CNT account was actually in Eddie’s name- he has a cedula, we don’t as yet- we asked him to please go and cancel both our landline and our internet.

That same day, we had a new internet installed from yet another private company, Fox Service. This time for only 1Meg- 3 Meg being way too expensive- but everything seems to work adequately, Magicjack, internet, streaming,- we are happy once again.