My Experience of Internet Services in Brazil: Blink Telecom

I liked the fibre optical service they were offering of 300 Mbps down and 200 Mbps up. So, on Thursday 22 September 2022 I contacted Blink via WhatsApp.

I saw the adjacent ad and this was the basis of my request. I do not know what Blink Play is and I can't imagine that I would have a use for it. I do not know what Bittrainers is and I have no use for any addit­ional apps. I do not know what Blink Multi is. And Blink doesn't seem very keen to tell me.

Perhaps they will explain in their contract what these things are.

Their refusal — at least, their obstructive reluctance — to give adequate details of the service they were offering disturbed me. Nevertheless, I could always not go ahead when I saw the final contract if I did not wish to accept the details of the service.

So the next day, I decided to go ahead with their 300/200 Mbps service and so con­tacted Blink again by WhatsApp. I said I would like to go ahead with the service. Notwithstanding, I soon discovered that, in order to sign up for Blink's service, I need­ed to already have an Internet connection. This is because Blink sends its contract of service by email, which the prospective customer must digitally 'sign' and return. Obviously, Oi having arbitrarily terminated my service, I had no Internet connection. So I could not access my email. This obvious 'chicken-and-egg' situation appeared to be beyond the comprehension of the WhatsApp operatives at Blink. I asked if they would send the contract by post. The operative didn't even answer. The operative said that I could receive and sign the contract by email using my smartphone.

I have absolutely no problem or impediment whatsoever in using a computer. I have been using — and indeed, programming — computers for almost 60 years. On the other hand, WhatsApp is about the only facility I can manage on a smartphone. I can barely read the screen because it is too small. I can barely even type properly with the touch buttons that are only about a quarter the size of my fingertips. The problem is greatly exacerbated by the fact that I often forget that for every word I type I must touch the word on the right to say, in effect, "Send what I typed: not what you think I meant!". This is especially the case because I have to converse in two different languages and cannot go through the complicated rigmarole of changing the phone's language every time I have to send a message in a different language. In any case, gross mistakes in messages can be corrected afterwards and the consequ­ence of an error is not at all serious. Of course, I would never so much as dream of attempting to do a financial transaction via a smartphone. Mistyping or touching a microscopic numeric key or a 'send' button by mistake could so easily send an indeterminate amount of my money to who knows who at who knows where. That would be catastrophic. Thus, all in all, for me, the smartphone is an extremely slow, error-prone and difficult means of communicating. Consequently, I never use my smartphone for email. The user interface is too small, far too complicated and extremely counter-intuitive. And the text is too small for me to be able to read.

Yet in order to acquire the Blink service, I was ex­pected to receive an email via my smartphone [which I wouldn't be able to read], digitally sign it and return my acceptance by smartphone. I was also supposed to read and accept the micro­scop­ically small terms of their contract [see illustration]. To me they were just a nebulous fuzz on the screen and, unlike with other web pages, the text couldn't be enlarged. Such obvious obstructiveness strongly belies an intent that this contract should not be read. So the prospective customer is expected — indeed, has no choice but — to sign it blind and commit himself to he knows not what; otherwise he will have no access to the Inter­net, without which he will be unable to function ad­equately within modern society. I am 80 years old and, as such, probably not considered to be part of society any more. I'm but part of a peripheral minor­ity that doesn't matter from the point of view of sell­ing Internet access services. Yet I have absolutely no problem using a normal computer. So why should I be excluded?

JOKE: I call a Brazilian ISP saying that I would like an Internet connection.

Salesman:	"Great, I'll send you the con­tract by email, which you can   digitally sign and return.   The installation will take place within 5 days."
Me:	"But I haven't got an Internet connection."
Salesman:	"So? Isn't that why you're buying one?"
Me:	"Yes. But how do I get the email?"
Salesman:	"On your computer! Don't you know how to access email?"
Me:	"To access email I need an Internet connection.   How about sending it by post?"
Salesman:	"We don't do that any more."
Me:	"Have you got a shop in a mall where I can sign up?"
Salesman:	"No, we do everything on-line nowadays."
Me:	"Oh, that's it then. Bye".

I don't think he understood that to access my emails I need an Internet connection and that if I already have an Internet connection to access his email then I don't need to buy an Internet connection from him because I already have one.

But the administrative staff were unperturbed. My digital signing of an email I could not receive was the only way I could sign up to the service. However, this is not only Blink: all the other Internet service providers that I know of do the same. So I had, by some means, to find a solution. Notice that it is up to the hapless customer — not the powerful corporate provider — to find a solution. It's called extern­al­isation. Whether to manage their clueless administrative staff or to feverously learn how to configure their routers or optical terminal units of which their technicians know little; it all falls on the shoulders of the customer. All in order to minimise cost and thereby maximise profit for the provider. I would gladly have paid for them to send a contract by post and have my signing of it witnessed by a lawyer if they require. At least that would have been practical.

Like that between every other corporation and individual customer, this "contract" is not a contract: it's an ultimatum. It says, in effect: "If you do not blindly sign and thereby commit yourself to our un­seen and incom­pre­hensible terms and conditions, then you will not be allowed access to the Internet, and hence be unable to function acceptably within society to fulfil your legal and financial obligations". Almost all bills and invoices are now sent by email or website, which you cannot access and hence don't know how much to pay or even if a debt exists. So you are registered as a bad debtor on the [Serasa Experian] bad debtors website for all to see, except you of course because you can't access the Internet. Serasa Exp­erian still sends a letter by post, but it requires you to access their web­site to 'resolve' the 'debt'. This happened to me with NET [see previously in this essay], in which the debt was eventually rightly judged to be false.

Blink was quick off the mark. About 4pm on that same day [Friday 23 September 2022] obviously before I could possibly have received and accepted the contract, a technician from Blink came to the building in which I reside in order to survey its communications distribution boxes. He was a tall enthusiastic young man with ginger hair. He was very knowledgeable. He had a coil of orange nylon rope around his shoulder. He showed us a piece of fibre optical cable. He obviously enjoyed his job. He said that Blink would have to install extra new distribution boxes in the building at no cost to me or the building administration. He said the process would take about a week and that he would arrange everything. He gave me a good impression of Blink, unlike the difficult and complicated administrative system via WhatsApp, which was better than Oi's Artificial Imbecile, Joice, but not significantly so. The fault was not in any way with the human operators but with the dys­func­tional structure and proced­ures of Blink's administrative system.

Thus, although, for me, mobility is not easy, my only recourse was to prevail upon a friend and go to visit her to use her computer in order to access my email account to retrieve Blink's email, digitally sign it and return it to Blink. On Sunday 25 September 2022 I went to visit my friend. But there I discovered that the Blink email hadn't arr­ived in my mailbox. I had a quick look at my friend's installation and discovered that the Blink OTU [Optical Terminal Unit] is a Huawei EG8145V5. Its configuration access IP is 192.168.18.1, default username is "Epuser" and password "userEp". I saw that it is possible to forward ports in the WAN configuration page by selecting For­ward Rules --> Port Mapping Configuration, and clicking NEW in the pane on the right. This gave me a little more confidence that the service could be made usable. I would have preferred the Nokia G-140W-H OTU used by Oi, on which I have already done a lot of research and have the full manual. Obviously I can neither search for nor acquire the manual for the Huawei because I do not have access to the Internet.

At 08:30 on Monday 26 September 2022, I finally was able to get an email client installed on my phone and, with the help of a magnifying glass, man­aged to access the titles to my in-box. There was no email from Blink.

Then, after much counter-intuitive fiddling, I suc­ceed­ed in accessing the spam folder. There it was, the email from Blink. I managed to open it and saw a PDF file for download. I downloaded it into my phone, where, of course, it was illegible. I had to find a way of transferring it to my computer to be able to read it. What a needlessly complicated time-consuming rig­marole that was.

Now, please can you tell me what I am supposed to do with this? I cannot see any active buttons or links here. Am I simply supposed to reply to it? It tells me absolutely nothing! Notwithstanding, circ­um­stances pre-empted me. In holding my phone, the edge of my thumb inadvertently touched the edge of the screen.

At which, suddenly, the adjacent screen content ap­p­eared. It effectively told me that my connection to the Blink website was insecure and that I should return [back-track] to the secure situation I had be­fore. Noticing that part of the URL of the Blink web site is visible at the top of the phone screen, does this mean that I have arrived at the Blink website? Does this consequentially mean that I have been deemed to have [albeit inadvertently] signed the "contract"? Or not? I have no idea! What I definitely do know is that I have not yet intentionally signed up to or agreed to anything. I touched the blue "button" to return to the so-called secure situation. Then what appeared was merely the standard Google home page. Where am I supposed to go from here? Am I supposed to do something? Or just wait? I'll go visit my friend again tomorrow and see if I can make any sense of anything through her computer. I decided to inform Blink of the above via their WhatsApp facility. I received an instant imbe­cil­ical reply that in no way pertained to what I had said.

I very much suspect that the very act of touching — however slightly or inad­vertently — any part of that mostly blank email automatically triggered the 'signing' process. In other words, the whole of the email screen was, in effect, one enormous unlabelled 'accept and sign' button. If this indeed be the case then Blink's so-called 'digital signing' process is plainly deceptive and devious. It is just my good fortune that the Chrome browser stepped in and barred access to the Blink web page because it detected a security issue and thereby prevented the 'signing' from tak­ing place. So now, in this digital age, one can 'sign' a binding contract inad­vert­ently while having no intention of doing so. I even have a further suspicion that the very act of down­loading the contract PDF file in order to read it actually causes the downloader to 'sign' the contract unwittingly. All this raised a very large red flag in my mind.

In the afternoon of Monday 26 September 2022, I buckled down to read the con­tract. I didn't like it. In order to subscribe to an Internet connection service of 300 Mbps [I can only make use of up to 100 Mbps because that is the limit of my in-house cabling] I was being forced to purchase all kinds of additional options, all of which were essentially of no use to me whatsoever. I did not even know what they were or what they did. And it seems I have no way to find out, since I do not have Internet.

I received a reply from Blink via WhatsApp. It said that Blink Multi is a club of benefits when buying things at certain well-known stores. I was invited to look at a link to show what discounts I am entitled to. However, entry onto the site requires that I already have a Blink connection, which, of course, I don't. Besides, I am old and the so-called benefits of Blink Multi are of absolutely no use or interest to me. But I am supposed to pay R$10.70 per month for them, even though I would never have cause to use them.

Blink Play seems to be a repository of applications. I have no idea what they are or what they do because I cannot access the given link without being signed up for the service, although they appear to be medical, sports, video and music streaming, again all of which I have no use for whatsoever. Nonetheless, I have to pay R$15.90 per month. They didn't tell me what Bittrainers was but I have to pay R$8.90 a month for it [or is it them]. I assume that Assistência Premium I is some form of on-line help facility. Over the 26 years I have been on-line, the technical assistance services from all ISPs have been notoriously useless. So I would have no use for that at R$5.00 per month.

I presume that "Wi-Fi Max" at R$9.00 a month is a rental for the use of the Wi-Fi func­tionality on the supplied OTU [Optical Termination Unit]. This is something I don't need. I already have my own Wi-Fi router that is configured exactly to my needs. All I want is a bridge from the fibre optic service to the input of my router. However, assuming that SCM [Multimedia Communications Services] would bridge the Internet connection to my own home router, I imagine that the R$49.50 per month does that. Why the grandeurs name "Multimedia Communications Services"? The only thing it does for me is convey IP data packets to and from my router. All in all, it means that half of what I would have to pay per month is for services that are 100% useless to me and which I do not want and for which I did not ask.

PACKAGED SERVICES	USEFUL	USELESS
SCM [Multimedia Communications Services]	R$49.50
Assistência Premium I - SVA		R$5,00
Blink Multi – SVA		R$10,70
Wi-Fi Max - SVA [SVA = Value Added Service]		R$9,00
Plataforma de treino e saúde Bittrainers - SVA		R$8,90
Blink Play – 1 APP para livre escolha - SVA		R$15,90
TOTAL	R$49,50	R$49.50

It seems to be eternally the case with all such Internet packages [or "COMBOS"] that the old, living on their pensions, must subsidise all kinds of extras that are use­less to them, being of use only to young double-income families — simply because those young double-income families are in the majority. Crude vulgar commercial expedi­ence always outweighs social justice and common consideration. So I am now resign­ed to the fact that, whatever I want to buy in the way of an Internet connection, I must spend as much again buy­ing all kinds of additions that I don't want and are absolutely of no use to me.

In packages from other Internet Access services, I would also have to pay a monthly fee for things like McAfee software security, which would be totally useless to me because I use the Linux operating system in all my computers on which McAfee won't function and which Linux doesn't need. Thus, as an old age pensioner, I am locked into paying a monthly tax in return for nothing: not to my government, not even to a company in my own country, but to a freeloading foreign corporation. It's just like the Microsoft "Windows Tax" that everybody unconditionally has to pay to an imperial sovereign state called Microsoft. It is high time that this kind of flagrant corporate thieving was taken down and sorted out.

And all this is because Internet access is now only ever provided as an indivisible integral package. That unfortunately is the pernicious way of modern commerce.

So I did not go ahead with the contract. Thus the question remains:

How and from where can I get a plain simple Internet connection in Brazil without having to pay for a combination of extras that are totally useless to me? At the moment, it appears that the answer is "nowhere".

An Absurd Chicken-and-Egg Situation

In order to be able to buy and sign up for Internet access in Brazil, I must already have Internet access in order to:

1. see what Internet access plans are available
2. access an email address in which to receive the contract
3. download the contract into my computer to scrutinize

The email address must be my email address: not somebody else's. This is because the email address will be used to send the payment demands. They don't send them by post any more. Note that my act of downloading the contract automatically trig­gers a software mechanism that deems me to have 'electronically' signed it before I can have had sight of it. Is one supposed to respect a law that permits this?

I had to put on my thinking cap and try to come up with a viable option to regain access to the Internet. First of all, I had to reorientate my mind away from striving for social justice and fairness and simply accept that any which way, I'm going to get shafted by whatever option I take. I'm going to have to accept that as an old age pensioner, I must be prepared to subsidise young double-income families and the thieving of freeloading corporations. These are the options I came up with:

1. Find a young person from somewhere to install an email reader on my smart­phone, entrust him to access the ISP's contract email, download it [and thereby blindly sign it] and wait for the ISP to make arrangements to install the Internet Access service package.

2. Request the service by letter [conveyed by post to the physical street address of the ISP] and offer to go to the ISP's offices in person and sign up to their service. Somehow, I doubt that an ISP would do this nowadays.

3. There's an ISP that operates community Wi-Fi coverage. I am able to access one of this ISP's Wi-Fi nodes from my residence. I could ask this ISP if they would grant me temporary access to their Wi-Fi node for the express pur­pose of accessing the contract email for signing up to their fibre optical service. This might work.

4. I could try to prevail upon a friend somewhere who has an established Inter­net access service. I could ask him if I could take my laptop so that he can sign me into his Wi-Fi while I access the ISP's contract email, download it [and thereby blindly sign it] and wait for the ISP to make arrangements to install the Internet access package service at my residence.

5. I could, after 26 years, simply do away with home Internet access and just use my smartphone for WhatsApp communication. I could thereby send files to my son in Canada to update my website. Or I could visit my friend from time to time with my laptop to update my website. Perhaps people my age are not meant to have Internet access: we know too much, and that's not good.

I decided to do more research using my smartphone, as best I could, through the almost illegible websites displayed on its microscopic screen. Unfortunately, this activity proved to be very difficult, frustrating and fruitless.

Therefore, on Sunday 09 October a young relative took me in his car to a very large shopping mall to resolve the problem by buying an Internet access service in one of the Internet service provider shops. There I discovered that, out of the big 4, only Oi supplied a fibre optic service all the way to a Optical Terminator Unit [equivalent to a modem] in the customer's residence. The only other supplier I knew of that also provided this was Blink. Blink didn't have a shop in the mall. Trying to continue with Oi was out of the question: the company is impossible to communicate with. I therefore decided to go back to the idea of using Blink's service.

I went home and contacted Blink via WhatsApp, telling them that I would have to arrange to go to a friend's house with my computer to use her Internet service [Blink] to be able to go through the signing up process, which was impossible to do via my cell phone. I arranged to visit my friend on Monday 10 October 2022 to sign up with Blink. This I did successfully during which I agreed to an arrangement that Blink's technicians would visit my residence sometime during the morning of Tues­day 11 October 2022.

When I arrived home after visiting my friend, I received a WhatsApp reply from Blink. It thanked me for signing up and asked if I would accept a visit from their technicians in the afternoon of Tuesday 11 October 2022. I told the person that I had already agreed for the technicians visit during that morning. The WhatsApp person said they had no indication of any such arrangement and so arranged the afternood visit. I ask myself: "Is this the start of yet another session of corporate confusion?"

At 12h25 Blink phoned 031983397348 saying technicians would arrive in 20 min­utes. They arrived in an hour. They looked at the cabling in the building and con­cluded that it was not possible to install fibre optics because the cable ducts were too full of cables already. They cancelled my contract.

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© September and October 2022 Robert John Morton

[1] I was not the ISP's actual customer, that was somebody else, who subscribed to the service on my behalf. However, throughout this essay, for clarity of prose, the first person singular has been used to indicate either or both of us. The other per­son has no knowledge, involvement or responsibility regarding any of the content of this monograph essay.