Satellite Panic.

Very often Neil phone's me when he reaches the golf course before he starts to play so last Wednesday I thought it rather odd that I hadn't heard from him. I picked the phone up to dial him, and found out why - we had no phone! I did the usual unplugging and re-plugging that normally works if the signal has dropped but nothing. I checked the internet and that wouldn't connect either. The skies were blue and cloud free so I couldn't believe it was weather related and so began a day of stress.

All the lights on the 2 modems were showing that connections were there but I couldn't get anything to work. I was due at my Spanish class at 10am so had to leave it all and hoped that it would be working OK when I got back.

When I reached the tarmac road my mobile beeped to say I has a message and it was Neil to say he had tried to ring the house and couldn't get through!

A couple of hours later I was back infront of the computer trying to work out what to do when I suddenly got a page open informing me that the company we had the internet through had had their licence to provide the service terminated! By now I had lost the light on the modem that told me I had a phone connection.

Great!

When I has been researching what was available to us for the internet and phone I had the choice of 2 companies that used the Astra satellite, that I wanted to use. One of these was better at responding to queries than the other and there was little difference in price so I went with Net2. Wrong choice.

The message was telling me that I could transfer my contract to the other company and they would have us up and running within 24 hours. With visions of being back to travelling to the tarmac road 2 or 3 times a day to pick up phone messages I decided that I would go for he transfer and hope for the best.

I popped up to our neighbours to ask if I could use their computer to sort it all out only to find I needed some code numbers off the back of our modems. After a quick trip back to the house I had all the information I needed and completed the transfer. All I coould do then was wait.

We were scheduled to go out that night and when we got back about 11.30pm I looked into the study just to see what lights were lit, when I realised the telephone light was back on. I pressed the handsfree button on the phone and sure enough, we had a dial tone again. A quick check on the computer confirmed we also had the internet link back.

12 hours from completing the transfer and we were operational again.

What a relief.