After 57 days without a working ADSL connection, Internet access has finally been restored by my ISP, XS4ALL; as of midnight on 3rd November, to be precise.
Our new ADSL modem kit (a Thomson Speedtouch 780WL(i) turned up on Thursday afternoon and was installed by me late Friday evening.
In stark contrast to every other aspect of the Herculean effort exerted to obtain DSL in the new home over the last 57 days, this final hurdle was leapt without incident and the DSL light on the modem illuminated unassumingly within a minute of connecting it to the phone line and powering the device on. Even the fact we have ISDN here, not an analogue phone line, didn’t throw soot over the proceedings.
There should have been rumbling from the skies, quaking of the house and choirs of angels singing hosannas, but the simple anti-climactic fact of the matter is that the system just worked; and that’s all I ever wanted.
So, it was with great gratitude that I moved all of our networked devices over to the new network and said goodbye to the mystery neighbour, through whose open WLAN all of our traffic had been routed over the last couple of months. Mystery neighbour, I salute you for your community spirit!