No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had - Samuel Johnson
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Couple told to pay £45,000 for broadband
BRITISH TELECOM (BT) has told a couple who want broadband they will have to stump up £45,000.
Ray and Frei Walker live in Dufton, Cumbria and asked BT for high-speed broadband. The £45,000 quote is for the new gear that BT says it needs to install to provide them with the service.
There is BT broadband access for the 150 villagers in the town but the company says there is no more capacity available for new users.
Well, unless they are the company's boss, Sir Michael Rake, who was provided with high-speed broadband at his rural home, even though the rest of the Oxfordshire village where he lives does not have broadband access.
However that was in Hambleden, near Henley-on-Thames, and that was a year ago and not in the North.
The Walkers' home in Cumbria is just ten yards from a telephone pole next door to other residents who already have broadband.
Walker told the Daily Mail that he did not want anything special. "Just the same c**p broadband service as everybody else in the village," he said.
The broadband speed in the village is only 500KBps but it would be a huge improvement over painfully slow dial up. Quite why the telephone pole is important the Daily Mail did not say. µ
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British ISPs should die in a fire. We all know why. That's a quote and a half, that is.
move
TBH I am sure that BT aren't lying, it probably will cost £45,000 to find the old equipment on the fleabay and have apparently incompetent engineers install it.
But ignoring that, isn't the Government supposed to be pushing for 2Mbps for every home by 2012, or something? So they should surely be footing such a bill, and this couple should get their broadband?
TBH the Government should have pushed for 100Mbps and forced massive fibre roll outs, not copper, then we could all share a network of fibre between whomever we choose to purchase from, and all be happy on super fast for 15 seconds broadband until the fair-use policies kick us down to archaic less than 56kbps again.
BT truely suck and the single minded openreach eng above proves it.
I happen to work for a company that has to deal with BT openreach on a regular basis so I can tell you that it costs £45,000 because the eng's are useless, they will use decades old technology/equipment that is cost inefficient and not reliable, work will probobly have to be redone multiple times to get it working. even still, does it realy cost £45,000 to expand existing cable paths in an area that is prooly nothing but fields?
when the install is done will it have additional capacity at very little additional cost in the event that homes are built in the future? I would say probobly yes.
will the people who actually pay the £45,000 for the extension of BT's network still need to pay subscription? will they get the money that BT will generate over the next 20 years from subscriptions on the new lines that are installed as part of the £45,000 install fee? I think not.
would also like to point out that it is the consumers that pay the fees to fix line faults so there is no cost involved to BT openreach in the long run.
looks like BT are living in there own little world and everyone in the real world is about to break in and ramsack it.
look for a new job mate.
Actually, BT gave us the option of having Fiber delivered to every house in the UK back in the late 80s (ish)back when it was owned by us, sadly it was not ment to be, our govenment said no as it was still clearing up the mess the last Labour Govenment left us. Thus it was privatised and gone was the future, until now that is, and ironically the govenment is going to have to shell out for it anyway.
Cable would be great if you could actually get it, broadband over powerlines is probably the future for the UK, that would cut out BT monopoly as well, it does work, its a proven technology that can make a difference, you can already turn a home in to a network using the power sockets thus its the way forward. just needs a bit of investment thats all, oh wait a sec, labour screwed as again, no more money, gonna need to wait before catching up with the rest of the civilised world, american not included.
"To say its naked profiteering on BTs behalf is ridiculous, its just not commercially viable."
But it is "viable" to roll it out to company executives, I suppose, whose time running one of Britain's privatised monopolies is presumably so precious that he must be able to videoconference and share his PowerPoint slides with the rest of the "executive team". (Although given the record of these people, if the case of various banks is in any way illustrative, not showing up at work and remaining incommunicado while sipping sherry from the decanter at the mansion would probably give the company some strategic benefit.)
I mean, we could just blame Thatcher and friends for all this, and it is to be noted that the Daily Mail is in no position to point such stuff out *and* wag the finger, but why not point out the shit-plated service that BT and the like offer the public? It's the result of the abandonment of public services in the name of fast cash for ministers and their chums.
How "pigheaded" of customers not to pay for all that infrastructure themselves and not to allow the corporate dicks like those running BT to aim for pure profit!
@YobRenoops
Your comments show that BT really is an dying dinosaur.
It must have been pretty obvious for some years that the 150pair cable to the village was nearing capacity - not to mention providing a very shoddy laughably titled broadband speed.
Did BT look to the future - no, rather than spotting the capacity shortfall approaching and investing in updating its network, either by replacing the cable with fibre or adding another cable it chose to do nothing and sweat its asset for maximum return without forward investment.
I wonder if the quoted £45,000 is just to add 1 additional connection - and the same will be required of the next potential customer - or whether this ammount would then enable other customers to be added at no cost to BT.
Failure to invest in upgrading network capacity is commercial suicide
Offer the neighbor to pay half of the monthly broadband bill and the cost of a switch and router to share their connection. I wouldn't be surprised if that were illegal or something in Britain though.
perhaps bt could stick the telegraph pole up their arse. maybe it will improve the speed.
As someone that works for Openreach I can tell you that they're being really pigheaded.
They have a village absolutely miles from the nearest telephone exchange. The main 150pr cable feeding it is full, hence they've been put on a DACS. To give the broadband service would need a significant lineplant uplift. Hence the cost.
To say its naked profiteering on BTs behalf is ridiculous, its just not commercially viable.
If his near neighbour already has broadband, then they should come to a sharing agreement.
"You give me the WPA key to your wireless router and I'll promise to not download anything illegal, and will give you a nice bottle of Scotch every Christmas"
And everyone's happy.
ALl my family and friends use virginmedia without issue. Rarely have to call them at all (painful when you do though) but in short they are in no way laughable. BT are also not a monopoly as there are alternatives which are equally known about and very available.
BT and virgin are free to install their services where they please (provided they are allowed by local authorities etc) and can charge as they wish although higher prices will put off users drastically. There is no monopoly here, just people not willing to pay the fee and rightly so.
I'd say get a 3G contract of some kind and you will be fine, not all internet connections come down wires.
Since we are supposed to live in such a wonderful democratic, free enterprise, open market, mixed economy, how come BT is allowed to have an effective monopoly on providing broadband? (Discounting the laughable non-alternative of Virgin, whose kit may be OK but which seems wholly ignorant of things like networking technology). You can buy ADSL from lots of firms, but they all run over BT's wires, fibre, and exchanges.
Access to the Internet is steadily becoming more and more important to more and more people - even the politicians have now managed to grasp that. So why interpose a vast, uncaring, clueless, incompetent, lead-assed bureaucratic monopoly between the people and the network?
How about some real choice, MPs? (And don't forget we voters will be exercising our own once-every-seven-years choice real soon now...)