My general distaste for phone companies has been "well-documented":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/001318/ here, but now I have a new target for my ire.... Qwest! The DSL connection at the house kinda stinks. On a good day, I can muster about 100Kb/s download speeds, which isn't much better than the days of 56K modems. This lack o' bandwidth was never more apparent than last week and early this week, which each time we had a fix to the software release for work that meant building 3 new project installers (dev, test and production) and uploading each one. At 83 megs apiece. Which took about an hour FOR EACH ONE! This is totally unacceptable.

When I first moved here I tried to call Qwest and see if they could bump our service up to the 1.5 Mb speed, and I could bask in glorious bandwidth, soak myself in illegally downloaded movies and television, and not dread trying to do remote database operations over our VPN(Virtual Private Network). At the time they told me that our local loop was about 21,000 feet from the nearest "central office":http://www.dslreports.com/coinfo/clli/TCSNAZTV, which was just over the 20,000 foot cutoff to get said service.

This week my download speeds have been pitiful for some reason; only like 30 Kb/s, which for $70 is so bad I wanted to scream. Called tech support, sat on hold for 20 minutes, and then finally talked to Natalie. She wasn't super-helpful, although she did tell me my local loop distance is exactly 21,267 feet. Woo hoo! I asked what would happen if they tried to upgrade my speed; would they just flick a switch at some data center? Change a card around in the "DSLAM":http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dsl9.htm perhaps? Would I be able to connect, just at a reduced percentage of the 1.5 Mb (sorta like now with the half 256Kb I get), or would I get no connectivity at all? Natalie sorta never answered that question, and instead put me on with Laura from the billing department so I could at least take the phone service off the account, since everyone has cell phones, and the only thing plugged into the wall at all is the DSL modem.

*Laura:* "Sir, for the standalone service through Qwest, you need to have the 1.5 Mb service." *Me:* "No problem, that's what I want anyway." *Laura:* "Ok, but it says here on my system that you're not qualified for the 1.5. In fact, you're not qualified for any service!" *Me:* "Then that means, I'M NOT REALLY HERE! THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE! RUN AWAY! AAAAAAHHH!" *Laura:* "..."

So, the best part is that I can't take the phone line off the account, so it's costing me more for the slower service that I'm not even supposed to have, when all I want is high speed (which I'm REALLY not supposed to have) and no phone. Laura pretended to be sorry that she couldn't do anything (while I know she was sending secret mental messages like "You aren't even supposed to have DSL at all you ungrateful jerk! Quit rocking the boat!", while I wondered how an unqualified line ever got DSL service in the first place, and someone must have been able to circumvent "the system" at Qwest. I just want them to _try_ putting me on the 1.5 Mb line, stop charging me for a landline that nobody is using, and we'll see what happens from there. She told me she'd talk to the DSL technical manager and someone would be back in touch with me. I'm not holding my breath.