It’s Friday morning, which marks the beginning of my 2nd week in Dublin. I get up extra early in anticipation of the Vodafone internet/box delivery within the 9am-1pm window. I also have a grocery delivery 10:30am-12:30pm. As mentioned in my last post, I receive a couple of calls from SuperValu about substitutions around 8:30am and 9:00am. I’m ready to jump to answer the hallway intercom phone as soon as it buzzes; in fact, after Vodafone had claimed they stopped by earlier in the week, I had tested the intercom by rigging up my iPad to take a video of it as I went downstairs and rang #21 three times, just to make sure.
Then all of a sudden I get a text around 10:22am saying Luke from “DPD” will be delivering my “INTERLINK” U.K. order… something from Amazon.co.uk is already arriving?! (DPD is Ireland’s largest homegrown parcel delivery company, which started out as Interlink and merged with France’s LaPoste along the way.) This is surprising. Indeed, I check my email and find a message saying the mattress foam topper will be delivered today, instead of Monday as originally scheduled. In no time the intercom buzzer rings, I pick up the receiver and it’s the courier with the package downstairs, I say I’ll be down in a minute. I had already gotten dressed earlier, so all I need is to grab a facemask, put on my shoes, and briskly head downstairs. I’ve made a habit of always checking to make sure I have the keys to the apartment in my pocket, since the door locks behind me, as well as my phone. Luke is waiting on the other side of the door, blue-eyed with short buzzed blond hair. He says something about if I’m not home for future deliveries, he’ll drop parcels at a storefront a few doors down… I guess he’ll be my regular courier? The box is rather large, but not too heavy.
No sooner than getting back through the apartment door with the box and catching my breath, the intercom buzzer sounds again — my SuperValu grocery delivery is here! Grab the facemask, put the shoes back on, head briskly downstairs again. I think it’s the same courier as last week, slightly older and cordial, we chat again about the weather, COVID restrictions, the pace of business. He uses my name when he says goodbye, which is a nice touch. I had placed another large order so it takes two trips to haul the 4 blue plastic bags of groceries upstairs.
I put away the groceries and then open up the box with the mattress foam topper. Included with the instructions is a special tool for cutting open the plastic that’s been vacuum sealed to compress the foam, it reminds me of a letter opener. I unfurl the expanding mass on to the bed in the second bedroom. There’s a deep crease where it was folded over, but the instructions say it takes 24-72 hours for the foam to fully “recover,” so I leave it to lay there and heal. Besides, I suspect the fitted sheet my landlord obtained for my bed in advance of my arrival will be too small for both the mattress and topper… in fact, it’s highly likely given my research into linen/bed sizes that it’s not even a European double sized one, but a slightly smaller regular double.
The minutes continue to tick away while the delivery window Vodafone had committed to my landlord (after multiple missed ones) is closing fast. Around 11:45am, the intercom buzzer goes off again. I pick up the receiver, “Hello? Vodafone?” but no, it’s a courier with another parcel delivery. This confounds me, as I wasn’t expecting any of my online shopping orders to arrive until next week. Grab the facemask, put shoes back on, head briskly back down the stairs. It’s another sizeable box, but flatter and marked “tier corner storage” — wow, it’s the shelves for the bathroom that weren’t supposed to arrive until next Wednesday at the soonest! It’s beginning to feel like Christmas morning.
One o’clock passes — no sign of Vodafone, and the only chance I missed them would have been in transit down and up the stairs for the previous deliveries of the morning. I text this report to my landlord, since he’s been dealing directly with them and losing more and more patience each time they fail to show up as promised. The weather has suddenly switched from bright and partially sunny to grey skies with rain. I turn on the oven/cooker to heat up leftover cottage pie and green beans for lunch. Then around 1:30pm the buzzer rings again, “Hello Vodafone??? No, another courier?! I’ll be down in a sec.” Facemask, shoes, brisk descent. The routine is becoming comical at this point. Two more boxes, one of which is another large one… I can’t even recall what they could be now, perhaps because I’m feeling sleepy after being up since 6:00am and haven’t had much to eat so my blood sugar is low. The courier also has a small DHL package for another resident and asks if he can leave it inside, I shrug and say sure, he’s talking into a headset on a call for another delivery so it’s not quite clear when he’s speaking to me or someone else. As I bring up box 1 of 2 of this latest delivery, the neighbor on my floor with frizzy long hair whose Irish name I can’t remember is in his doorway and asks if a package was left for him, so he must be who the courier was calling. With the first box deposited in the apartment, I head back down and pass my neighbor who asks if the other delivery is for me… who knows what he must think of this American with his unusually large grocery orders and multiple boxes arriving all the time. When I make it back up to my floor, he’s there holding open the door from the stairwell to our outdoor deck hallway for me… “How kind of you! / I’ve been there meself / Had I known the other package was for you, I would have brought it up / No worries, cheers.” Perhaps I should nickname him Hodor? Such genial and polite exchanges continue to be so refreshing here.
The parade of boxes:
After all the bustling, I settle down to lunch, then retire to one of the living room couches for some light napping. My phone’s ringer is on and the intercom buzzer is loud enough to wake me should Vodafone finally show, although my hope is diminishing. I hadn’t heard back from my landlord. It’s now getting to be late afternoon. I open the box with the bathroom shelving and begin to decipher the instructions. I also take a closer look at the last two boxes — they’re from Simple Human?! Again, these items arrived much sooner than expected.
At around 4:30pm my landlord calls, “Has Vodafone delivered the box? / No sign of them / Jesus! I’ll call them again now.” At 4:53pm, my phone rings from an unknown Irish number. I answer, it’s someone from Vodafone about the Internet box — the first direct contact I’ve had with them about it. The male voice says they are on their way to deliver it, they’ll be here in about 40 minutes, perhaps earlier or later. At last, could this be the end of the saga?! Exactly an hour later, I get another call from the same number. They are on Dame Street, could I come down to meet them? Yes I’ll be down in a minute — facemask, shoes, and throw on my flannel shirt which I button up as I head downstairs. It’s raining again, I don’t have a coat but no matter. I turn left out the door towards Dame Street where I see a small white delivery truck with its flashers blinking, then I hear a voice behind me call my name and it’s the Vodafone rep with a box in his hand. He meets me at the door to Sprangers Yard, hands off the box, and turns to go. I had been expecting them to come up to the apartment and set it up, but apparently not. I ask if there’s anything I need to know about the set up and he says something about there’s a couple of cables included in the box, it’s straight-forward. OK whatever, I think I can manage, I’m just ecstatic to have the box in hand! I text my landlord the good news.
Turns out it’s not quite as straight-forward as one would think. First off, there are multiple references on the packaging and quick-start guide to a “Vodafone Gigabox” app, touted to make setup a snap, it’s available to download from both Apple App Store and Google Play. I search for “Vodafone Gigabox,” there are some other Vodafone apps but no matches for the “Gigabox” one. Sigh… it must only be available on the Apple App Store for Ireland. This leads down a technical rabbit hole of how to change regional/country settings, including setting up a new Apple ID so as not to screw up my iCloud sync with my U.S. account, etc. I choose my iPad as the guinea pig device for these changes, and after following the steps outlined in some DIY articles online, I eventually switch it over to the Ireland regional app store and behold the Vodafone Gigabox app appears! (Keep in mind I’m still using my phone’s network data connection, and the connections with Apple’s servers time out after awhile so it requires a few attempts.)
Problem solved, right?! Not so fast! I plug in the modem and launch the app, only to be faced with a “your router is not supported” message, contrary to what all Vodafone’s quick-start and other instructions say:
The absurdity of Vodafone’s customer service failures grows even larger. I consider myself fairly adept at computers and technical things like this, so I can only imagine the frustration of lay people who run into brick walls like this. OK fine, forget the app, let’s just plug the modem in and it will still work right? At this point, I begin to realize there is something obviously missing… there’s no place to plug in the modem. I’m not talking about the power, I’m talking about the actual network connection between the modem and the Internet… there’s no port on the wall behind the TV where I’d expect there to be one. I begin to question reality… maybe the Internet works differently in Ireland?! Does it just magically get beamed into people’s home modems from some ubiquitous transmitters???
I return to google in search of answers, eventually coming across a Vodafone video tutorial on how to set up the exact modem that’s been delivered to me. The video explains the different color-coded cables included in the box, starting with the blue cable that on one end should be plugged into the WAN port on the modem and the other end plugged into the “ONT box which is usually on the wall inside your house.” Wait, pause the video — what the heck is an ONT box?! For years I had the same Internet connection setup in the SF house, so I must be behind the times… or perhaps this is something specific to Ireland? Another google search reveals that ONT stands for Optical Network Terminal. Aha! Another clue in this seemingly never-ending scavenger hunt. But again, there’s no sign of any ONT box on the wall behind the TV… surely there’s been Internet set up in this apartment before?! Although my landlord hadn’t mentioned anything other than the Google Chromecast dongle that was plugged into the TV, so I begin to question whether or not he knows how the Internet works. Forging ahead, undeterred by these baffling mysteries, I start searching for the possible existence of an ONT box on another wall in the living room behind the furniture. In the opposite corner from the TV, I come across a dated looking wall-mounted box, but it only has two coaxial cable terminals on its underside — a vestige of previous technologies now abandoned? There’s nothing else behind the couches besides power outlets. And then, in the least likely place behind the living room door that has been held open by a rudimentary doorstop made of unfinished wood, I find mounted on the wall a plain white box with two ports covered by tiny doors and labeled only by wordless symbols depicting what looks like a decades old desktop computer and a telephone above each one, respectively:
It looks nothing like the modern ONT box that appeared in Vodafone’s modem setup video, but it is a box mounted on the wall with right-sized ports for network cables, so this must be it!
(A side note: In the AirBNB apartments where I stayed in Dublin during previous visits, one of the more curious features I noticed was that the door separating the entryway from the main living area was installed with an automatic closing mechanism. Apparently, this must be a firedoor design mandated by the building codes here in Ireland, or at least Dublin. This made it quite annoying to have to open the living room door each time when going from one room to another, as the only way to the bedroom(s) and bathroom was through the entryway. No doorstops were to be found in those apartments, and I had improvised by jamming a flip flop under the living room door to keep it open. Having learned from these experiences, I made sure to include multiple doorstops in the box of essential household items I had shipped over for my move to Ireland. So I was pleasantly surprised when entering the apartment for the first time and seeing the living room door propped open with a wooden doorstop; it, too, has an automatic closing mechanism built into its design, but the landlord and/or previous tenants paid no heed to its intended safety purpose. Hence, with the living room door propped open the entire time I’ve been here, I had never noticed the ONT box hiding on the wall behind it.)
Now I return to Vodafone’s setup video and re-watch the part about plugging the blue cable into the modem’s WAN port and the ONT box. The CAT5 plug end of the cable only fits into the left-side port of the ONT box with the computer symbol above it, the right-side port turns out to be smaller-sized for a standard telephone cord plug. OK, the variable combinations of ports and cables have been culled down to just this one configuration, so it must finally be set up correctly…
I turn the modem off and on, then watch the row of white indicator lights on its front begin to blink in their precoded sequence. The one for the Internet connection, however, stays dark. What possibly could I be missing?! Is it possible that the wired connection to the Internet was never set up? I text my landlord asking about it, and he calls me up. Yes, a technician had come to set up the wired connection 2+ months ago, maybe Vodafone still needed to activate it? Having no further constitution for dealing with them, my landlord texts me the Vodafone account information so that I can follow-up directly.
But before contacting Vodafone, I look to google for further answers now that I know the wired connection was allegedly setup. Besides the video I had previously found, there’s also what looks like a relevant PDF guide available for download from Vodafone’s website. As if uncovering a lost sacred text, I scroll through the pages with wonderment at the mysteries explained within… there’s a diagram of an ONT box that matches the one on the wall in the apartment, and what more there’s a section that outlines alternative steps for using the black cable (barely mentioned in the setup video) to connect the modem’s DSL port with the left-side port on the ONT box. In disbelief, because the black DSL cable is just a smaller-sized regular telephone cord that I would have never imagined should be plugged into a larger CAT5 ethernet port, I follow the instructions in the manual and power the modem back up.
The lights begin to blink, but this time in a sequence that continues past where it had stopped before. The Internet indicator light turns red, then a blinking white, then a solid white. I go to one of my devices, change the WiFi network from my phone’s hotspot to the network name that’s printed on the modem, and go to a web browser. The page loads. I run a speed test. The download speed clocks in at above 40 megabits per second. HALLELUJAH!
All the attention that Vodafone’s documentation paid to “Gigabox” and “Gigabit” was a red-herring, since my landlord had only set up DSL service, which in retrospect made sense given that it only costs €30 per month as opposed to the €40+ per month for faster speeds.
It’s now approaching 9:00pm, and I haven’t eaten anything since lunch. I preheat the cooker/oven for a frozen pizza and pour myself a whiskey coke in celebration. I fetch the AppleTV from the other room, and after undergoing further trials and tribulations involving VPN and DDNS configurations that seemed petty in comparison to the saga with Vodafone, I manage to get my streaming services working. I finally settle in for the evening, basking in my victorious struggle for connectivity.
