Life in Mexico: No Telephone, No Internet Service

I had every intention of posting two follow-up articles about water in Mexico on the heels of my previous water article. Alas, real life intruded and my good intentions flew out the window.

Just as I turned on the computer and prepared to check something on the Internet, I discovered I had no service. I picked up the telephone...no dial tone. Aargh!

As a writer who lives in Mexico, I depend almost exclusively on the Internet to do research and to send articles and queries. Without phone service, my DSL Internet does not work. Without the Internet, the areas of my writing life that depend on the Worldwide Web come to a screeching halt.

Interrupted telephone service is not uncommon in Mexico. We have sometimes gone for days on end without service. It is inconvenient and frustrating, but something you have to live with if you want to live in Mexico. Still, I was curious about what caused the outage this time. The bill was not due for several days, so that wasn't the answer. Suddenly, I thought of the probable cause.

The city of Guanajuato has been doing major street and sidewalk repairs around town for the past two years. Besides tearing up the cobblestones, the workers are digging trenches to replace the water and sewer lines. Unfortunately, one of the workers in our neighborhood must have been excessively enthusiastic in his digging late one afternoon and cut the underground telephone cable.

The next morning, all the neighbors congregated in the street to discuss the situation. We had to find someone with phone service or a cell phone to report the outage to Telmex (Mexico's telephone company). Fortunately, the insurance office at the end of our street, serviced by a different telephone cable than the rest of us, had service.

Graciously, the business owner allowed us access to his telephone. My husband waited patiently on the phone for fifteen minutes, but never got to speak with a live person. He just heard a recording every thirty seconds, "Thank you for calling. Please wait. Your call will be answered in the order it was received." No doubt everyone in our end of town with a cell phone was calling Telmex at the same time.

Thinking it probably would be some time before a live person answered, one neighbor wrote down all our telephone numbers. She and another neighbor volunteered to take turns waiting to make the report while the rest of us went about our business. Bless those two women!

We were certain days would pass before the cable was repaired. After all, life tends to move slowly in Mexico. Things are done mañana (tomorrow), maybe.

To our surprise, we had phone service by that evening! The only reason I can think of to explain the extraordinary speed is two influential people live in the affected area. One is a high-ranking government official and the other is the governor's mother.

Next time, I'll tell you about water woes during central Mexico's rainy season.