Friday, February 11, 2011

Internet in the third world: when you need it?

I have a weekly conference call with our client in the USA, that call is 8:30 PM Phnom Penh time. I prefer to make that call from home rather than going back into the office. This evening when I got home I turned on the computer it took the internet a while to come up but it did. At 7:00 PM the internet dropped and was still out at 7:30 pm. I called the service provider and got the standard answer "shut down the modem for five minutes and turn it back on, we will call you back." Ok, I turned it off and five minutes later back on, nothing and no call from the service provider. I called them again, their number was busy, that indicated to me that they were having problems which would most likely not be fixed to allow me to participate in the conference call.

I hopped on my moto and headed into the office. The call went well but there was some follow up that I needed to do right after the call, by the time that was done it was about 10:15 pm. I had hoped to be asleep by then.

When I arrived back home, the landlord and his family were asleep so I parked at a guarded parking spot around the block. Parking there is expensive, $1.00 for the night.

The internet is working now, I hope it is still working for my 06:30 AM call with the partner in Salt Lake City.

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