Phone-less

We came home yesterday to find the sidewalk in front of our house re-paved and marked off with orange cones. There's just two little spots re-paved, about half a meter wide each, so I'm guessing it was some utility repair. Looks OK. However, our phone service has stopped. Related? You tell me. British Telecom says it's our problem -- there's nothing wrong on their end.

So now comes the hard part: Who dug up our sidewalk and why, and will they fix our phone line? An Odyssey through the city's bureaucracy begins. By the end of it, will we even want a fixed-line phone anymore?