In 2005, I had broadband installed in the house I rent and share with a couple of friends. Because we couldn’t install a phone line, we went with a wireless provider. For €36 a month they provided a 1Mbps connection with a static IP address. The connection is synchronous – i.e. the download and upload speeds are the same. There was no download cap, so you could transfer as much data as you liked without fear of being penalised.

For over a year, my connection was rock solid, and I had no problems at all. Then in November 2006 my provider went through a network upgrade. All their 1Mbps customers were automatically upgraded to a 2Mbps connection. Great I thought, but that’s when my problems started. Although I was getting a consistent 2Mbps download speed, I was having problems connecting to websites. After some basic troubleshooting, I found that the problem was with my upload connection. The speed would fluctuate wildly, and at one stage was working at less than dial-up modem speeds.

After a few calls to technical support, one of their engineers came out and confirmed that there was a problem. The solution apparently was to re-orientate the aerial on the roof and connect to a different high site. The only problem being that because of a storm that week, it was too dangerous for anyone to go up on the roof to do the work. Eventually after waiting another two weeks, the engineer was sent out again to resolve the problem. Or so I thought. Even after changing me over, I was still having the same problems, and apparently I wasn’t the only one.

After talking to his head office, I was put on to someone in “premium support” who told me that they could no longer guarantee my connection and to find a new provider. So I did. That very day.

A week later, I got a call from my soon-to-be-new provider to arrange the installation of my new aerial. I took the morning off work, and waited for their engineer to show up. He was supposed to call me when he was on his way, but didn’t actually call until he was half way up the ladder onto my roof.

That’s when I got the bad news. There is no line of sight from my rook to their high site because of a tree. My neighbours chimney, (which is about 15 feet away), does have a line of sight. No problem I thought, just put the aerial up there. No way I’m told. They want written permission from the owner of the house before they’ll do it. This is despite the fact that when I got my original connection put in I got permission from the management company that looks after our little estate, and there is already an aerial up there.

To top it all off, I got a call last week from my original provider to arrange for their equipment to be removed from the roof. Because their engineers are only in my area two days a week, they weren’t able to do it last week. So last Friday, I had to call them and ask them to cancel the removal, and reinstate the direct debit on my account so that I can keep my connection.

All that’s left to do is call my soon-never-to-be provider and cancel the installation with them. I’m really looking forward to finding out what hoops I’ll have to jump through with them.

If I want broadband, I need to get written permission from the owner of the house to put an aerial on their chimney. As the house is rented out to students, and they’re on holidays for another two weeks, I’m not going to be able to get it.

My current provider is due to cut my connection any day now. Access wise, I’m living on borrowed time.

As it stands, I have the following options:

• Try to get permission from my neighbours to put an aerial on their roof, or
• I can go get a phone line put in and go with some variant of DSL, or
• I can cancel the whole lot and do without internet access.

I don’t particularly want to get a phone line put in because I have no use for a phone, and I’m not going to pay for something that I won’t be using. I really can’t do without internet access, so that brings me back to the first point, which is out of my control.

Looks like I’m screwed.