Anyone close to my family knows that it can be a real bugger to get a hold of us... Well, that's primarily because 8 months ago I received a whopping 600 dollar phone and internet services bill that I just couldn't afford to pay. This was the straw that broke the camels back and coincidentally it put my previously excellent credit in the shit house. The major cell phone companies have a knack for beating up on ordinary people's credit by wrongfully charging peoples accounts then leaving it up to the customer to spend unholy hours on the phone with billing departments and rude credit departments to try to rectify the situation. Bottom line in all this is that they just don't give a rats ass if your in over your head with 600 dollar bills, I'm suppose to pay them more than a weeks pay to get one or two months worth of phone and internet because of some billing screw up? Ughhhh, get it together people...
In our family we have 4 Cell phones active and even more sitting inactive in a drawer in the kitchen, All pay as you go, and all so outrageously expensive that we just simply avoid using them unless we really need to. I use my cell phone more than anyone else here does, but even I limit my conversations to mostly textual means... This is for a couple reasons, one being, why talk when you can text? :) I am so used to conversing with people by text, having been using the internet for conversations since the early 80's. Even before the internet when I was a kid using the K12 dial up networks and BBS's to send and receive messages...
And so at that point of despair when we had to decide internet and "home phone" just wasn't as important as oh, lets say.... taking our kids to the movies, or to the mall to buy them some new clothes... I had to get creative if I wanted to ride out the recession. To make a really long story short I won't go into detail about most of it but as far as internet goes, I found a clever and secure way to receive internet on a router by reprogramming it's software to not just broadcast the network but to pick it up from multiple sources at the same time and provide me with decent enough speeds to read my email or write in my blog etc... I know, family have said to me... "Open wifi? Aren't you afraid you'll be hacked?" My answer is usually plain and unamusing since I just simply don't want to go into detail and explain. However the long and short of it is that along with this modified hardware I was able to set up a proxy in the US on a server that I trust whereby all traffic from my house network is piped to this server through an encrypted connection before it actually gets out onto the real network. HAHAHAHAHA, Did I just geek out of you there? I know and trust this US server and have been using it for over a decade, almost two in fact. So that took care of the network side of things for me. As far as telephone goes, I thought HEY I'll just simply set up a VoIP phone... Works in theory, and in fact sometimes it works flawlessly. However Encrypting every ounce of data that flows out of our house before it actually gets on to the internet has it's drawbacks and it has proved to be simply too much for voip. It is also a challenge when trying to view streaming video etc without a whole lot of buffering as it causes delays, breakups and just a whole myriad of problems. These problems with our home phone have our family thinking we just don't want to talk with them... But it's not true! we love them all, and while we may be a bit awkward we want to keep in contact with them near and far...
So what did we do to fix it? We have already told our entire family and network of friends that our new VoIP phone number is and will remain our home phone number. Ughhh, we don't want to change the number again but have to find a solution to our little phone problem...
There is a new phone company in town... A cell phone company in fact... So we decided to ride the "Wind" of change.. or rather, the "Wind Mobile" of change... They have only been in our local market for a few months and have their own set of issues to deal with but I think it's a good time to give them a chance, I encourage you all to do the same... You have to buy a phone outright, there are no silly plans and a somewhat limited choice of phones however it's the flat rate All accross canada "unlimited" calling that got my nubs in an uproar... We purchased one of these phones today as a family and decided to try it at our house as a house phone replacement, but we also have the flexibility to take it mobile when we go on our little family adventures etc... And for our frustrated family members, we will keep our VoIP number forwarded so you don't even have to change your contact lists... But this time the call should come through any time of day or night... Don't forget to leave a message :)
I am not sure how wind mobile will fair in the market but I do know that I have already seen a 10 cent per minute reduction in my existing pay as you go phone, which I assume has something to do with the new market competition...
I will blog every once in a while to report on Wind Mobile's reliability etc, hopefully it works out but for a flat rate monthly and the ability to call anyone in Canada for as long as we want I think this may be the cell phone revolution we have all been waiting for. I am excited to be part of it!
No comments:
Post a Comment