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.

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/2007/08/14/uruguay-versus-costa-rica-the-first-of-occasional-rantings%e2%80%a6/ http://www.uruguayliving.com/2007/08/14/uruguay-versus-costa-rica-the-first-of-occasional-rantings%e2%80%a6/#comments Tue, 14 Aug 2007 22:01:54 +0000 The Southron http://www.uruguayliving.com/2007/08/14/uruguay-versus-costa-rica-the-first-of-occasional-rantings%e2%80%a6/ One of the things that seems to amaze many of the Uruguayos I meet is that I left Costa Rica to come here.  After all, doesn’t Costa Rica have better weather?  Isn’t it a world famous Expat haven where more than 100,000 gringos have found a home?  How could anyone leave there for here?

Easy!  After leaving there I felt like I had been promoted from a particularly nasty version of purgatory into the beatific vision.

The first things one learns, usually several thousand dollars too late, is that living in Costa Rica is like living the Pirates of the Caribbean movie.  I have never come across such a collections of liars and cut throats in my life. (And that is saying a lot considering I worked in Washington, DC for 8 years!)

There were three prices for everything:  the local price (low), the gringo price (high) and the el gringo estupido price (ridiculous).

That wouldn’t be so bad, if you got value for your money.  The electric rates were set by zones, so if you lived in a gringo area, you literally paid 5 times more per kilowatt hour than locals.

And the utilities…oh my God!  They were state owned like here, but Antel and UTE at their worst are 100 times better than ICE (which did everything).  It took 6 weeks to get a telephone line, 6 months to get ADSL, and it is easier to buy a hand gun than to get a cellphone.  Every time I get aggravated here, I remember Costa Rica, and I smile.

At this point you may be thinking: Thank you Southron for the weather report, but what the heck does this have to do with Supergas?

Because of the mild temperatures nine months of the year many houses (and even apartments) here do not have any heating system beyond a fireplace or two. During the cold months they rely on very efficient space heaters fueled by Supergas, more commonly known as propane gas, bottled gas, or simply LPG.

The sole importer of Supergas is ANCAP, the state-owned company that provides oil, gasoline, propane, and (believe it or not) cement. To the best of my knowledge, ANCAP does not distribute Supergas directly to the public. That task is handled by a goodly number of distribution companies.

In normal times, this system works very well. Each of the distribution companies have rolling fleets of trucks which deliver the gas in 13 kg (28 lbs) tanks, usually within 30 minutes after you call in your order. But, because of the extreme fog over the last few weeks, several shiploads of Supergas were delayed, and a shortage developed here in Montevideo. To my knowledge very few people actually ran out of gas, but in many cases, our own included, we ended up using our entire backup store of gas before we could get any refills.

The response of the “powers-that-be” at ANCAP was amusing. It was a perfect example of a bureaucracy making matters worse.

In order to reduce the amount of Supergas consumed, ANCAP allowed the distributors to reduce the amount of gas per tank from the standard 13 kg to 8 kg. Of course, some scalawags took advantage of this situation and started putting only 4 kg of gas in each tank. But ANCAP moved with alacrity to counter such gouging, and ordered that tanks that were sold with only 8 kg of Supergas would be required to have a black sticker over the nozzle instead of the usual red one. (This is almost as good as the childproof bottles in the US that only children can open.)

I guess the idea was to more evenly distribute the amount of gas that was available, but what ANCAP neglected to factor in was that tanks with less gas would need to be replaced more often, thus burning more gasoline or diesel in the delivery trucks… then again, since ANCAP is the primary supplier for gasoline and diesel fuel, perhaps they did factor it in. ¿Quien sabe?

The good news is that the fog has lifted, the weather is back to normal, and Supergas is super again!

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.

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.

Despite that background, I was impressed last night at the power of the storm—apparently so was UTE, the state-owned power company.

According to published reports, a lightning bolt struck the major north-south power supply line at about 22.00 local time last night, and turned off the power to most of the southern half of the country including all of Montevideo. Power was restored in as little as 45 minutes in some places to about 90 minutes here in Montevideo.

Considering we don’t have hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, or tornados, I guess a little lightning—or even a lot of lightning is ok, unless you happen to beat the lottery…