Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Formal Talking Practice: Wanadoo - Wanatalk

For me to practice talking in this blog, I am dependent on Orange, which was Wanadoo, which is France Telecom and my relationship with them hasn't been an easy one. To begin with, we were given the impression that when France Telecom brought broadband to the village, we could only have Wanadoo which, as I've said, was France Telecom. This, of course, was not true and, had I realised, I probably would have stayed with AOL, my English provider. However, Wandoo it is.

There was a strange anomaly when it first arrived in that one person in the village found that their connection was good all day until the street lights came on.............

My main problem was getting the Wifi box to work again after a trip to Britain. In fact, it was broken so I was obliged to buy a Wanadoo modem. This was all very well, but as this house doesn't have central heating, if the fire isn't lit in the room with the connection, then it is too cold to sit and talk. So the modem was replaced with a super-duper Netgear router with a booster in my computer. I need the booster, as well, because the walls are really thick and the signal can't get through. Even so, I am limited as to where it will work.

Of course, it doesn't mean that all my troubles are over. All of us in the village have periods of poor service: sudden disconnections and fluctuations and we have to watch out for storms. With emails, there are those that don't arrive that we know have been sent to us, while others can sit in our Outbox for days. I've just had some mails come back several times, while my neighbour isn't getting any at all. We've been told that our village is at the end of the line and that the cabling isn't as good as it should be. Not that this helps any. We just have to carry on and hope for the best. So far - touch wool - my talking practice isn't being too disrupted.

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