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It was Wednesday morning when our DSL suddenly disconnected. Then, I noticed the LED indicator for “DSL” of our modem was off. I suspected immediately that the DSL service was down but I was surprise to find out when I lifted the telephone, and that there was no dial tone too! What was happening?!

I told my father to report to 173 as soon as possible so that when I come back from school, I could finish my work already. Afterwards, my father informed me that the dial tone has been not restored yet. It was already late afternoon. I called 173 on my way back home. The automated telephone service prompted me to one of PLDT customer service representatives. The PLDT customer service representative was chatting with her colleague when I was connected to her line, and she didn’t realize I’m already online. I listened for a moment, waiting for the representative to notice that someone is already on the line. (Isn’t it stupid to forget muting the mic?) Anyway… after a while, the representative had come back to earth and responded to my call. Of course, as a typical customer service representative, she had promised to let the repair crew know of the present situation. Blah blah blah….

Later on, I learned that the PLDT telephone cables in our area were actually pillaged by thieves. As a result, our subdivision did not have telephone and internet service for days. The scrap cables and wirings that the thieves took are quite profitable because the wirings are gold plated, as one of the repair PLDT crew told us. It has been their problem ever since the oppressed community learned that those can be sold in the black market. Easy money, eh? And It didn’t happen once. In fact, they told me that it happened for the 6th time in our area already. Some people have already pointed who the culprits are, but there is no evidence so the people cannot just point fingers.

I asked the repair crew why this kind of incidents cannot be prevented easily and they told me that PLDT has no direct responsibility to watch every cablings they install, so the community should help them catch these thieves in order to protect the services offered to our community. It makes sense, but can’t they go an extra mile to protect their investment?

The next day, I had to check my emails badly so I had to use a friend’s internet shamelessly. I had no better choice. There was still no dial tone but I received good news from our neighbor: the wires were already set. The repair crew just needed a little more time to replace the wires.

At last, on the 3rd day, our dial tone was restored and our DSL was finally operational. I thought that the repair will stretch between 1 – 4 weeks. I’m thankful that the worse case didn’t happen.