Manx Telecom broadband

Was chatting about broadband to a neighbour of my Mam and Dad in the pub near their house this weekend. He has to ration the use of the internet between his kids who all want it for different applications at the same time – Xbox Live, iPlayer etc. Unfortunately Manx Telecom still operates ADSL2+ and his connection isn’t fast enough to run the whole family’s internet needs simultaneously.

This unfortunately is what a monopoly does for you. We are lucky in the UK that we have Virgin. Virgin is what will have driven BT to invest in FTTX. Nothing else. What other motivator would it have had. In a monopolistic situation if I were the incumbent I’d be squeezing my assets for all their worth. Manx Telecom is a private company and I guess is doing just that.

Footnote 7//7/2014 Last time I was home in Peel in the Isle of Man I had a very mixed experience with mam and dad’s wifi. I have to say that the tech support lady was top notch. She patiently waited whilst I went through the motions of testing the router, upgrading to the most recent firmware (ours was yonks out of date) etc.

In the end we concluded that mam and dad needed a new router. Next time I’m over I’ll pop into the Manx Telecom shop and pick one up. Timico did offer to send one but mam and dad are knocking on a bit. the last thing they need is to find themselves trying to call Manx Telecom for support only to find that they have an unsupported router.

Look out for some holiday posts from the Isle of Man this August. It’s my favourite place to go on holiday. Innit:)

Finally on a totally different note Manx Telecom were used as a test bed for 3G by O2 way back in the day.