The chairman of BT, Sir Mike Rake is the only person in his Oxfordshire villiage of Hambleden that has got broadband, and as expected this has not pleased his neighbours.
The locals of the village have been waiting for around 5 years for broadband, while Sir Mike only moved in around a year ago and has already got broadband.
His broadband connection is due to his participation in BT’s trial of Broadband Enabling Technology (BET), which although is only a limited trial it is estimated that it costs around £3,000 for each line.
BET is designed to help deliver a stable broadband connection of 1Mb to locations that are 12km from the exchange and largely unable to receive broadband due to their remoteness, these places are also known as “not spots”.
A local resident, Mr Ashworth, asked to be put on the trial but was told that no one would be added until next year. BT said that they quite often use their own staff when running trials and this is nothing new.
The frustration and anger amongst locals is easy to understand, they have been waiting for broadband for years yet when the chairman of BT moves in he gets broadband very quickly.
How about working on the fact that most of the BT cabling around the country is sub standard and most people get abot 20% of the expected speed that they would get at the same distance from the exchange from anywhere else in europe.BT are another example of a c*** organisation in the UK mainly brought about by the fact that most chairmen and CEO’s are selfless C*** that dont have a clue about how to get things right unless its in the US handbook of how to BS your way through life. The exception obviously Mr Branson, unfortunately i aint got cable so i have to suck up the buck passing of line provider to adsl provider as do we all. 0.5kps 2.5 miles from exchange, sooner someone digs up the whole of the UK and lays cable and puts these lame f****** out of buisiness the better
Comment by John Smith — January 8, 2010 @ 2:16 am
Sir/Mdme: I read your story with great interest. I am located in the Yukon Territory in Northern Canada at Lake Laberge which is approx. 30 kms from the nearest exchange. The exchange is located in Whitehorse, Yukon population approx. 28,000 souls. The entire territory which is 482,443 sq. km has only about 35,000 people. How is it possible then, that I have broadband DSL service in my log home on the edge of a lake in northern Canada and the Hambledon area does not have this??
I was referred onto this story by my English relative who lives in Little Freith, as I was trying to set up a Skype connection with him. There seems to be something very odd about the excuses given by the Telcomm provider
Comment by Florian Lemphers — January 13, 2010 @ 5:22 am