Internet in Brazil is like an annoying neighbour: if you don´t need it, it´s always available and stopping you from doing your work but as soon as you urgently need its help it´s either busy due to a lot of people using it or not available.
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We like to think of Brazil as one of the leading nations. Economy, wealth, development.
Unfortunately
I am forced to say that Luanda (capital of Angola) has more reliable internet
providers. During my time there, the internet in two private apartments as well
as the internet cafe never failed (only when we had some of the occasional
electricity failures but then again, it wasn´t the internet providers fault…)...
Working
mainly through the internet and online masterboards, my husband and I have been
fighting our way through at least 4 different internet providers. Two mobile
stick internet options (claro and vivo, incredibly expensive and incredibly
slow), radio and cable internets
(affordable, but totally unreliable). We will hopefully soon be able to try out
the last remaining, expensive option called Velox (unfortunately we do know
from relatives using it here in Porto Seguro (region Bahia) that even this
option has similar failures although it seems to be the fastest and reliable of
all). So what do they all have in common?
“It is all due
to some #mysterious# ´link-signal break-up´.”
Really, I
don´t care too much about general inefficiency in life, bureaucracy and other
funny stuff that often occurs here, I love this place too much to be worried
about such things. But the basis for my current work and social online
dependence due to EU family and friends…
It really
is the most difficult BR issue to accept, always being worried probably mainly about
our work situation and the frustration of break ups, e.g. during skype calls to
my family and friends in Europe or just as simple as being able to meet online
at the agreed time. As I am working shifts, I am often forced to work longer (while
getting paid the same amount and sitting around half of the time waiting for
the internet to return) due to the internet failure which does not allow me to
work through as much as I would have been able to if the internet had been
stable.
I do not
want to imagine how many thousands, if not millions $$$ local companies lose
here due to those ´link signal breaks´… Local political candidates c(sh)ould
invest into changing this embarrassing internet issue or at least get the
horribly asphalted roads fixed instead of 24/7 noise pollution through sound
car propaganda, irrelevant opposition intrigues and throwing useless weekend
parties during 5 (LONG) pre-election months…) Probably they find it convenient
that every now and then, they get some free time to have their cafezinho during
offline company times. But again, I find it so difficult to understand why all
those internet providers aren´t able to guarantee a stable internet connection.
Is there some secret reason, they might gain something while doing it? Although
I cannot really think of what that something could be…
As I am
writing this article (offline, as the internet decided to jump out for more than
4 hours now), the electricity decided to just switch off as well, meaning I
also lost half of this article. Yes. Here we are forced to have at least two
internet and two IT options. One is (currently) cable and the other one is our
mobile internet stick. So in an emergency case during a work shift with sudden
break-up of cable internet and electricity (&PC), we are still able to work
on our laptop and s__naiii___lllll_slow mobile stick for as many hours as the laptop
battery bears.
At least as
long as the mobile network stands strong…..
Which it
doesn´t today. o_O
This article was written about 3h before it was posted. I am now happily working. Online! Yay!
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