We’ve been experiencing some issues with our Mediacom phone service at the house for the last month or so. It’s frustrating to not have a functioning land line, but not as frustrating as trying to hear someone on the phone using a Motorola RAZR cell. Who designed those things?! Blech.
Anyway, our Internet pipe really started to degrade pretty significantly over the weekend, which was a sign to me that it was time to take action. I can do without the telephone, but when someone starts messing with my e-mail and IM, we’ve got trouble. Long story short, two techs from Mediacom ended up installing a new “drop” from the utility pole in front of our place to the side of the house. I went from 30% – 80% packet loss to 0% packet loss, and now the phone works great. I made sure I got a couple weeks of credit on my account for the downtime.
I felt bad for those poor techs, up on their ladders in the howling wind and ferociously low temps, but the customer is always right. Turns out one of the guys was leaving today for a week in Vegas, so I didn’t feel too sorry for him.