My home modem crapped out on Wednesday.
Since I live in the US, that meant that my house was completely without internet access, except for cell service hotspots. (This fact continues until _at least_ 8am tomorrow.)
I'm a software developer who works remotely. (If I were to drive to the office, my commute would be about 2,400 miles one way.) To say I depend on access to the Internet is an understatement.
I think it's time to classify the internet as a utility. I don't want to force people to work on holidays, but 6 day outages of services that someone less fortunate than me could be fired over just aren't reasonable.
Yes - the 'standard' moden where I live in Luxembourg is the "Fritzbox" allegedly a high quality German designed and manufactured range of modems. The only problem is that they have a tendency to crap out the moment the guarantee expires!
We have now gone through three or four of the damned things @100 €uros a pop!
In Luxembourg we are lucky. Unlike the UK where the entire country stops dead for anything up to 14 days at Christmas, in Luxembourg, Christmas Day and St Stephens day (boxing day) are public holidays and that's it!
If you want to go shopping, eat out or go drinking or do anything much at all after about 4pm on Christmas eve, I don't rate your chances too highly as the evening of Christmas eve is when the big celebration happens here, and indeed in most countries in mainland Europe. Shops all shut at around 4pm or 5pm on Christmas Eve and everyone goes to family to get drunk!
Christmas day is for Alka-Seltzer and recovery from the massive hangover that most people acquire!
There is no time of the year when you would not get service for an urgent problem within 48 hours.
@Paulos_the_fog
In the US, Thanksgiving (4th Thursday of November) is like that, except...
The next day is called Black Friday, because it's the day that retail stores move from being "in the red" (not being profitable) to being "in the black" (having a profit) for the year. (Based on the old accounting practice of putting deficits in red ink and deposits in black ink).
Most places are closed on Thanksgiving Day. Only the absolute worst customer service departments are closed on Black Friday.