Sunday, 10pm - called TelstraClear to hear "We're busy and your call is in the queue - please expect 20 minutes wait"...
After 14 minutes the call was answered (ok, they delivered earlier). I then explained that my cable modem stopped working at 7pm. The person on the other side says "wait another hour and see if it comes back".
I did wait another hour because I had experienced a couple of outages (over the last 12 months) that lasted about 4 hours - but there was always a problem on their side.
Called them again at 11pm, confirmed the modem had the On-line light off, Send was blinking, so it was obvious my side was trying to communicate.
I was told the earlier I can have a technician here is Tuesday morning. That's two days away!
I explained I work from home and this was a very important tool. The person on the other side said "Sorry, but since this is a home connection the contract estipulates up to 5 days for a technician is ok".
Wow... Five days!
Lucky I have my Vodafone 3G and Telecom Apache Pocket PC around here and I can connect via Bluetooth - no LAN at home for the other computers, but at least I can work.