After suffering the nightmare of Telefonica Brazil's broadband - possibly faster than a carrier pigeon but certainly not fast enough to watch video, while at the same time being criminally expensive - I know I should be pathetically grateful for any old broadband back in Blighty. But human nature being what it is, I soon became itchy to test out the competition.
So it was a fond farewell to TalkTalk, whose founder and chief executive, Charles Dunstone had impressed the hell out of me over the years by always replying to my personal emails (often within minutes) and thus more than making up for the too-often flakey - or worse - Indian call centres and technology. But when my tenant was recently inconvenienced one too many times by the on-again-off-again phone and internet connection, I found myself sharing her exasperation at the situation.
I did a bit of online research to bring myself up to date with the broadband market and decided to give Virgin cable another go. I had used it a few years ago and half-remembered something disappointing about it. This became a fully-remembered problem once the new, super-fast 30-meg line was installed and switched on. Yes, the test showed it was flowing at full-tilt through the pipes but in actual use it often seemed painfully slow or even dead. Despite the fantastic-looking modem, with its multi-coloured lights constantly flashing away, navigating the Web once again felt cumbersome. I am guessing there was also something iffy with the wifi - too often you just sat there waiting to hop back onto its irregular signal. Very disappointing.
So now I've gone with O2, despite their customer service and technical slip-ups already. The product itself seems excellent. It uses the boring old phone line, unlike Virgin's cable, but seems to employ a bit of gee-whizz gadgetry that helps draw twice as much data. The net effect is that you get a steady flow of high-speed internet, which is infinitely preferable to an unsteady flow of super-high-speed internet !
One other thing worth mentioning: on ending my trial period with Virgin I asked if they wanted the modem back and they said no. I immediately thought of the crappy modem we had been forced to buy back in Sao Paulo, since Telefonica's really crappy modem didn't include wifi. And when we ended our contract with Telefonica, something they made all but impossible to do, we had to schlep across town and hand-deliver their piece of junk back to a Telefonica office.
So it was a fond farewell to TalkTalk, whose founder and chief executive, Charles Dunstone had impressed the hell out of me over the years by always replying to my personal emails (often within minutes) and thus more than making up for the too-often flakey - or worse - Indian call centres and technology. But when my tenant was recently inconvenienced one too many times by the on-again-off-again phone and internet connection, I found myself sharing her exasperation at the situation.
I did a bit of online research to bring myself up to date with the broadband market and decided to give Virgin cable another go. I had used it a few years ago and half-remembered something disappointing about it. This became a fully-remembered problem once the new, super-fast 30-meg line was installed and switched on. Yes, the test showed it was flowing at full-tilt through the pipes but in actual use it often seemed painfully slow or even dead. Despite the fantastic-looking modem, with its multi-coloured lights constantly flashing away, navigating the Web once again felt cumbersome. I am guessing there was also something iffy with the wifi - too often you just sat there waiting to hop back onto its irregular signal. Very disappointing.
So now I've gone with O2, despite their customer service and technical slip-ups already. The product itself seems excellent. It uses the boring old phone line, unlike Virgin's cable, but seems to employ a bit of gee-whizz gadgetry that helps draw twice as much data. The net effect is that you get a steady flow of high-speed internet, which is infinitely preferable to an unsteady flow of super-high-speed internet !
One other thing worth mentioning: on ending my trial period with Virgin I asked if they wanted the modem back and they said no. I immediately thought of the crappy modem we had been forced to buy back in Sao Paulo, since Telefonica's really crappy modem didn't include wifi. And when we ended our contract with Telefonica, something they made all but impossible to do, we had to schlep across town and hand-deliver their piece of junk back to a Telefonica office.
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