Becoming The Muse

Dear Telecommunications Company

Imagine waking up to find the front of your yard all dug up.. (again) looking like an archeological dig site.

And not so much as a warning, a by your leave; silence, nothing, just strangers in work suits digging.
You say Hello.
They say hello, make small talk about the heatwave and ask for some water.

You ask the men at work what they are doing and find out they have been contracted by some telecommunications company to dig trenches to lay cables.

You ask  “didn’t you guys do this again just earlier this year or were you the ones from late last year. Because this is the 3rd or fourth time people been digging up these trenches.”

They say “oh no that wasn’t us, that was someone else contracted by a different company.”

Oh?

So if I formed my own corporation, I would also have to dig up the whole countryside to lay down these cables for super fast internet connection and all that.

Can’t you guys all get along like agree to all pitch in to some single contractor and then just dig the once and for all. Then leave some sort of service pipes so that in the future, for new connections you won’t need to dig up again. Or when evolution of internet connection yields newer faster tech and you need to upgrade it will be easier too.

All this digging can’t be good for the environment, especially now at a time we are busy praying for rain, a deluge of rain at that, so that Kariba dam levels rise up and we can have normal electricity generation, from the hydroelectric power plant. (That is why we are having loadshedding I am told)

Speaking of electricity won’t all this fibre what what, increase the demand on our already strained power grid or you have a secret you are yet to share with us.
Personally I won’t have much access to this wonderfully fast internet (that the packages are usually ridiculously priced being one of the reasons) having electricity for only 6 hours a day between 2300hrs and 0500hrs.

If I do not use the internet on my phone I can go three whole days on a single charge cycle.
Who knew.
Alternative power solutions, Maybe wind or solar powered network towers. How about pocket sized solar Wi-Fi routers (my phone lasts longer on Wi-Fi than on mobile data connection)

You say that all these cables you lay are so that everyone gets connected that’s a good plan.
Wireless you say but it’s only later you tell me I have buy this expensive hardware (antennas & routers)

And then I wake up to see headlines in the newspapers about companies retrenching which means to my limited street economics some of you are rolling out campaigns you can’t afford to consumers who can’t afford it, this can’t possibly end well, cheap reasonably capped internet sounds like a fair compromise.
I do not want just social media bundles (turning me into a permanent resident in the Hotel California, that is social media, you log out, but never ever leave) I want google, I want GPS, I want to know how fast I run when I jog, I want it all, if you
make my dollar stretch, I will happily give you my next dollar, even if it’s way later on, that is better than me not giving it to you at all. Financial advice from a street bred entrepreneur (read vendor)
But I am no economist I am simply a guy complaining about his dead lawn.

On the upside this time round the guys did not kill the paving on the driveway, (too much) they used some sort of drill, to bore beneath it.
I can’t say the same for the lawn, it will grow back I suppose but I keep wondering isn’t there a better way, you could have at least, apologised gave me free internet for the inconvenience (ok I admit the last bit was fishing)
You killed the shrub just by the corner, I used to wait in its leafy shade for the girl next door.

The internet should be like the ground beneath your feet, everywhere you step….. It’s there.
But hey you to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs…..dig holes, kill lawn, and pay, someone always pays.

Till it rains

~B