One of the first things we wanted at our house was a reliable internet connection. This would provide us with our communications back home, our entertainment and a way to work collaboratively with others. Once we found our house, Stan jumped on his bike and again rode all over town searching for the ISPs. Like everything here, there is no address. You just are given directions and told it is near "such and such" a landmark.
We went to a number of different places with all kinds of pricing. Some wanted $30 for a 1 mbs connection. Some wanted $90 for 4 mbs. We came across a deal whereby if we prepaid for 6 months of an 8mbs ADSL connection, they would upgrade the connection to fibre optics for free. This seemed an excellent choice and we arranged to go to their office.
At the office we were assured that we may be able to get fibre, but this was subject to a site visit. The girl jumped on her moto and followed us home. The site visit lasted for all of two minutes when the girl looked at us very sreiously and told us that the installation fee would be very expensive as they had to run the fibre a long way. "Extra $50, so sorry", she said. Well at one one hundredths of the price in Australia, what could we do but agree. We prepaid 60% to get the ball rolling and settled back to wait the three days they had promised us. Two days later as we were riding home, we came across a guy kicking a spindle of wires down the road.
Following him was a guy along the road swinging the cables around and trying to throw the rolled out cable over a tree along the road.
Meanwhile all the cable was left in the street for people to drive around.
Once the cable was in place, another guy climbed the electricity pole with a few zip ties and put it in place.
Eventually they got the fibre all the way to our flat and out of curiosity Stan asked them how far they had to run the cable to reach me. "We used one and a half spools", they told him (one and a half kilometers). A very good deal for $50.
Three guys then went to work on our living room floor. One configured the router and fibre box. Another pulled out an expensive box to join the fibre cable to the terminator cord. The third held all the cables in the right location. After 20 minutes they realised they did not have the right equipment to protect the cable where they joined it to the house connection. One guy was sent off on the motor bike and came back a minute later with what we thought was the correct cable. We were wrong. He came back with a bottle of water. They proceeded to throw the water out and one person stayed outside for five minutes shaking and waving the bottle to make it completely dry. They used this bottle to connect the external fibre cable to the cable inside our house.
So now our internet connection at home runs through a water bottle and looks like this:
In some ways we can laugh at how this connection was accomplished. But for all that, we must confess to having better internet than at home in Australia (at half the price). We find it a little funny that having traveled from one of the wealthiest nations to one of the poorest nations we are able to receive better connectivity (when the electricity is on) than in Australia.
Our speeds on an 8mbs fibre connection are as follows: ( http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3326179528 )
We went to a number of different places with all kinds of pricing. Some wanted $30 for a 1 mbs connection. Some wanted $90 for 4 mbs. We came across a deal whereby if we prepaid for 6 months of an 8mbs ADSL connection, they would upgrade the connection to fibre optics for free. This seemed an excellent choice and we arranged to go to their office.
At the office we were assured that we may be able to get fibre, but this was subject to a site visit. The girl jumped on her moto and followed us home. The site visit lasted for all of two minutes when the girl looked at us very sreiously and told us that the installation fee would be very expensive as they had to run the fibre a long way. "Extra $50, so sorry", she said. Well at one one hundredths of the price in Australia, what could we do but agree. We prepaid 60% to get the ball rolling and settled back to wait the three days they had promised us. Two days later as we were riding home, we came across a guy kicking a spindle of wires down the road.
Following him was a guy along the road swinging the cables around and trying to throw the rolled out cable over a tree along the road.
Meanwhile all the cable was left in the street for people to drive around.
Once the cable was in place, another guy climbed the electricity pole with a few zip ties and put it in place.
Eventually they got the fibre all the way to our flat and out of curiosity Stan asked them how far they had to run the cable to reach me. "We used one and a half spools", they told him (one and a half kilometers). A very good deal for $50.
Three guys then went to work on our living room floor. One configured the router and fibre box. Another pulled out an expensive box to join the fibre cable to the terminator cord. The third held all the cables in the right location. After 20 minutes they realised they did not have the right equipment to protect the cable where they joined it to the house connection. One guy was sent off on the motor bike and came back a minute later with what we thought was the correct cable. We were wrong. He came back with a bottle of water. They proceeded to throw the water out and one person stayed outside for five minutes shaking and waving the bottle to make it completely dry. They used this bottle to connect the external fibre cable to the cable inside our house.
So now our internet connection at home runs through a water bottle and looks like this:
In some ways we can laugh at how this connection was accomplished. But for all that, we must confess to having better internet than at home in Australia (at half the price). We find it a little funny that having traveled from one of the wealthiest nations to one of the poorest nations we are able to receive better connectivity (when the electricity is on) than in Australia.
Our speeds on an 8mbs fibre connection are as follows: ( http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3326179528 )
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