Bayantel DSL, Now What?

I have been a Bayantel DSL subscriber for more than a year now. I was very proud of my connection because unlike other DSL providers, I did not experience problems except for a few lags and disconnection issues. They were very tolerable. A few seconds once or twice a day during the first two weeks and then the performance improved. Their technicians were quick to respond. The customer service number was easy to contact.

But things are messy the past two months or so. See, a number of times we had no connection because their technician (or line men) pulled out our cable thinking ours is an inactive account already. Huh? I thought this is the strangest...or dumbest reason for having a disconnection issue.

Don't they have tags from among those cables up in the post or wherever these are connected? This is the reason why we are apprehensive whenever there are Bayantel line men within our area. They might accidentally pull out our connection again. The last time they said they already marked our cable that it is still active and we are not a delinquent subscriber, meaning we pay on time.

The past months, intermittent connection is a usual scenario. At times too I have just logged on but I cannot connect so I have to restart the modem. Only to be disconnected after a millisecond. That is not an exaggeration.

I went to the Bayantel Forum and checked what's happening. The complaints are the same - lag, disconnection, slow speed, customer service cannot be contacted. I spent my morning today calling their customer service several times to report my intermittent connection. The last call advised me that they already changed my profile end user.

Please, what does that mean. I asked the call center agent to explain to me what it means. She doesn't know either except that it should have improved my connection. I was also asking what the report found out, why am I always getting disconnected. There was no report about the why and wherefore of my DSL's predicament.

I sounded really exasperated but I was still in control as the call center agent was very polite and nice. I understand customer service representatives. I keep my patience when they act and sound nice and professional enough to deal with my feelings. It's the organization's responsibility to feed their front liners enough information to satisfy the customers. Don't treat your front liners like they
are robots that will only say the same things over and over again.

Bayantel DSL is performing badly. They only have one number for their customer service and it's not answered promptly. I don't have an idea what's the alternative to Bayantel because I read about the woes on other DSL providers. What is the lesser evil?

I guess the National Telecommunications Commission should take a very good look at these internet service providers.

The connection is down again as I was about to publish this. Based on my record for the past hours, this is the performance (or non-performance) of Bayantel DSL.

12:10 PM disconnected
12:14 PM reconnected
12:50 PM disconnected
1:05 PM reconnected
1:14 PM disconnected
1:17 PM reconnected
1:18 PM disconnected
1:20 PM reconnected
1:21 PM disconnected
1:43 PM reconnected
1:47 PM disconnected

And then I thought it was already publishing, it hanged. The light went a-blinking again at 1:53 PM.

Reconnected at 2:05 PM. Quick, I have to press the publish button!

My account above is the same pattern as I had from the moment I logged on at around 9:30 this morning. This is worse than being on a prepaid internet card.

Good thing I am used to multi-tasking. I finished The Zahir, have done my cooking on time, had lunch with my daughter, have started the laundry in the middle of all these Bayantel disconnections.