The latest manifestation of ANTELmania arises from a simple request to change my cellphone number.  Since I have a contract, they refuse to do it without a letter from the Police explaining that I have been receiving harassing calls.

Why they can’t simply charge me US$25 for the privilege and change the number is beyond me.

I have said it before, and I will say it again:  the single largest obstacle to the economic development of Uruguay is ANTEL!  In my opinion, they should change their name to ANCOM: Administracion Nacional de Comunicaciones y Otras M***das.

For months I have not been getting emails at my southron@UruguayLÑiving.com account.  I just figured that everyone was bored with me and no longer bothered to write,  I admit that I was a little surprised that no one evn bother to spam me as well, but being incredibly busy, in between being sick, hospitalized, having body parts removed, etc., I really didn’t spend much time on it…

Until yesterday when i realized that my UruguayLiving.com email was not getting through because one kind person sent me a private message on www.SociedadSouthron.net asking if I had gotten their email.

I think my computer needs to be exorcised–for no conceivable reason, I have not been getting my email since 11 April 2008.

In the words of Gomer Pyle:  “surprise, surprise, surprise”.  I just downloaded 16.531 emails totalling 21.MB of space.  The Spam catcher is still sorting through them and the number to which I must respond is dropping steadily.

So, to all those who have written me, I humbly apologize for not responding–sometimes it takes me a while, but I try to respond to every legitimate email I get…

After Epiphany (Tres Reyes) I am going to bring a priest here to bless the house and office AND exorcise the computer and exchange server–I wonder if metal can blister?

Maybe snail mail is faster?

At least one good thing came out and that terrible experience. I discovered a telecom company that apparently wants to do business the right way: Claro, which was formerly CTI Móvil. We discovered it in our hunt for alternative Internet access during the ANTEL debacle.

NOTE:  Since this was published several people have pointed out to me that Claro and Telmex are both ultimately owned by Carlos Slim. Maybe he needs to take a hard look at TelMex’s management and practices…

One solution turned out to be G3 wireless modems. We’d previously gotten one from ANTEL (I know, I know: I should’ve known better) because I wanted one that would work throughout the entire country. It does work, but the bandwidth isn’t very good. So, during the crisis, we decided to explore other options.

The Claro modem was the cheapest at 500 pesos per month with the first month free. It also had the best local bandwidth: I was able to get a steady 236kb. The one year contract promised to have countrywide service by the end of this calendar year. AND, in something unheard of in this business climate, they offered a five-day return with no questions asked.

Since the first modem worked so well, we bought two more. In addition we are negotiating with them for cellphones and modems for our entire staff, and also looking into the possibility of them providing a wireless backup Internet for the next time ANTEL decides to engage in it self-indulgent idiocy.

My plan is to do business with companies that want to do business properly whenever possible, and to promote them through my websites. Please note, I have no financial interest in Claro nor any business arrangement for promoting them. I am doing it for the good of Uruguay and those who live here or want to live here. I am convinced that good business practices will eventually drive out the bad.

There are two alternatives to ANTEL for Internet service: Dedicado and TelMex. My experience with both has been abysmal.

Having said that, we are going to give Dedicado another chance now that they have moved one of their main antennas. There are still many people who have excellent service from them and it is a real alternative to ANTEL. It seems that they can provide excellent service, but you need to check and see how the service is in your location before you buy. My biggest gripe with Dedicado is that they advertise that the bandwidth is guaranteed, but if you read their contract it absolutely is NOT!

TelMex is another case. They are expensive and incompetent! We signed a one-year contract with them which EXPLICITLY guaranteed the bandwidth, for which we paid a huge premium, and they never delivered. In the evening I seldom was able to get half of the Guaranteed bandwidth. After talking to IT professionals, I have been told that TelMex is famous, or more properly infamous, for this performance throughout Latin America.

I am hoping that Dedicado will take a page from Claro’s playbook and become a responsible company. I have little hope for TelMex, and absolutely none for ANTEL.

I thought I had found the nadir in state owned company performance when ICE announced that the number of incoming calls to their ADSL helpline had dropped by 85% over the previous month—it turns out that it was only because they had changed the helpline number and not told anyone.

Over the last 5 days ANTEL managed to sink even below the abysmal standards of ICE. A whole area of the city, including our offices had their telephones and Internet connections turned off for 5 days without any real prior warning. I admit, there was a recorded announcement left on our answering machine several hours after our office closed last Wednesday night informing us that everything would be turned off Thursday as of 8 a.m—90 minutes before our offices open. Of course, we didn’t find out about it until nothing worked when the office opened at 9:30 a.m.

This is the single most reckless, incompetent, uncaring, clueless and stupid act I have ever seen committed by any telecommunications monopoly! With out prior warning they shut down all kinds of businesses because they are “recabling the area”.

Firstly, their “recabling” should’ve been done from midnight until dawn, instead of during the business day. But they were too lazy for that.

Secondly, had they given at least one or two business days notice, we could’ve made alternative arrangements. But they were too thoughtless to do that.

Thirdly, despite numerous calls to Supervisors, NO ONE at ANTEL would give us any information. Because they were too uncaring to do even that.

The very worst thing about all this is that is was not due to an accident, but was a planned event—a deliberate and reckless outage without taking into account its contractual obligations or the impact of this action on the people whose service has evaporated…

I wonder how many future jobs were lost for Uruguay because of ANTEL’s actions. How many people or companies were considering Uruguay and were appalled by ANTEL’s reckless and indefensible behavior?

Had it happened while I was considering moving here I would have stricken Uruguay from the list!

The biggest single hindrance to the development of Uruguay’s economy is the incompetents in government and state-owned companies who prevent business development by their appallingly shortsighted and self-indulgent behavior!

I wonder how long the people of Uruguay will tolerate this kind of thing.

I am certainly sure I will NOT tolerate it!

Last year, in a desperate search to get sufficient bandwidth we bought an expensive router that would aggregate Internet bandwidth from two sources. We connected an ADSL line from Antel and a microwave link from TelMex. The Antel line cost about $84 per month, and the TelMex link cost $850 per month (that was because we bought “guaranteed” bandwidth). I must tell you, that the TelMex service was HORRIBLE! Despite the “guarantee” there were many times when my total bandwidth was less than 128K, even when no one else was in the building. We called to complain almost daily, but with no effect. 

However one year and US$10,000 later we are free from TelMex.

We have replaced the TelMex link with a second bigger ADSL line. And we have upgraded the first ADSL line as well. Now our total Internet Bill is about $400 a month, and we have more bandwidth all the time.

Perhaps the best news is that Antel has committed a significant investment to build a huge new fibre optic pipeline that will connect to the Internet backbone through Brazil–this will effectively obviate Argentina’s policy of choking off Internet access in Uruguay by limiting the bandwidth they allow us to buy from them.

My next adventure is the new G3 wireless modem for my laptop. I will be testing that out in the next week or so and will let you know. I am guardedly optimistic.

Life in Uruguay is good, and the technology is getting better!

(I should mention one really cool feature of BroadVoice. With their Unlimited World Plus package they include unlimited free calls to 33 countries including land lines in Brazil and Argentina—which could be very useful here.) Check it out at: http://www.broadvoice.com/rateplans_unlimited_world+.html.

But, back to the Skype skip.

We use Skype for communications between our staff here and on other continents. We also use it for clients.

And now it has gone and died…well not exactly died, but it is pretty sick. The announcement on their website says that they have a “software” problem and that the engineers expect it to take 12 to 24 hours for it to start working again. I certainly hope those are “American” hours and NOT “Uruguayo” hours!

The conspiracy theorist among you, and you know who you are out on the coast there, will be certain that since E-Bay has bought Skype, they are using this time to install the bugging devices so that Uncle Sam can listen in to all the previously encrypted conversations. After all the Yankee Senate has passed a bill that would allow warrantless taps on all international calls and emails. Hmmm…

I am not sure I believe that; but just in case, we are testing out VoIP services that work well with Phil Zimmerman’s (the inventor of PGP encryption) Zphone which can be found at: http://zfoneproject.com/getstarted.html.

For those who are searching for alternatives, here are a few that are supposed to work with Zphone.:

http://www.gizmoproject.com/

http://www.sjlabs.com/sjp.html

]]> http://www.uruguayliving.com/2007/08/16/skype-has-skipped-out%e2%80%a6/feed/ 2 http://www.uruguayliving.com/2007/03/11/bigger-and-even-more-important-news/ http://www.uruguayliving.com/2007/03/11/bigger-and-even-more-important-news/#comments Sun, 11 Mar 2007 13:53:53 +0000 The Southron http://www.uruguayliving.com/2007/03/11/bigger-and-even-more-important-news/ After months of waiting, the printed version of “The Southron’s Guide to Living in Uruguay” is finally available online at: http://www.lulu.com/content/579686.

This is a full-sized, 8½ x 11 inch paper back, with color covers and black-and-white inside. Because of its large size is much easier to read than the pocket-sized edition produced locally.  The price for the full-size paperback is the same as the retail price for the e-book, US$30. For payment, lulu.com accepts Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express and PayPal.

One other note: there was a Yankee Naval vessel holding station a few kilometers offshore for my house–obviously they were here in connection with that politicians visit.  I didn’t mind the ship that much, until I noticed that as I went from room to room its weapons readjusted accordingly…

Two ADSL lines that are 1024 down/256 up have improved to be insufficient for our needs even when aggregated together using a special high priced router.  We either have no bandwidth at all for 5 or 10 minutes at a time, or the bandwidth does not exceed the 54kbps needed to make a clear Skype call.  Yesterday for more than two hours, when people called in I could hear them but they could hear nothing.  This means we had less than 30 kbps upload.

256 + 256 = 512.

and

30 / 512 = 5.85%.

Hence, I am not even getting 5.85% of the bandwidth upload for which I am paying.

When Jimbo called Anteldata to complain, he was told that they did indeed have been with problems, had had them for some time and expected to have them for some time longer.  What a wonderful way to run a service company.  And if there were any real service companies competing with them, they might end up out of business.

However, the highly touted Dedicado seems to have no more idea of customer service and then the aforementioned glacier has a steam.  After six failed attempts at installing their more expensive service, we tore up that contract.  Since we needed an alternative to Anteldata, we chose the most expensive option: Tel Mex.

Their contract guarantees the bandwidth, they actually sent out surveyors to pre-plan installations of the receiving antenna and seemed to be very professional.  Bah humbug!  Yesterday, they were supposed to show up and install the service.  Of course, it didn’t happen, and of course they had a tear jerking excuse–the problem for me is that I am a jerk and I rarely shed tears, although the situation is bringing me close to them.

Right now I have no choice but to “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and wait until they are good and ready to install the service, but I’ve already begun planning for satellite service at the end of my contract with Tel Mex.

I am told that the situation is improving, but right now from where I sit, I am more concerned that my house will be washed away when Uruguay floods due to all of those glaciers racing into the Southern Ocean and melting.

It has been more than 50 days since I moved in to my new home/office and the Internet issues have not yet been resolved. I had hoped that moving closer to the center would make the ADSL lines more reliable–hoping for peace in the Middle East would’ve probably been a better exercise.

My nephew, the boy technology genius, found a router (an Internet connection gadget) that will combine the bandwidth from two separate Internet connections. Our original hope was to combine two ADSL lines to create sufficient bandwidth for us; this hope too, was dashed upon the rocks: last week we didn’t have enough bandwidth to even make a clear Skype call.

Then we decided we would use the router to combine one ADSL line with a wireless connection from Dedicado. While that would increase our monthly cost by US$220, we felt like the redundancy would be worth it since Dedicado has its own direct link to the Internet backbone. Once again however, hope foundered upon reality. After six failed attempts to make a wireless connection work, we tore up the contract– six strikes and you’re out. We were told by one of the technicians that the reason they could not make the connection work was that the company refused to allow them to use the “good equipment” that was more expensive, but more reliable. So unless the North Star or the ozone layer are responsible for greed and stupidity, I guess the management of Dedicado will have to take the rap themselves.

At this point we decided to bite the bullet and order some heavy-duty commercial Internet service. I wanted something with guaranteed bandwidth instead of the usual setup where you get anywhere from 5% to at best 75% of the bandwidth for which you’re paying. Having taken that decision, we only had two real choices: Anteldata or Telmex.

Anteldata was about US$100 per month cheaper than Telmex (US750 as opposed to US$850). Despite that, we made the decision to use Telmex so that we would have full redundancy, as Telmex, too, has its own direct connection to the Internet backbone. The Telmex connection is due in this coming Thursday; regardless of the result I will reported here shortly thereafter.

On a side note: this week Copperhead was supposed to have an ADSL line connected to his apartment by Anteldata. Accordingly, he left his apartment key with the portero, put his laptop on the table next to the phone line, and left a message, in Spanish, on the laptop telling the installer to “please connect the ADSL line to this computer”. When Copperhead return home he found a note from Anteldata saying that the ADSL line had not been installed because he didn’t have a computer…

Is it Magnetic North, the North Star, the hole in the ozone, emanations from Atlantis, or something else?

We planned everything to perfection!  We would first move only two ADSL lines into the new house and leave one at the old house as a contingency.  All the orders were placed early enough and installation was confirmed for the day of the move.  The phone lines to connect the ADSL are in and working, and have been since Tuesday.  All of the paperwork to move the ADSL lines has been filed with Antel.  Every day Santiago called Antel to make sure the transfer would occur smoothly–every day he was told it would, until yesterday.

That was when we found out that everything was on hold until Antel is able to process the fact that the Copperhead’s passport number changed because his old passport had expired and he got a new one.  This was just too much for Antel to deal with, so the entire project was halted until Antel’s administrative apparatus, (undoubtedly the governmental version of a Rube Goldberg machine) can “approve” the change in number.

My question is this:  what happens if Antel does not approve the change?  Is Copperhead supposed to go to the Yankee Embassy and ask for a new passport number that Antel will approve?

I am completely befuddled, in fact, believe it or not, I was almost speechless, except for a few words that would have made the average chief petty officer blush.

The bottom line is that I am trapped!  They have promised to install the ADSL on Tuesday, December 26^th—Boxing Day—maybe that’s because the ADSL modems come in boxes?

Otherwise, the move went pretty well, most things arrived within 24 hours or so of the time promised.  My family got in today on time without incident—for which I am grateful.

Five days until ADSL—I am already having withdrawal symptoms.