Pillaging mobile broadband service gold, they are!
Last night I met someone at the Engineering Dinner at Bangor University who put a different slant on the Digital Divide.
Stephen Yates lives on a small-holding just outside Holyhead on the Anglesey coast. Although only a three mile walk from his nearest pub in Holyhead he can’t get broadband service – the copper winds its way around the lanes and by the time it gets to his place the speed has slowed to an unusable dribble.
Interestingly, he does get a very fast mobile internet connection but only when there are no ferries passing by. This puzzled me at first. Is the steel side of the ship having an effect on the signal strength? Actually no. Whenever a ferry comes into sight of Holyhead everyone on board starts using their mobile phones and all of a sudden instead of having the base station practically all to himself the cell is shared with the incoming hordes.
In the old days these incoming hordes were called Vikings, pillaging gold on their way around the Irish Sea. In modern times they just pillage the mobile broadband service bandwidth.