[UPDATE Aug 24: Ah... TM called this morning while I was at work to say they might have repaired my connection. They said they had change the port at the Idontknowhere and that I was to switch on the modem when I got back home to see if the ADSL was lighting. I arrived home at about 9pm and the first thing I did was to switch on the thing and, yes, it was lighting! My Stremyx is back!]
ORIGINAL ENTRY BELOW:
For some reasons unknown to anyone — well, no one seems to know what has gone wrong with it or how to fix it — my Streamyx connection at home has gone kaput. The ADSL light on the modem is off permanently.
At the time of this writing, I’ve already lodged three complaints to TM’s 100 line but the problem persists.
Each time I made the complaint, I was told to reset the modem, check the cable connection, told to connect the modem directly to the wall phone socket, changed the DNS server setting on my laptop, but nothing seemed to work.
According to a staff at the call centre — after telling me to run the “ipconfig” command and me reporting back the readings — there is nothing wrong with my modem. Everything seems fine except that I can’t connect to the Internet. Man, it’s been eight days already.
At the rate things are going, my Streamyx woes look set to go on indefinitely. At the moment, my relationship with the service provider, TM, is no longer that of a client and a service provider, but that of a complainant and a listener. I complain, they listen; I complain again and they listen again, and again and again.
In the meantime, in my attempt to think outside the Streamyx box, I’m using my Nokia N8 as a wireless modem. Currently, as a stop-gap measure, I’m subscribing to DiGi’s weekly 250MB plan, priced at RM15 — that is an additional cost I will have to bear because of Streamyx connectivity problem. So, I rugi dua kalilah.
Even then, the DiGi’s weekly plan is slow at 384Kbps, hardly an ideal speed for an active online activity. I still need Streamyx, you hear that, TM? You may not need me but I need you like a fish needs water.
How do you turn the Nokia N8 into a wireless modem is quite a straight-forward affair. First, download the eZSpot app from Nokia’ Ovi Store for RM6 and install it on the phone. Launching the app will turn the phone into a wireless moden.
The next step is pretty simple — just allow your computer to detect the signal and connect to it.
However, this is hardly an ideal solution due to the lack of speed. Blogging will be a painstaking affair, especially if your blog involves a lot of data such as a large number of photographs or videos, and especially if you want to open websites in multiple tabs.
I still need Streamyx though I don’t know when can I resume using it. I’m giving myself until the first week of next month to assume the role of a complainant. If they still refuse to fix my line, then what’s the point. I may try those ugly USB broadband thing and see if it can handle my online activities.
NOTE: This entry is posted using the N8 as a wireless connection. This is an unedited article so you are bound to find spelling or grammatical mistakes because I’m to lazy to edit and post this article over and over again over a less than ideal Internet connection speed.