Let's talk real for a second, yeah?

As the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to become the headline everywhere and the lockdown was officially announced by the government, a majority of professionals were quite happy about it. Most of us lived a decent distance away from our workplaces which meant daily commute took a chunk out of our time & energy because of the phenomenon we all know & hate -- Bengaluru traffic. Also, most people cannot help but take at least 3 to 4 breaks just hanging out near the coffee machine or sharing a smoke with their colleagues when they are in the office. Because quarantine implied WFH, we all knew there were a handful of perks that meant better productivity & less time wasted.

The problem was, many of us didn't realize then that we live in a society where nothing is as it seems.

What do I mean by this?

There are two major essential services that most of us require to get things done which we would take for granted at a workspace. These are:

Let's see how both these essentials look like for a person working from home.

Electricity Supply

Tell me, since the lockdown came into effect, how many times has our beloved BESCOM disconnected the power across the city without any proper heads-up for more than 4 hours at a time?

Most offices and shared workspaces today have decent power backup units and generators that can kick in every time BESCOM decides to play its games. But when we are working from home, many of us are using computers that cannot charge or function on the output provided by a generic UPS for more than an hour or so. This means when there are power outages for hours at a time, many of us are forced to stop working mid-way through them.

Let me add my personal experience here to make this conversation a little more relatable. At least once a month, BESCOM decides to disconnect the power in my area (which is quite developed, if I might add) for more than 6 hours at a stretch. Luckily, I use a laptop that can hold power for 4 to 5 hours and I also have backup systems that can help me work. Now imagine, I was a graphic designer or an animator who has no choice but to use a high-performance laptop or a desktop. How do you think I would cope then? Would my deadlines not take a hit?

Also, the people over at BESCOM mandatorily have to disconnect everyone's power supplies at least 5 to 75 times a week for short durations for *tree trimming*, *transformer issues*, *kVA feeder issues* etc. Add on the fact that our power lines cannot handle two drops of water falling from the sky and we can see how messed up the system really is.

Let's not play the blame game, but we are living in a metropolitan city in the 21st century whose power distribution mechanism is probably over a century-old right now. What kind of equipment is our *ONLY* power distributor using that can't handle a slight deviation in load or fails as soon as there is a slight drizzle? Where is the taxpayers' money, our money being used if not for making life in our country easier for us?

If Bengaluru was a city that rarely saw showers and rains were something that came without forewarning, we could probably sympathize with BESCOM, but hasn't there been a monsoon every year in this city during this time & aren't there meteorologists working round the clock to give us heads-up for any upcoming storms? Then why can't BESCOM prepare for these natural events?

The government wants us to work from home. We want to work from home. All of us are concerned about the situation of the world. But with this kind of support, how can we take action? How should we stay safe?

Internet Connectivity

Let's move on to the next important thing that most of us need to get work done -- the Internet.

We live in times when internet connectivity is not a luxury, it's a necessity. Most of us work on cloud platforms and even if we don't, we definitely use online utilities to connect with our teams, collaborate & report our work. In times like the Coronavirus Pandemic when social distancing is mandatory, having a reliable internet connection at home is probably on top of most people's lists.

The problem starts here. Bengaluru being the metro city that it is is home to enough Internet Service Providers to put any country to shame. We've got ACT, Airtel, Hathway, GTPL and who know what else. Suffice to say, there should be more competition in the market than needed to ensure the best quality of service by these brands. Unfortunately, when none of them provides decent services, no one really cares about competition, do they? You see, competition among privately-owned services is the backbone of customer satisfaction. If you don't like one service, another brand can get it done for you.

But even though Bengaluru is referred to as the Silicon Valley of Asia, we citizens are not even entitled to a decent internet connection. Just run a Google search for any of the brands that are available and you'll see the kind of problems people are facing every day.

Let's again talk from personal experience. I am currently using ACT Fibernet as my ISP for my broadband service. When it runs, I get at least 70% of the promised 150 MBPS speeds that I've opted for. But in the past two weeks, I've been off the grid more times than being connected to the internet. The first time my connection was lost, I didn't have connectivity for almost a week. First of all, it is almost impossible to get in touch with their customer support team. They respond to tweets at least 3 days later and their ticket system is completely broken. Also, ACT's customer service is just a bunch of clueless agents who commit to deadlines for their technical team that are never fulfilled. Furthermore, they lie! They lie about the issue. They lie about work being done. They lie about anything and everything just to make the customer go away. Their field personnel are arrogant and have the audacity to threaten customers. After almost a week, an agent came to my place and fixed the issue stating that the OFC was broken.

Two days later, I lost internet connectivity again for almost an hour. This time I waited before raising alarm and thankfully, I was reconnected to the web within the hour.

But again, a couple of days later, my connection was lost and the same cat-and-mouse game began. It's been almost three days now and my ISP doesn't seem to want to fix my connection at all. The agents assigned to me just bullshit their way through the calls that are barely answered and I'm stuck here working using my hardly responsive Airtel 4G mobile data.

The point of this article wasn't to defame the brands I have mentioned above, it is to try and highlight the kind of support professionals are getting in a city that is supposed to be the IT capital of the country. I am sure that many people in and out of my network can relate to the issues I spoke about in this article. No media outlet talks about these issues for a variety of reasons but I just hope these essential services step up their game and start taking responsibility for their actions. I know nothing can be fixed in a day, but we have to start somewhere, don't we?