Telephones and Cable Thieves

I woke early Friday morning to find both telephone lines and the ADSL down. That is very unusual, telephone service being one of the most reliable public services we have. Nora called Cable and Wireless and they took the report and gave her a trouble ticket number. Later in the morning, we asked neighbors and it turned out the whole neighborhood was without telephones. We waited patiently, but when darkness came, we knew we wouldn't have telephone or internet until the following day, at the earliest. When we still had no telephones Saturday morning, Nora called C&W again and learned that thieves had dug up and stolen a length of telephone cable, and that we would get service back within 72 hours of the outage.

I was surprised to learn that the problem of cable theft had come to our neighborhood. Before I retired I worked for the US Army 56th Signal Battalion, which had responsibility for strategic communications (telephone, microwave, digital, and other fixed type comms system). Cable theft in isolated locations, like the jungle runs between some of the bases, was a constant problem, but this theft occurred in a heavily populated area. Thieves most often take the large 600 pair cable, because it yields the most copper per foot in a manageable size that can be stuffed in a car trunk or tossed in a pickup bed. Nora saw a TV report on it the other day, which I missed, and apparently the thieves have learned an easier chemical way of removing the insulation from the wire than burning, which is how they used to do it. According to the TV report, telephone cable theft is on the rise.

Cable and Wireless ADSL Promotion

Last week I got a call from Cable and Wireless Telemarketing offering to double our ADSL speed for $5.00 per month additional. I immediately said yes, and a few days later noticed that my download speed had doubled. I was a bit disappointed that my uploads stayed the same, but I knew that upload speeds are usually a  lot lower than download with ADSL and that upload upper limits are lower than download limits. I also did not see the full 1024 kbit download, but I didn't expect to. I'm a fair distance from the dial central office, and measured speeds have always been a bit lower than theoretical speeds. With the $5.00 per month bump in price, I'm once again paying what I paid for a 56 kbit dialup account back in 1995. We've come a long way, baby!

Skype

Skype is one of the most popular Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services and many expats use it to communicate back home to the old country. The basic service, computer to computer is free and the pay services are very reasonable.

We decided to try Skype in hopes of reducing a nearly out of control phone bill. We had previously blocked all outgoing calls except local non-toll calls and that reduced the bill quite a bit, but it seemed we were spending almost as much on prepaid calling cards. Then we tried Skype (http://www.skype.com/) and are very happy with it. It works on both Nora's Windows 2000 and my SuSE Linux computer. We talk computer to computer, or computer to phone with SkypeOut. Most calls are $0.02 a minute and $10.00 lasts a long time. The only glitch I've encountered is that when I tried to buy time, I was unable to receive an email at my panamaretire.net address or any of the free services like Yahoo. I solved the problem by using my ISP supplied address at cwpanama.net so if you have trouble buying SkypeOut, you may want to keep this in mind.

Recovery Update

I'm driving again, and have even made a few airport pickups and dropoffs. I feel better every day, I've lost a few pounds, and can cough and sneeze without a lot of pain. I figure I still have about three months to go before I'm 100%, but life's good, and I want to thank all of you who wrote to wish me well. I hope to be sending you this newsletter for a long time to come.

Service and Assistance for Retirees Who Want to Live in Panama