Other than possibly the worst PR photo§ I have ever seen, a recent BBC article caught my attention.
Although Britain has reasonably good ADSL coverage, it took a long time, and BT (British Telecom) dragged their feet in some areas, a lot. As they previously had a virtual monopoly on the residential telecommunications industry (barring oddities such as Hull which have the Kingston company serving them), BT were loathe to invest a serious amount of money on fibre optics, for example, just to see other companies come in and profit from other’s investment.
This has left Brits lagging behind in post-ADSL technology, meaning even true 8Mbit connections are still rare to find. LLU (local loop unbundling) has gone some way to remedying this situation, but to ensure we are not left behind, something needs to be done soon.
Check out the story, and I’d be especially interested in hearing from readers who come from other countries as to what your local telecoms infrastructure is like.
Just don’t get me started on Kazakhstan. 128 or 256Kbit ? BROADband to the rest of the world!!!
§ I did check before making that comment – although he does seem to have under bite, the majority of his other publicity photos do not accentuate it so badly.