Slightly behind the curve on this story, as a result of getting a hip replacement a week or so ago. And that will be a critical point to remember as I rant my way through the next 300 or so words.
After coming down from my lovely morphine-induced high I left hospital with a shiny new hip and a bagful of painkillers. Like many men, my pain threshold is rather low and, as such, I was in a foul mood for a little over a week.
Things that contributed to my foul mood:
- BT TV not working
- BT Broadband not working
- BT Home Hubs not working
... and when I say not working, I don't mean not working at all. What I mean is that these services work fine most of the time. In fact I'm quite happy with my suburban FTTC service at around 36 MBPS.
But what got me so riled up, whilst spending 14 hours a-day confined to the sofa was the internet news telling me that we'll soon have gigabit internet through G.Fast, whilst simultaneously experiencing a fibre broadband service that randomly stops working.
TV used to work. You turned it on, and unless there was a howling gale, it worked. All the time, with no drama. No troubleshooting, no settings, no routers and no wi-fi.
Now we have a vastly superior delivery mechanism for glorious streamed HD content, which occasionally just stops, you know, for a minute or two. That, to me, seems a backwards step. It's a good job the emergency services don't rely on broadband, or 4G for that matter. Oh, wait... they do.
If the government wants to invest £1BN in something, it should invest at least a little of that in a proper Ofcom group to assess the reliability of the current BB & FBB end-user service that customers of BT and its competitors are actually offering.
In the same way the EE wants to shift focus from population coverage to geographical coverage. I'd like Ofcom to switch from speed and coverage measures, to "does it work all the time" measures.
Everytime you see a message saying "connection lost", "download failed" or "not connected to the internet". That is clear evidence that your provider has dropped the ball. Count up those occasions, for everyone in the country, and Ofcom would have a decent idea of how reliable each service provider is.
Come on Ofcom, I know its important to tinker with BT to find the best ideological division of its groups, but what we consumers care most about is whether what we've been sold, and what we're paying for actually works. Not some of the time, all of the time.
And when I'm still on the maximum allowable dosage of codeine & paracetamol, I care about this A LOT!
After coming down from my lovely morphine-induced high I left hospital with a shiny new hip and a bagful of painkillers. Like many men, my pain threshold is rather low and, as such, I was in a foul mood for a little over a week.
Things that contributed to my foul mood:
- BT TV not working
- BT Broadband not working
- BT Home Hubs not working
... and when I say not working, I don't mean not working at all. What I mean is that these services work fine most of the time. In fact I'm quite happy with my suburban FTTC service at around 36 MBPS.
But what got me so riled up, whilst spending 14 hours a-day confined to the sofa was the internet news telling me that we'll soon have gigabit internet through G.Fast, whilst simultaneously experiencing a fibre broadband service that randomly stops working.
TV used to work. You turned it on, and unless there was a howling gale, it worked. All the time, with no drama. No troubleshooting, no settings, no routers and no wi-fi.
Now we have a vastly superior delivery mechanism for glorious streamed HD content, which occasionally just stops, you know, for a minute or two. That, to me, seems a backwards step. It's a good job the emergency services don't rely on broadband, or 4G for that matter. Oh, wait... they do.
If the government wants to invest £1BN in something, it should invest at least a little of that in a proper Ofcom group to assess the reliability of the current BB & FBB end-user service that customers of BT and its competitors are actually offering.
In the same way the EE wants to shift focus from population coverage to geographical coverage. I'd like Ofcom to switch from speed and coverage measures, to "does it work all the time" measures.
Everytime you see a message saying "connection lost", "download failed" or "not connected to the internet". That is clear evidence that your provider has dropped the ball. Count up those occasions, for everyone in the country, and Ofcom would have a decent idea of how reliable each service provider is.
Come on Ofcom, I know its important to tinker with BT to find the best ideological division of its groups, but what we consumers care most about is whether what we've been sold, and what we're paying for actually works. Not some of the time, all of the time.
And when I'm still on the maximum allowable dosage of codeine & paracetamol, I care about this A LOT!
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