Changing our Cablenet Contract

Four-and-a-half years ago, I wrote about how we decided to move our landline phone and Internet provider from the national company CYTA to the somewhat newer Cablenet.  It saved us about ten euros per month, and gave us a faster Internet connection.

I still have the original documentation, which shows that we signed up for the 'cable/talk + surf + view 20M' package, at €44.64 per month.

At the time, all the Cablenet packages had cable TV included, although we weren't in fact interested in that as we don't watch TV. We thought we might - but it hasn't happened. We wanted to keep our landline phone although we didn't use that much either. And when our last physical phone handset gave up working, we simply diverted the number to Richard's mobile phone; the landline was barely used, and we haven't missed it.

A couple of months after we took out the contract - which was 20M download, and 2M upload, though I'm not entirely certain what the two figures refer to - we were upgraded to 30M/3M, at a slightly inflated cost.  Perhaps that was part of the initial contract; I don't remember. Anyway, for a couple of years it worked well, and we were paying €46.90 per month for the package, plus the occasional few cents if someone dialled the landline and it was then transferred to Richard's mobile.

Shortly after that, we were upgraded again to 75M/5M, and then, earlier this year, 100M/6M. Paperwork arrived with the bill, sometimes, and we glanced at it, wondering if we would do better with a different package. Richard thought that perhaps he could transfer his mobile number to Cablenet as part of one of their new packages which included a mobile. But somehow we never got around to it.

The monthly price had gone up to €52.90 per month, which seemed rather on the high side, when compared to costs elsewhere. But a six euro increase - along with much faster speeds - didn't seem too bad in four years.

Then in the summer, we were away for over a month. Our Cablenet bill for August (it's always paid in advance) had arrived just before we flew, but by the time we collected it from the PO Box, I had turned my computer off. I knew I had until the end of the month to pay it, and since I was taking my laptop with me on our travels, I thought I could easily log into our bank before the end of the month, and pay online. So I popped the bill into my laptop case... and forgot about it.

The Internet connection wasn't great for our first couple of weeks away. But then we stayed for a week in a villa in Coronado, which had a reliable connection. I found the bill, and paid it online without any problem, despite it being about six days after the end of July.

Richard flew back to Cyprus towards the end of August, and visited our PO Box where he found our electricity and water bills, but no Cablenet bill. I was able to pay the other utilities, despite them also being rather late, but was surprised that there was no phone/Internet bill. Everything was working, and I didn't think about it until about ten days ago, when we went to check the PO Box again. Still no Cablenet bill. 

So we went to the Cablenet office. A very helpful lady was able to print off our bill - both the one we should have received in August, and the one for September which had not yet arrived. When we asked why we hadn't had the September one, wondering if they had gone paperless and we'd missed something, she said it was because the August bill was paid late, and attracted a re-connection fee of five euros.

No, that didn't make any sense to us, either.

We asked if we could pay then. Yes, she said. Did we want to pay just the September bill (which included the reconnection fee), or the October one too?  I said we might as well pay them both at the same time, and produced my debit card.

Meanwhile, Richard had been looking at the special offer card that was sitting on the desk.

It was all rather confusing, with several different offers, nowhere near as straightforward as it was four and a half years ago.

I asked if we could have an Internet connection that didn't include TV, since we didn't use that, and the lady suggested a couple of options. However, both of them had rather slower upload speeds than we had been using - and for Richard's work, he likes that as fast as possible.

But after some discussion, we realised that we could get a connection that's almost as fast (5M rather than 6M upload) with the package labelled '2play 60M Purple 2', which costs €39.90/month.

This has no TV, but does include, in addition to home Internet, a mobile phone with a monthly allowance of 400 minutes, 200 SMS and 1gig Internet.  There wouldn't be much point having my phone on this package, since I only spend about €15 per year on pay-as-you-go. I write perhaps thirty text messages in a month, but I don't think I use more than about 60 minutes a year of talking.  And even with my new-to-me smartphone, I don't want to use mobile Internet, other than, briefly, on wi-fi when I'm at home.

However, Richard's phone, which was on a CYTA contract, was costing about €20-30 per month. The basic contract was only €2.50 with what's considered low usage, but he paid another €8 or so for 300m mobile internet per month, and typically at least €10 in charges for calls and texts. Until recently he had used it mainly for work, but now he mostly uses online calling for work calls to people abroad, so the call/text charges to his mobile phone were mostly local. I had felt for a while that we should now be paying this rather than his work (which has been doing so).... 

So once the Cablenet lady had established that his current contract doesn't include any minutes or SMS, she agreed that we would do much better with a new contract. It should save about thirty to forty euros per month.

We had to take in a former CYTA bill in order for the process to begin, but since we already had a Cablenet contract, there were no further charges. Richard was given a new sim card for his phone, and told to change it when he received a text message informing him of when the transfer was done.

On Monday morning he was sent an SMS telling him to start using the new sim card at noon on Tuesday...  and shortly after lunch on Tuesday, when he realised his CYTA connection was no longer working, he changed the card, and everything - so far - has worked perfectly.

All of which is a very long-winded post to say: it's well worth checking special offers with phone/internet companies.  Facilities change, and what seems like a great deal at the start of a contract may not be the best one a couple of years later.

Will we remember to check the options in another two years time....??  That remains to be seen.

Early Morning Walking Resumed

It took me nearly a week to feel as if I'd recovered from returning to Cyprus. Not that I had any trouble adjusting to the two-hour time difference. And although I'd had a bit of a broken night before flying (continually waking in case I'd missed my alarm...) a couple of good nights' sleep easily made up for that.

Instead, I felt unutterably weary, my brain foggy, my actions slow. Partly it was returning to the heat, I'm sure; yet the humidity is down, less than it was in July before we left, and the temperatures are no more than 31-32C in the hottest part of the day. As I type, it's almost 6.00pm and a not-too-warm 28 outside. It will be dark in a little over an hour.  I had air conditioning on in my study earlier, when the temperature was a bit higher, but not now.

But partly it's something I've come to expect each time I return to Cyprus. Perhaps it's resuming responsibilities for looking after the house, and the cooking, and so on. Perhaps it's a kind of reaction to the end of an enjoyable holiday. Or perhaps it's the way I experience jet-lag, though it's odd that it only ever seems to happen when I'm back in Cyprus after a break.

Still, by Tuesday I'd decided I could manage an early-morning walk with my friend Sheila. It's mostly light by about 6.00am and a pleasantly cool 23C.  We exchanged text messages, and I put on some socks and my trainers, untouched for the past three months.

I grabbed my camera as I left, and took my first photo as we approached the entrance to the trail:

The Salt Lake, when we saw it, has completely dried up.

That doesn't happen every year, but we'd had no rain since at least May, and far less than the normal amount in the past year. There are strict water restrictions in place. Not that water gets turned off, as it did when we were first here. But heavy fines are being imposed for people who use hoses to wash their cars, or their patios/verandas, or the pavement outside the house.  Or rather....fines are imposed for people caught doing these things. First thing in the morning, and late at night, we've seen neighbours use their hoses, surreptitiously, to clean their outside areas anyway.

The lack of recent water shows in the general brownness of the sides of the trail:

We walked, as usual, to the aqueduct and then back to the opening. About two km in each direction. We weren't walking at all fast, but then neither of us has done much walking in the past few months.

On the way back, I was struck by this rather pretty display of purple flowers:

However, some long-forgotten memory of the basic horticultural education given me by my parents told me that it was bindweed. I don't know why I thought that, as the bindweed I vaguely remember from my childhood was white. I suppose there's something about the shape of the flowers.  And, as we looked more closely, we realised that this plant is wrapping itself around branches and even leaves of other plants.

Neither of us recall such a profusion of these purple flowers in previous years. But bindweed is insidious. I doubt if anyone will do anything about it. Most people will admire its beauty rather than worry about what it's doing.

There's a rather obvious spiritual lesson there, which I won't expound upon.

We walked again on Thursday.  Yesterday, there was some rain in the late afternoon. It wasn't heavy, but it was enough to make the whole street look wet. Inevitable, perhaps, as we were planning to barbecue with our friends in the evening - but happily the rain finished in plenty of time to do so.

It was nowhere near sufficient rain to make any different to the Salt Lake, but as I looked out of the window prior to walking this morning, I saw some clouds and wondered if there would be a pretty sunrise.  I was about to grab my camera when I remembered that my new-to-me phone had a built-in camera.

When the moment came that I wanted to take a photo, I wasn't entirely sure how to use the phone. But it wasn't difficult to find the camera icon and press the button on screen.

This afternoon I wondered how I would get the photo from my phone to my computer. Google searching suggested plugging them together via the charging wire, and installing an Android connection app on my computer.  I did that... but the app wouldn't recognise the phone. Perhaps it's too basic.

I looked at the photo, wondering if I could email it to myself, or download it, but there were no options to do so.

Finally, I opened Google Photos, wondering if I could put it there temporarily....

... and to my astonishment, the photo was already there. So I opened Google Photos on my computer, and was able to use it.  Not that it's great quality. It's nowhere near as sharp as my camera photos. I certainly won't be abandoning my camera any time soon.

But it gives a general idea of the colours in the sky; not as impressive as some we've seen in previous years, but still: my first phone photo:

Now that I've got used to using an on-screen keyboard, I don't miss my old phone at all.  I haven't yet worked out how to make phone calls on the smartphone... but I can send texts, and WhatsApp messages, and even quickly browse Facebook without having to switch my computer on.  Richard installed some more hard drive a few days ago - the tiniest hard drive I've ever seen - which means I'm not running out of space any more.

The weather forecast sites don't show any indication that the temperatures are going to drop in the next ten days; 30-32C remains the expected maximum temperature, 22-24C the expected overnight minimum. But with humidity no more than 50%, it's not unpleasant.

September usually marks the last month of summer in Cyprus. Perhaps in October it will cool down a little.

Trying a (basic) smartphone...

I didn't even have a mobile phone until 2007. By then, almost everyone else in Cyprus had one, and landlines were starting to vanish. After a couple of occasions when I realised it would have been useful to have a mobile, I was persuaded to buy one. As simple as possible, just enabling me to make and receiving phone calls and text messages.

And yes, it was useful. Four years later, when its battery was almost worn out, it was much less expensive to buy a new phone than a new battery. I opted for a similar kind of phone, which had the addition of predictive text, and slightly better storage capacities. And it's done well.

It's been dropped a few times - hence, if you look closely, some missing plastic at the side of the keypad - but has continued to function. It fits nicely in the side pocket of my handbag. I have a camera for photos, and a computer for accessing the Internet, so I had no need for anything more advanced. 

I'm also extremely sensitive to vibrations and radiation, even harmless kinds, and when I've had to hold other people's iPhones, they have become uncomfortably 'tingly' within a minute or two. And I found the navigation and usage very confusing. No way did I want anything like that...

In the past six months or so, however, our family on the Logos Hope have been sending photos to Richard and other relatives via WhatsApp, which - for some reason - is one of the few things that works reasonably well on the ship's slow Internet connection. Each time I had to ask Richard to download them on his phone and forward them to my email address, so I could see them on my computer.  It was a bit frustrating to learn that WhatsApp can be used on a computer - but only when connected to a smartphone WhatsApp account.

In April, when I was in the UK, I remembered that my father had stopped using a basic smartphone which he found frustrating, and moved on to an iPhone. I asked my resident technical experts if it would be able to use WhatsApp, and learned that it could.  My father was delighted to pass it on to me, and when I got home I was equally delighted that, so long as I kept it charged and near my computer, I could get WhatsApp photos directly on my computer.

But in the meantime, my basic phone was starting to feel squidgy. In the UK, it refused to send messages to my son's phone. Every time I tried to send a text message to anyone, I had to keep re-typing because the space key wasn't working well.  I realised it was reaching the end of its useful life - I suppose seven years isn't too bad these days.

When we were on holiday in Panama in August, I had to use Richard's second (Android) phone (with a UK chip) to send text messages a couple of times, while he was driving. To my astonishment, it didn't make my hands tingle, and I found it surprisingly easy to use - at least, for sending messages. For the first time, the idea of actually using a smartphone began to seem less unreasonable.

I'm told it's still possible to buy non-smartphones, and I may still decide that's the best option. But in the meantime, I asked Richard if it would be possible to put my Cyprus sim chip in my father's old phone (which is on the Android system) so I could see how easy - or not - it is to use.

The only way I knew how to remove the chip from the phone was by dropping it. Happily, he knew a better method, and was able to snip it to the right size for the smartphone. Then we learned we needed to unlock it from Vodaphone UK, but since I'd had it for a few months, that simply required an email with some details. A day or two later, the unlock code was sent, and worked easily.

It 's a lot more complicated to send text messages than either of my basic phones, and I seem to have lost my phone contacts... all twenty of them. But there are only two or three people I tend to get in touch with via text messages, so those are now entered. Along with all my gmail contacts, which apparently imported themselves, but aren't much use as they mostly don't have phone numbers attached.

I suspect I'll stick with it, as other friends have done when given smartphones, at least for now.  Which, I suppose,  means that I've finally been dragged through the gate into the 21st century...