Ha!
Just when you thought you'd got rid of me - I'm back.
But only in a very limited sense. I have been investigating why it is that my broadband speeds are so much lower than everyone else's in the entire country (and lower than many people living in mud huts in the Amazon rainforest).
And I've come to the conclusion that it's just plain, simple racism.
Racism? Surely not, you cry. Not in the 21st century!
Well, yes, I'm afraid it is. It must be. After all, we have 21st century technology - 150n-band routers, multi-tasking multi-processor computers, servers the size of shoeboxes with 1000 times the computing power than was used to take man to the moon (please, let's not do the whole conspiracy-theory thing right now), and the capability of using little fibre optic cables to send voices and information from one side of the world to the other.
Therefore the fact that my broadband is not much faster than dial-up (remember that - 90s technology with sound effects) is down to racism.
Let's look at the facts:
1 I live in Cornwall. It's a glorious country (that's not a misprint for county, by the way), with stunning scenery, fabulous beaches and of course, the inimitable pasty.
2 My ISP is Orange. Orange is part of what we used to call Wanadoo. Which is a wholly owned subsidiary of France Telecom. They're bloody FRENCH!!!
3 My telephone line is provided by BT. (Actually, everyone's phone line is provided by BT. You might be a TalkTalk customer, or an Orange (spit) customer, or whatever, but BT is the only provided of telephone lines in what is laughingly referred to as the United Kingdom.) And the clue there is in the expanded name of that anti-customer-service conglomerate - BRITISH Telecom.
Cornwall, I am reliably informed by the local Cornish guy, has a charter granted to it in the 11th century enabling it to provide its own monarch. Centuries later, the English realised what they had done, and tried to do away with this charter, but the Cornish were too canny, and it never happened. The best the English could do was put in place their own lackey, who was henceforth known as the Duke of Cornwall. (Mind you, Cornish guy also thinks dogs are the children of the devil, and tourists only come here to crap in our fields - or some such).
But ever since then, the English have hated Cornwall. And British Telecom is of course English (or British as the English prefer to call it, as long as it is doing okay - like Zola Budd, Greg Rusedski and Andy Murray).
And of course, they keep claiming that Cornwall is actually part of England, and the French, who know no better (and probably don't want to), hate everything they perceive to be English.
Which is why my bastard broadband doesn't work properly.
There - now I feel better.
I'm off for a lie down in a dark room, plus it's time for my medication!
My son-in-law lives about 1 mile up the road and his broadband was as pitiful as yours, yet I get about 6.5meg so I'm quite happy (ignoring when it goes down due to contention issues!)
ReplyDeleteHe's gone super-fast BT fibre optic mumbo jumbo stuff and now it runs like lightning! Of course he doesn't live where you live so they have actually installed the infrastructure here.
What they didn't tell him was the amount of wiring they had to do to get the connection from the hole in his front wall where the connection comes in to the upstairs bedroom where the computer lives. I understand from the installer that this is a common complaint.
I'd go for it here but the connection is by the front door and for the life of me I can't see where to put the router that woudn't involve totally screwing up my house with loads of cable.
So much for wireless!