“I’d send a strongly worded email,” said Ngo, “but my router won’t stop catching on fire.”
Photo by Maria Dhilla
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has dealt harsh blows to “mom and pop” stores and hole-in-the-wall restaurants, but certain businesses have seen increased customer demand over the past 11 months, including morgues, Amazon, and internet service providers. The latter category includes Spectrum, which services much of the UCSD off-campus community and has long been the subject of complaints and criticisms. As faculty, staff, and students become increasingly dependent upon the internet for remote work, Spectrum has responded to surging demand in a manner befitting its dismal online reviews.
Anticipating elevated demand following the new year and more students moving in, the company purportedly upgraded its systems to accommodate heavier traffic. However, especially following a week where service was only available six hours a day, many consumers remain skeptical that any changes were made at all. “It’s all talk but no actual work,” complained Sebrina Ngo, a fourth-year UCSD student who has used Spectrum’s service for two years. “It wouldn’t surprise me if their chief engineer was a duck wearing a trenchcoat. Actually, that would explain a lot of things.” Ngo continued, saying that the severe lack of dependability unnecessarily adds to the challenges of trying to complete her nanoengineering degree online. “If I wasn’t so lazy, it would probably be both easier and cheaper to provide myself with internet.”
While many customers have not been sympathetic to Spectrum’s sluggish service, others noted that the network outages were occasionally fortuitous. “I was so stressed last Tuesday, and then boom: internet outage. In the span of eight hours, I got saved from both a midterm that was beating me up and an internship interview that I was hilariously underprepared for,” shared Will Iwakura. “I ended up securing the internship and got my midterm pushed back a day, so now I theoretically have time to study. I thought about leaving them a five-star review on Yelp before remembering that they were the reason I didn’t have internet access.”
Iwakura, however, appears to be among a minority of consumers. Based on an increasing volume of negative social media posts, most La Jolla residents liken Spectrum to an unavoidable nuisance. “They’re fully aware that they’re rubbing their lack of competition in our faces,” lamented Ngo. “It’s almost as though in order to become an internet service provider, someone first runs a background check on you to ascertain whether you’re capable of being a large enough jerk. I know UCSD wifi isn’t really an improvement, but if this pandemic has taught me anything, it’s how much I miss whining about UCSD-PROTECTED.”
Records indicate that since last March, Spectrum has received hundreds of phone calls per day, many being complaints from dissatisfied customers. Ngo recalled that her attempt to voice her frustrations ended after she was put on hold for 45 minutes listening to Beethoven’s “Pathetique” sonata. When asked for an interview, Spectrum declined to respond. “Figures,” commented Iwakura. “If their employees use their garbage service there’s no way they received that email. Even if they did, they certainly wouldn’t be able to sustain a connection long enough for a Zoom call.
