Timico Head of Network Operations Ben has just moved house. Fourteen years of accumulated “stuff” moved with him including a cutting from the Daily Express he found from 1995. He was just setting out to seek his fortune in the big wide world and thought he would get into this up and coming thing called the internet.
The 33 ISPs around at that time were offering dial up internet to around 500,000 customers in the and Trade and Industry Select committee chairman Richard Caborn was warning the House of Commons that “many people could be denied access to the information superhighway because much of Britain is not covered by the necessary technology. Even if the cable companies met their obligations in full it would still leave more than one third of the country without access to a fixed cable network” he said.
The article could, with a few name changes, be applied to the debate regarding Digital Inclusion going on in UK plc today.
What also struck me was that the pricing has changed very little since then with a range of options not dissimilar to what you can get today. Speeds have changed of course :-).
2 replies on “1995 flashback”
And how are we to build this new network when the policy makers are still confining the country to the obsolete victorian phone network? Any suggestions welcome, cos digital britain we ain’t.
Everyone who was anyone had a .dcu in those days didn’t they?!
Mine was deepgreensea and my partner’s was scrumpie.