Lucky Sir Michael Rake enjoys exclusive Hambleden broadband service.
Lovely piece reported by the BBC today, where British Telecom (BT) has admitted its chairman is the only person with broadband service in the village of Hambleden on the Oxfordshire-Buckinghamshire border.
BT said Sir Michael Rake’s broadband service connection was part of a trial of new technology. The village, they say, is too far from the exchange for a standard ADSL service.
The article doesn’t go into which technology was being trialled, but here’s a thought: BT could set up Sir Michael’s home as a POP and run tails from there. That way everyone in the village could get broadband service connectivity, and all would be happy. Sorted.
10 replies on “BT Chairman has Only Broadband Service in the Village!”
BET, this was being banded about by bt 3years ago. The main issues are line concentrators, dacs and the obscene amount of aluminium on the rural networks. I cannot really see him putting up with a trial connection, he prob has It as fail over for a leased line.
I know but I liked the idea – it was probably not something he had in mind 😉
It is BET technology being tested it said in the article I read this morning.
“At the moment we are trialling broadband enabling technology (BET) at 10 locations in the UK. We can confirm Sir Michael Rake is trialling BET at his home. The pilot is very small and involves a handful of users at this stage.”
http://tinyurl.com/ylczk6e
So at least the chair of our biggest telco is subjected to the crap first. Wonder if he is impressed by having to pay for two telephone lines to receive ‘up to 2 meg’. Am also wondering if in the week when the BT site offering BET to the ‘notspots’ – (you know the areas that can’t get broadband) goes live all of a sudden BT get nationwide coverage of the BET solution. And wondering how many poor suckers sign up for it.
http://media140.org/?p=252 quite a lot of informed comment about BET on this link.
sorry, forgot the reason i started to comment on this post!
He wouldn’t be any good feeding his connection to the rest of the village, the limited supply through a BET feed will be lucky to let him use Iplayer let alone feed anyone else from it. When his line gets back to the exchange I wonder if it is coupled to a normal 400:1 shared connection or whether he is the proud owner of a leased line? To trial it properly it should be on the same card as everyone else… otherwise he won’t get a feel for what ordinary people have to ‘contend’ with every day.
finished ranting now.
the end.
I am sure it never even entered his mind… sharing. Opening up access to rurals! heaven forbid. where’s the profit in that?
If the CTO managed to get fibre to his own house whilst at BT, what has gone wrong that the Chairman has to put up with substandard copper these days??! Have BT had it? Or do they just not get it? Or is time cyberdoyle’s idea gets its moment?
CD – your stage, your idea – explain the tree saving, get it notion you have…..;O)
The BT CTO needs to have a quality access because he is always keeping an eye on the BT network. You can’t rely on broadband for that. That’s first rule of being CTO. Thought everyone knew that. I’m still waiting for someone to come and install mine though 🙂
You know the company isn’t going to pay for that :p what would be good is getting a leased line out to the sticks sit on a radius server with wireless access, then any user has an access point and relay, job done fast and manageable broadband.
Rake’s Progress (couldn’t resist!)