ratpole
12.02.09, 11:53
bulbonski oczami cudzoziemca
I have the world’s worst internet connection. It costs me 50 zl a month and is
slightly less reliable than a Nigerian oil millionaire who wants to use your
bank account. Frankly it would be quicker to write Google searches on handmade
parchment and post them to California. I can get quicker results by shouting
questions out of the window in the hope that a passerby knows the answer and
speaks English.
My internet connection is very similar to the kind of internet connection you
are probably familiar with. I get a shiny wi-fi router with blinking lights,
unsightly cables hanging out of my window and, of course, a monthly bill. The
only difference between my internet connection and the kind you’re familiar
with is the fact that mine doesn’t appear to be connected to the internet. I
think it works like this:
1. I type a search query into Google;
2. My query is printed out in the back room of my “service provider;”
3. A man who knows the answer comes on a bicycle from Szczecin and types up
the results;
4. My “service provider” has a cup of tea and takes a short holiday in the
mountains;
5. I get the result of my Google search.
This is when it’s working. Most of the time it’s just dead. Like now. I’m
writing this offline. Tomorrow or in a couple of days time some guy will turn
up, fiddle around on the roof for a few minutes and then inform me everything
is fixed. He will be lying.
It’s nice to think that my “service provider” might read this and be consumed
with shame, but I doubt it. I’m not convinced he even knows what or where the
internet is, let alone how to read Poland’s premiere blog on it.
Why does this happen? Because I belong to one of these weird local internet
providers. Thousands of these one-man companies exist all over Poland. They
provide connections to a couple of hundred people on two or three streets via
a ramshackle arrangement of microwave transmitters and receivers perched on
roofs. How do these businesses keep going? Because there are no phone lines in
these buildings. I live about half a kilometer from the center of a major
European city in a building that has no phones. Check the century on your
calendar and read that last sentence again.
I admit I’m exaggerating slightly, there are some phone lines in this
building. The building administrator has one (miraculous!) and the old lady in
the flat next to me who can’t hear it ringing has one. Nobody else though.
They’ve asked for them but, apparently, connecting city-center buildings to
the last century’s favorite mode of communication is not a priority.
One day, if I’m really lucky, I will get a phone line and then I can get a tp
internet connections! I hear they are really good…
