I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it - Mae West
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BT offers to install broadband for pensioner
TELECOMS OUTFIT British Telecom (BT) is asking one pensioner to help it subsidise the cost of rolling out its "next generation" network.
The firm responded to a broadband line activation request made by Beverly McCartney with a quote for over £150,000. BT, clearly realising that a pensioner might find this figure hard to bear, decided, through the goodness of its heart, to foot £8,000 of the total bill.
Unsurprisingly, Mrs McCartney initially thought the quote was a typing error, however after talking to a BT employee, was told that it was indeed the current amount. To top things off the employee lectured the pensioner saying that "other people have had bills for more".
According to BT spokesperson Chris Orum, BT is making a "multi-billion pound" investment in its UK network and presumably the firm wanted Mrs McCartney to help out in no small part with this charge. While it is true that there can be occasions when, due to geographical location, utility companies charge the customer to install infrastructure, that usually pertains to commercial facilities, such as in the case of BT, laying fibre-optic cables into datacenters and large office blocks, not "up-to 24Mb" broadband.
The pensioner admits that her abode is located in a rural part of the country, but that it isn't "on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere". A claim that is confirmed, to some degree by BT. Orum said that the Mrs McCartney's home village of Salem, near Llandeilo, is not a "broadband not-spot". This begs the question, why quote such a ridiculous amount for broadband activation?
As for Mrs McCartney, who is seeing the funny side to the whole palaver, BT's quote should mean that she, and her town of 50 houses, will either have to pony up the 150 grand or live without BT high-speed Internet. µ
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Sorry Darren, but there's no chance that Virgin would do anything to help them out. They won't install cable into any area that's not a large city because it would affect their average broadband speed. It's a nasty tactic and it also means that I have to have my ADSL over BT's copper rubbish.
To be fair to BT, they have to roll fibre over the WHOLE country, Virgin just have to do the cities that they're in.
Typical of BT absolute rip off.
I wonder if she wrote to Richard Branson and asked him to see if Virgin would come and install broadband for her whether he'd charge her as much, or whether he'd do it out of his own pocket and ensure the whole Llandeilo has Virgin broadband. Obviously if he did do this for her this would be very good marketing for Virgin Media and make BT look like conmen.
Anyway even if she paid all that out for broadband she probably wouldn't get 24mbps, she'll be lucky if she gets 8mbps.
I left BT about 4 years ago due to their overcharging rates and the fact their ADSL service is a lot more slower and a lot more hassle than Virgin Media.
BT should have been using it's own money about 10 years ago and started laying a proper fibre optic infrastructure around the UK, just as Virgin were doing, but they couldn't be bothered and now they're playing catch up and expecting their customers and the government to foot the bill.
I've got a spare USB broadband stick that this pensioner can have for nowt!
Nothing new here from BT, they wanted to charge me £122.50 for a land line. I went to a well known satellite provider who did it for £25 using an engineer from BT Openreach