I have a cable internet connection, which does not require a phone line, and is in general much faster than the usual connections using modems. Except, because of my marvellous ISP, there was a great potential for injury, or even loss of life in my house.

Recently the monsoon season (ie the rainy season) has come to Mumbai, and there a frequent showers 24 X 7. And these showers come with strong winds. Because of these winds, the cable which brought my internet connection got loose, and is now dangling from the top of my building (which is 10 storeys high) right upto my flat, which is on the 2nd floor. Also, the winds have caused the cable to get coiled around the cactus plant of the people living above me. Great ISP, don't you think?

And now for the worst part: Somehow or the other (possibly because of the cactii) our internet cable has been torn, or broken in some place or the other, and the monsoon rains have started using the cable as a convenient draianage pipe - a pipe which leads directly to my computer. For quite sometime, nobody around the house realized, until one day my father happened to notice a pool of water underneath the cabinet box. He lifted it, only to see a whole lot of water splash out of it! Literally.

All this time the rain water had accumulated in my computer, without anyone noticing. It's a wonder nobody was hurt, no electric shocks, nothing like that. And apparently, the same thing happened in another house, also gets cable internet, with the same ISP.

Getting through to these people is a whole lot of pain, and more than half the time, they never come. Maybe a snail paced modem internet connection is a better alternative.

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Just to let you know what the cable internet situation around here is like. I am posting this from the computer in my father's office.

By the way, for any Indian who's interested, the name of the ISP is Hathway.

If your ISP doesn't want to respond to your problem within a day or two...cancel your subscription and explain why you are cancelling. I'll bet they will be out the same day to repair the wiring.

Presumably the cable goes into their modem does it?

Anyway, certainly a problem that needs prompt attention. The cable becoming loose and damaged is maybe the sort of random thing thing that can happen. I personally wouldn't say the company was bad because of that. What is a gauge of how good they are is how quickly they respond once the fault has been reported. If this happened to me I'd expect them out pretty quickly because who wants water being piped into their home?

Having had the benefits of a cable modem you might be unhappy to go back to dial-up, so I'd say keep phoning them until they come out to fix the cable.

(I found cases of water coming in with TVs too. The connection box on the aerial lets in water. The co-ax cable then pipes water down to the aerial plug. From there it drips onto the carpet.)