This is a tech-related post - it's been a tricky second half of the week due to Internet issues.
As I've decided not to tie myself to 24-month fixed-line rental (and broadband Internet plans) in Italy, I'm using mobile Internet at home. The Internet is vital to online teaching and so I have SIM cards with two different major network operators. In case one fails, I thought, the other one would still save my day. But after this week, I might have to reconsider my options.
By Sod's law, the back-up SIM card failed me this time round. On Wednesday evening, my main SIM card started connecting to the barely functional 4G+. Normally it would stay on 4G even though my router is '4G+ capable'. This meant the 'stop' mechanism wasn't working. The constant shift between 4G and 4G+ caused the Internet to cut off for a few seconds every time it happened.
So I temporarily switched back to using my old '4G only' router and tried it with both SIM cards. The speed on 4G was dead slow. By this point I had figured out that upgrading work was being done to my nearest mobile radio tower. I remember a similar two-week ordeal in 2019 - the trigger was a mild rainstorm at that time.
You can imagine my annoyance since a stable Internet connection is required for online lessons.
The solution? I'm going to use a '4G only' router to avoid my SIM card switching inadvertantly to 4G+. It seems my three-day ordeal is over (slight improvement!) and I truly hope I didn't speak too soon. Then I'll also have to look into a third mobile network provider whether it's on mobile or fixed-line Internet.
(For those techies out there, I'd prefer using my '4G+' router on 5 GHz since the family living next door generously uses up two out of three chunks of 2.4 GHz channels.)