Jure Merhar

After almost six months of absence from the internet, I am finally back online!

It all started in August 2007, when I moved closer to the centre of Ljubljana. Before, I had lived on the outskirts of Ljubljana, and had had a broadband internet access — albeit only a 1024k/256k ADSL — for more than 4 years. As you can imagine, I had no doubts whatsoever of being able to acquire a broadband connection — and a faster one at that — in my new abode. As you can probably see by now, I was very wrong in making that assumption.

One week after moving in, I casually solicited one of our ISPs for a 5M/5M VDSL connection. I decided to go for T2, a relatively new one, simply because it was the cheapest. A week later, I received a negative reply, saying that the connection is not possible at my location. I was quite shocked to hear this, since I now lived only 600 meters away from a major telephone exchange building for Ljubljana, while my previous location was over 3 kilometres away from the same building.

All the landline infrastructure in Slovenia is owned by Telekom Slovenije d.d., a formerly state owned company and the largest telephone and internet service provider in Slovenia. Telekom therefore only leases their infrastructure to other providers, meaning they first have to acquire a grant for every household they wish to connect. In my case, Telekom’s answer was negative, with the following explanation: “There is no twisted-pair cabling available for decoupling”. I was as baffled by this explanation as I imagine you are.

It’s a well known fact here, that Telekom constantly uses their leverage — being the owner of all the infrastructure — to hinder all other ISPs at acquiring new users. This is mostly due to the fact that the largest Slovenian ISP, SiOL, is for all intents and purposes a subsidiary of Telekom. Naturally — albeit not always legally — they are trying to do everything in their power to promote their own ISP and hinder all the others. I immediately assumed this was what was currently happening to me. Not willing to prolong my internet-less state any longer than necessary, I solicited SiOL for a comparable internet access. To my surprise, a couple of weeks later, I got a negative response from them as well. Now I was completely perplexed with the situation at hand. I inquired with one more ISP and got the same response. I was quickly running out of options at that time.

After that — for lack of any better ideas — I asked my friends and acquaintances, if they knew anyone that was employed in Telekom. I found out that my new landlord had a contact quite high up in management. With some pulling of strings, I eventually got my internet access through that contact, but not without further complications. Even through her, they refused to connect me without an active telephone line. Since the landlord terminated the contract four months prior to my moving in, I had no active connection and no wish to acquire one — after all, we do live in an age of mobile phones, while fixed phones are becoming more and more obsolete. My landlord then generously agreed to reacquire a telephone number at his own costs and to subsequently pay all the bills for it too.

This was not the end of the story, though. Telekom now refused to provide me with VDSL access, claiming I was too far away (!) from the telephone exchange building. Being exhausted from the long struggle and not having the will any more to counter their claim, I asked for ADSL instead. I now have a 4M/512k ADSL connection with SiOL, paying a higher monthly price as I would have for a 5M/5M VDSL.

As you can see, I have spent the last six months in an endeavour to acquire broadband internet access in my new dwelling. While I do have it now, I will continue to work towards getting the originally requested speed. I have already inquired with T2 again, getting the same response as before, which is quite ironic if you think about it, since I now already have a broadband connection.

Nevertheless, I am now quite happy to have internet access at all. Amidst all that struggle, I was beginning to think that I was never going to get it.

Now that the server was up and running again, I decided to revamp my site. Since I have neither the time nor the will to write a site for myself from scratch, I decided to go for WordPress. I was pleasantly surprised that it has come a long way since I last looked at it. The administration is highly intuitive, it has a very large theme- and plugin-base and it is quite easy to modify as well. All in all, I am very pleased with it and recommend it to any wannabe blogger.