Thread: Living A Digital Existence Week 2 - Part 1

Living a Digital Existence

Week 2 – Part 1

This week, I thought I’d shake up your usual Living a Digital Existence, with it consisting of 3 parts, culminating in your usual Living a Digital Existence blog on Saturday. Over the next couple of days however, it’s time for a rant, here’s what grinds my gears...

Broadband is all a big joke!

Earlier last week me and my friends were sat around in a free period at college, and got onto talking about Broadband suppliers. After the news that the first fibre optic cables were being laid in London and Cardiff, we were wondering if it would really make a difference and would it be worth it. We came to the conclusion that no, it wouldn’t make a difference and no, it wouldn’t be worth it.

Now, you might wonder how we reached this conclusion, because by using the fibre optic cables would bring us quicker broadband speeds, which you would have thought would be better. But no. This would be far too much effort for the broadband companies, as this would mean they would have to make an effort into supplying everyone with fibre optic cables to give everyone the highest speeds possible. This would mean that they would have less time to drink tea, talk about the weekends footy, and play with their testicles. Well, at least that’s what I presume they do, as they seem to do bugger all when my internet gets cut off halfway through a game of Halo. So we thought, what speeds are we likely to receive with these fibre optic cables? Well, we concluded, as with the current cables, it all depends where you live. If you live close to the exchange, you may well receive the full 50 mbps, but if you live further out, god only knows what you get. In fact, I don’t think even he can understand the logic behind our testicle fiddling friends. So as with so many things, it’s a post code lottery, doesn’t instil you with confidence does it?

So, once we had discussed this, we got onto the subject of download limits. Yes, now these fat cats have settled their fat arses in their executive chairs, charging us for 50 mbps broadband when in fact we are only receiving 10mbps, in their infinite wisdom, they decide to put a limit on how much we can download, and once that limit has been surpassed, our internet speed gets cut; I mean, it isn’t as if it’s low enough as it is. So, they are actually punishing me for using my 50mbps broadband (and I don’t even get the benefit of the 50mbps in the first place). We then came to the conclusion of, how in god’s name are we supposed to download all these HD movies etc. which this broadband is meant to be for, if they give us a 4GB a day download limit, and then cut our internet speed. Pure idiocy from our tea drinking, chocolate hobnob eating, moronic friends.

We then had a long discussion about price. What we don’t understand, and want to know is, how can the Koreans, who are supposedly a less well developed country than us, with poorer infrastructure and less money to spend on these things, have 100mbps broadband by 2010, when we are struggling along on 20mbps broadband. Now, I understand that the Koreans are very big on their technology and they are among the most enthusiastic internet users in the world, but in an age where almost every business uses the internet to complete transactions, and with Britain having one of, if not the biggest service industries in the world, how can we be lagging behind so much. And it is almost guaranteed that the Koreans will be paying half the price that we will be for our 50mbps speeds.

So, our final conclusion came to this. We want them to stop lying to us. We want them to give us a fair price. We want them to charge us for the connection we receive, NOT the connection we COULD receive, and we want them to get off their fat backsides and sort our broadband industry out.

And that Ladies & Gents, is what grinds my gears.

Check back over the next couple of days for more, including illegal downloading and ridiculous games that should never have been released.