Smart Broadband
December 19th, 2005 Posted in Internet, IrelandWow, it’s been a long time coming but I finally have broadband at home. I say a long time but let me quantify this:
On July 18th, received an e-mail saying that the exchange had been upgraded and broadband would be available for me in 3 weeks.
After much wrangling and heartache, on the 10th of November, my order reached magical Order Stage 2, quickly followed by the even more impressive sounding Order Stage 3. Stage 2 stated that it may take 5-10 working days to get the broadband order finished so I was ecstatic when stage 3 arrived on the same day.
Stage 4 happened on the 23rd of November, stating that my broadband order was complete, so on the 25th, with our spanking new modem in place, our old phone-line was cut-off and a new Smart telephone number was going to be unleashed. Sadly this did not happen.
Just last Wednesday I sent an encouring e-mail to the customer support at Smart and to ComReg, the Irish communications regulator, to see if they could hurry this little inconvenience along. Well, it seemed to work. Perhaps there is a lack of communication within Smart that let this problem slip through as the managers that rang me were not aware of my predicament.
Anyhow, it took 3 weeks of constant ringing (freephone thankfully) and harassing the poor folk at the Smart technical faults help-line (with not much success along the way) before we actually had a telephone line, not to mention the broadband which was the reason behind this whole service disruption.
And after a weekend of messing with the connections on the computer and a last-minute intervention by Donncha, we now have lift-off. We have broadband at home, but even better we have a telephone line again.
I know I have been very sarky with Smart in this little rant but I don’t believe that they were completely at fault. I reckon their hands are tied big time by the incumbent operator who doesn’t want to lose customers. I seriously considered cancelling the order as it was getting ridiculous but this is what our monopoly-lovin’ incumbent hopes for.
To finish, I would like to wish all at Smart a very happy Christmas, hopefully you won’t hear from me too soon in the future.
PS Please don’t cut me off for this: I know it wasn’t all your fault!
3 Responses to “Smart Broadband”
By Damien Mulley on Dec 19, 2005
enjoy your 6mb broadband for Christmas too!
By Mike on Dec 27, 2005
Well done on finally getting the broadband in. I haven’t heard of anyone in Ireland who has managed to get connected without weeks of hassle. We got Irish Broadband in a few months ago; it works, but nowhere near as fast as we are paying for. I’m also having fierce trouble trying to get broadband sorted for my parents house. Have you seen the Comwreck website?
By the way, this blog is showing up near the top of the results page when you google smart broadband. Influential, eh?
By Mel on Feb 1, 2006
Donal, you were curious over how long I was waiting for my Smart Broadband to be connected. See http://blogs.linux.ie/ungod/2006/01/23/smart-broadband-modem-delivered/
It was due to be changed over/connected by 03-Feb-2006 (Friday next) but was connected on 30-Jan-2006 (Monday past).
It was all done and dusted in under 3 weeks.
What really pisses me off is that Eircon said it was not possible!