Where’s the internet? Yet another Qtel rant...

I try to make sure that, as a minimum, I post on this blog every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. However, this Friday I was defeated by Qtel.

Yes, Q-tel has once again proved its inability to maintain a working internet connection.

I first noticed that the internet was missing on Thursday at around three o’ clock in the afternoon. I rang Q-tel. Nine minutes and thirty two seconds later a grumpy receptionist (tip, Qtel – give your telephone receptionists some training in basic politeness) admitted they were having problems. “We’ll fix it today, if God wills it”.

The next day the problem remained. A quick visit to my friends in the area confirmed the problem was not mine alone. One friend, upon ringing, had been told that the fault lay in her modem.

I rang again this morning, and was also told that the problem lay in my modem. When I told here I didn’t have a modem but a router, I was told the problem was in my router. Although I pointed out several times that the problem was not an isolated incident and could therefore not be related to a single piece of hardware, I was repeatedly told that the fault lay with me.

My friend then rang, to see if he could persuade them it was a general problem. He had great difficulty in explaining the problem. When he finally managed to explain it, and gave the general error code, the telehonist finally admitted it had a technical problem in our area. He then asked Qatar was doing about it. “Technical department, technical department,” the lady asssigned to internet technical problems said and hung up.

We did not receive one apology through out the four telephone calls. But let’s be reasonable – if Qtel had to apologise every time people had bad service, they wouldn’t have time to do anything else. Still, it would be nice if they didn’t take the attitude that they were doing us a favor by letting us pay sixty dollars a month for occasionally using the internet.

This is not the first time this has happened (it made the newspapers last time), but I can’t remember the problem lasting so long before. Could it be that anyone who could do anything is on their holiday?

It’s not even as if the service is very good in the first place. Qtel’s standard (expensive) adsl connection is 500 kbps. (I can’t remember the last time they upgraded, either). This compares to eight megabytes in the UK, which is itself slow (though now trialing faster speeds) – France is 24. So the UK is 16 times faster and France 48 times faster than Qatar’s ADSL is supposed to be.

Supposed to be. For in fact the internet, as anyone who uses internet frog will know, often slows down to dial up speeds of 30 kbps or less. In fact it sometimes becomes so slow it is just unusable. God help anyone who is actually trying to do business on-line.

Remember, we are not writing from an impoverished third world country struggling to buy modern technology. Qatar is the third richest country in the world. Yet somehow Qtel is still unable to keep up with the 20th century, let alone the 21st. Never mind. We have been promised competition, and like everyone else I know, I have sworn to switch to them when, and if, they arrive.

So, is the internet in my area back yet? No, I’m writing this from an internet shop in another area. I will, of course, be sending Qtel the bill.



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Qatar Doha Middle East Q-tel internet problems connection