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Saturday 19 September 2009

BET you don't know what broadband is

Went to see some folks yesterday on dial up....they had seen the BT piece on TV

Cumbria is quite big, but because Wigton was mentioned on the news, they thought, "This is it. Our broadband could be sorted now". 1Mbps, 2Mbps, DACs, lack of enough copper lines etc - whoosh, straight over their heads.

You try telling people that broadband is 100Mbps symmetrical, or it should be. Not a chance here.

I flogged them a satellite dish. Made me a fortune. Not.

By the time I had explained how ADSL works, why it will NEVER work at their house some 14km from the exchange etc, why BET makes no difference whatsoever, what broadband is about etc, I can only ever be out of pocket.

Why can't the telcos be made to tell the truth? Why is it my job (unpaid) to educate the masses?



2 comments:

Cyberdoyle said...

I don't think there are many people in the country that get 'IT'. Even the people in gov running the digitalbritain team don't seem to understand. If we aren't careful BT will implement BET, then we are truly stuffed in rural areas. Maybe we need to educate a few 'tech' journos? Do you think Rory gets it? He could make a start on the problem couldn't he? Surely there is someone out there who understands apart from a few JFDI peeps?

Cyberdoyle said...

Actually after reading my last comment I feel it is not just rural areas who are stuffed if BET is implemented. Its the whole country.

BT will continue to make a victorian phone network deliver the trickle of internet connection and call it broadband. If we could just stop them deploying more copper to patch it up then we could see some improvement. Copper cable is £6 metre. Fibre under £1. Fibre costs BT. Copper public money through BET. easy enough to see why they are trying it on innit?