December Chatty, hohoho!

[Furby]

Oh Poor Patience. I am getting worried about this board all these sick people at same time. Hope everyone is feeling better soon.

[OurCreature]

Our Gang plus friends has been very unfortunate in terms of illness recently, and I hope we are all properly better soon.

I got up late yesterday and on my way to the garage I saw the black boxes out with their glass Xmas empties so I thought the glass collection was a bit late but put it down to it being on an unusual day. When I arrived home they were still there so I thought good, I'll put out my Advent Calendar empties. Come the evening and they were still there - and then I recalled that while still in bed I had thought I had heard the far-off smash of glass which heralds our boxes being emptied into their giant wheely bin but when I went out I forgot about that. Today is forecast to be horrid and rainy, so I shall take them to the recycling at Morrison's on Monday when the weather is supposed to be better.

[OurCreature]

I thought I needed something extra to look forward to in 2024 apart from my Portugal trip, so I have booked 10 nights near Pisa in Italy for end September/early October. That is 9 proper days to do things and have perhaps 2 days off for a rest. Regional trains in Italy are cheap so I am thinking of 2 trips to Florence, 2 trips to Pisa, a day in Lucca, another day in Livorno and I might have another trip to Florence.

I am staying in a splendid-looking hotel in Viareggio up the coast from Pisa. My room is a sea view without balcony. I hardly ever used my balcony in Interlaken, so it clearly isn't all that important to me.

I can arrange for somebody from the hotel to meet me (for a fee) at Pisa Airport so I might do that, rather than struggle with luggage on a train.

[merry]

Poor Patience!

The characteristic and most distressing aspect of the illness I just had, which may have been flu, may have been covid, was.... headache and nausea.. Coincidence, or has Patience got the same thing as I had? The headache/sickness took about a whole week to resolve, and meant I got little sleep at night. I hope you feel better soon.

OC, that looks like a magnificent hotel! what fun. I love your enthusiasm for travel.

Thank you so much for that Eccles! I'll pass that on to poor Pani. Today his phone line has gone down as well as his broadband. This has given us a little hope that perhaps they are fixing the broadband and had to unplug the phone for a while.

[Panikos]

Hi all.

It's certainly been a different Christmas. While I've had my phone to get online I struggle with font sizes so it's a last resort usually.

Eccles, thank you for the research. I found myself struggling to answer the simplest questions because they all assumed you knew how it was done and I was looking on a phone. You're right about Three in this area and in fact they told me that they couldn't give me mobile broadband at home.

Vodophone had a few options which seemed promising, but I had no idea which would work and was going back and forth looking at T&Cs and what others said about them.

I'm managing now with an unlimited data Vodophone phone sim which will get me through, but I would like to prepare for next time. I feel it's going to become more common.

Because I don't have a suitable modem I have a spare phone with the sim in it plugged into a PC usb port so that PC is online and I can see what I'm doing.

I lowered my sights because I wanted to be able to do everything as normal and that isn't possible with this set up but at least I'm online.

Oh and the phone line came back on just now. So that seems like progress.

[Panikos]

Furby, well spotted with the car crash thing.

I'm still puzzled by that. On the one hand it was at just the right time to be the cause and it did damage gas/electricity lines.

But how could it break the broadband and yet leave the phone still working? That's a very clever car crash lol

I wish they'd say, but they seem to feel it's none of my business why it broke.

When I complained to Plusnet about not getting details a more senior support guy said that BT don't give them details either. They get a ticket number, an estimated time frame and a priority level.

I'm inclined to believe him because I can imagine their system being mostly automated and not chatty at all.

[eccles]

@Pani, I would take what Three say about mobile broadband with a pinch of salt. All it means is that they won't offer you a contract with a 5G router. It doesn't mean you can't get a sim and stick it in your own device. Officially home broadband from Three isn't available here either despite having my used it for the last four years. It was only a desire to tinker that I got my current 5G router nearly two years ago and I discovered one little hotspot where I could get a 5G signal. But many people can get half decent performance from 4G as well, as did I for the first two years, so don't rule it out. When I switched I was getting around 35-55mb/s down, not as fast as the lowest Virgin Media tier but it was good enough. A router upgrade doubled that, and a second upgrade increased that by a factor of 10. 5G routers have dropped in price since then so if you went that route I would go for a 5G router straight off because they will be more up to date and able to maximise 4G speeds as well.

You've already found out how to connect your phone to your PC but that might be limiting - your phone might not be in the best location for the best signal, and if it is a spare, i.e. older, then it might not be ideal for the best band aggregation which the networks do nowadays to increase connectivity and speeds. If you put cellmapper on your phone you can do a walk test to find the best signal. If that means you cannot connect with a USB cable then you might want to try using wi-fi hotspot instead because signal strength is important and the little bars on your phone will be next to useless.

I would recommend signing up to ISPReview forums and plying your questions there. The guys there have done it all many times and will be happy to help get a new user online. Importantly, they will know all the best deals. Needless to say I am also happy to help however I can.