Okay, seriously, where do I begin?

Let me take you through my day today. At 10:30 a.m. I received a call from a customer of mine telling me they had lost all network access - the IP phones weren't connecting, they couldn't receive e-mail, etc. etc. Since no other engineer was available, I visited the site.

 

With an interconnectivity between Dubai and Germany and backup operations in Spain, this was a mildly cumbersome task, getting the right people on board to help diagnose the issue. I spent almost two hours trying to diagnose where the issue was coming from and of course, it was from Dubai.

 

Since the hardware had been checked already, I decided it was time to do the unthinkable - contact Etisalat. For those who follow this (people do?) and don't know Etisalat (subtotal: 0.5 people), they're our sole telecom provider in the UAE. Yes, DU, you're there too, but honestly, the only thing you compete with are mobile phones. For anything else, we're not given a choice, and for business requirements, we only have Etisalat. So yea, sole provider.

 

So I call Etisalat help, 101, who after running through some transfers, tell me, "Leased Line is a separate department, please call 04 xxx xxxx". Right cool. In parallel, I might add, I'm trying to reach two separate account managers, both of whom are unreachable (which is okay, that happens).

 

So what happens when I call the number?

Attempt 1: <bad number>