Telephone, Internet, and Satan

If you did the smart thing in planning your move, you got yourself a GSM enabled smart phone.
And you also went to great lengths to find an apartment within WIFI connectivity range of a German Starbucks. You also signed up majcJack or Skype to continue to have a US phone number and for free internet phone calls.


Well, you can see where this is going.

We were not smart. We had no GSM phone and no free WIFI in town. We had also not thought of buying a prepaid phone once we got off the plane, at one of the numerous cell phone stores run by Middle Easterners or Asians.

Instead, we found ourselves in the German countryside without phone or internet. And then the health crisis described in "Hospital, what Pain Meds?" hit.

What started as an inconvenience became a crisis faster than you can spell Krankenhaus.

The Deutsche Telekom salesman had a good day. He was ever so helpful, he unloaded thick and slick broschures on me, accepted the contract be made out in the name of the friend who had given me a ride to the shop, printed out the forms needed to transfer the contract over to me later.
Thus, my friend's signature under a 2 year contract came about.
I left the pink themed shop relieved and feeling smart. After all, I had asked the question: I have unlimited data, right?
His answer had been a succinct "yes".
When I voiced my satisfaction by telling him: "that's great, 'cause most other providers throttle the data."
He had smiled and wished me luck with the  voice and unlimted data plan at speeds of up to HSDPA.

The plan allowed connecting two devices, so, of course, I bought a modem and another SIM card to get the laptop on the blazing fast internet.

An hour later, my laptop was sucking down Microsoft Windows updates while I made phone calls on the One Euro smart phone that came with the plan.

With the laptop up to date, I checked my web email, and some forty minutes later, the old Dell became agonisingly slow, the email session timed out, and would not be restored despite valiant effort.

Next morning, still basking in the afterglow of a communication contract well done, I tried my email again. Alas, the result was identical to the night before. Could that Microsoft Windows update have broken something?

Only after a friend allowed me to use his connection, could I do some web searches to get answers. Disquiet began to emerge deep down in some emotional corner of my brain.

These long German sentences and the sometimes aggressive forum statements of Deutsche Telekom customers slowly coalesced into a jagged whole.

I had unlimited data, very true. Above a certain volume, Telekom reduced the data link speed to 64kbps, lower case b, not upper case B. The difference between lower case b and upper case B is a factor of 8. Eight times slower, or eight times faster.

I had been had.

My critical thinking was awaking from a stress induced coma, and my rudimentary arthimetic skills came to the rescue.

That Windows Update plus a few application updates, like Adobe Flash, had topped the "full speed" download volume within 3 hours. This left me with a 64 k data speed for the remaining 30 days and 21 hours of the month. I was curious to find out how much unlimited data I could consume during that time.

Still, even simple html web pages not loading, that did not jive with 64 k.
The friendly connection helped. I downloaded 2 network speed apps onto the smart phone and started my series of measurements. While on the friend's connection, I sent the first of what would become many emails to Deutsche Telekom and asked about the unlimited data. Yes, they said, you have unlimited data but after a certain volume your speed with be restricted to classic DSL. The next month, you start with the fast speed again until you reach that threshold.

By my standards, this was an organised undertaking. I measured over a total duration of two weeks, at set intervals during the day and in the evening, using both apps.

The great news was that the voice part of the plan worked. Calls to the hospital and to other people could be made. Yeaah, we had a phone plan with practically no data that cost about five times what any old phone only plan would cost.

To make matters worse, they also advertised unlimted data for landline connections and defined unlimited data as "no reduction of speed". Their pretty 100 page brochure included a footnote saying the plan I bought prohibited use of a data device, such as a laptop.
The network speed applications showed actual speeds under 100 bps (bytes per second) in more than 50 percent of measurements, and just a handful of sessions at over 500 bps.
In short, speeds lower than those of old dial-up modems two decades ago when only academics had ever heard of that internet thing.

The test series, formatted nicely as spreadheets, did not get a reaction other than "the contract is for two years". The friend who had signed the paperwork was getting nervous.

Almost elated, I found their network coverage plan. We lived in a black hole! One block in either direction, the map showed great coverage. However, we lived in a small square the map deemed not covered.

The last data point was in their terms of service. They committed to try and provide 64 kbps, of which 48 were download, the rest upload.

I cancelled the automatic bank withdrawl and sent them a termination notice, claiming bad advice (about the data volume and speed) and no advice (re the white spot on the map) as reasons for early termination of the contract.

Which got their attention.
But not in a good way. We were now in week three of the contract. Little had I known: we could have canceled in the first two weeks without giving any reason and without the slightest hassle.

Bummer. They refused to accept my cancelation, sending a payment reminder for good measure.

I started wondering. Was that how a deer in the headlights felt?

Less than a week later, their next letter. We are terminating your contract. I squinted, blinked, afraid the stress had gotten to me, but the words were still there. The attached payment reminder convinced me it was not a prank by the friend out to take revenge as he had become a shining example of "not good deed goes unpunished".

I paid the bill for the month, then waited for disconnection. On the first of the following month, a small X overlaid over the connection status icon greeted me.

The hardware, what was I supposed to do with that? From a friendly phone, I called Deutsche Telekom and asked for a return address for the hardware.

Keep it, the customer service rep said. Since we terminated the contract, you are not obligated to send back the hardware.

Thinking "WTF" but saying "oh, thank you", I ended this conversation.

Two weeks later, we had cable internet at 20 Mbps.

How Satan figures into this?

It has to do with all these tv channels we, as tv recluses, did not sign up for. But the neighbors watch TV via satellite, and many TV satellite dishes around here are emblazoned with "SatAn", an abbreviation of the German Satellitenanlage, satellite installation.