Slashdot Mirror
The Horror Of British Telecom
MBCook writes "'Someone, raised amidst the elegant lattice of custom and tradition that serves as the foundation of English society, came up with a very elegant, very British, solution to broadband policy here.
And it absolutely, positively sucks.' So starts an article by Mark Hachman over at ExtremeTech chronicling his odyssey to get broadband in his new flat."
"...let's review the procedure for obtaining broadband in the U.S. Step #1: Call up your cable or DSL provider, walk through the options, and decide what you want. Step #2: Receive and install the modem, or have an installer do it for you. Step #3: There is no Step #3!"
:/
So, let's review the procedure for obtaining broadband in the UK:
Step #1: Call up BT, to make sure you have a line capable of receiving broadband. (Apparently everyone in the US can receive a broadband connection. That's what this guy says, anyway!)
Step #2: l up your cable or DSL provider, walk through the options, and decide what you want.
Step #3: Receive and install the modem, or have an installer do it for you.
Step #4: There is no Step 4! Unless there's a problem, in which case the useless bureaucracy of BT kicks in!
Seriously though, this guy's problem with "The Horror of BT" is just him making a lot of noise about nothing. There's plenty of room for more legitimate gripes about how BT run things - for instance, if you have a fault with a line, their engineers will only come out between 9am-5pm Mon-Fri. Absolutely useless for 99% of the working population!
Game dev and music blog
Are you in possession of the facts?
You can get 2Mbps for £14.99 (about $28.17) per month.
2Mbps is the highest speed generally available.
Later this year, higher speeds will be available (up to 7.2 Mbps), and "hip" ISPs will offer these speeds at no extra charge. "shitty" ISPs (e.g. BT) will probably restrict the higher rates to premium services.
Most of these problems would likely not of occured if they hadn't privatised BT .
.
,power , telephone lines and hospitals privatised . It has never reduced costs as they had said(well gave the reason as to why they did it) The trains are worse and more expensive than ever and telephone line costs have gone up.
Well the lines atleast , it gave the private BT a near unbreakable telephone monopoly outside of state controll due to the rather pathetic regulators.
If only they had just privatised the telephone service alone and kept the lines state owned we likely wouldnt see many of the problems
Everything must go through BT at one stage so prices are allowed to pile on and they have no real reason to worry about reducing costs as either way they make money.
Just my opinion , but i don't like infrastructes such as water
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
well...I've never had a phone line fault...
Besides the whole BT system sounds not so much quaint as uselessly fucked up. Why are you choosing to read criticism of such an assbackwards system as xenophobia against the brittish? If he wanted to do that, he could have just refered to the people he dealt with at the various isp's as being limp-wristed tea-sucking limeys--but he didnt. In fact there were no negative imprecations against britain at all apart from what he saw as the rather neolitic broadband situation, which seemed pretty well justified. In fact he started out by making sure that it was understood that he happened to like the place and that his was not a typical UglyAmerican tirade against a foreign country for not being america.
I think you're reaching a bit
chill
Come read my stupid blagablog. Rants and Giggles
Being British, and having had the drama of getting broadband installed recently, I can completely see the author's point here -
... well, you voted Tory right?
To label a self-deprecating piece by an American who has moved to the UK, and has a lot of positive things to say about the UK as 'xenophobic' is
+Pete
Score:-1, Funny
Looking at all the European countries whose idea of "privatizing" was creating one absolute monopoly corporations, I can't help but wonder "WTF were they SMOKING?" The USA went through the legal effort to break up AT&T because of monopolistic practices, yet half of Europe went to great lengths to _create_ their own monopolies.
I mean, let's just look at the Deutsche Telekom here. They didn't just get the whole phone and data lines, they actually got the TV cables too. I.e., they got _everything_ that could have been competition.
Can you even get a cable modem instead of DSL? Well, no, in 90% of Germany you can't, because the Telekom isn't going to compete with itself.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
but i don't like infrastructes such as water ,power , telephone lines and hospitals privatised
I can't speak for the last two, but I do know that with water, power and the railways, before they were privatised, sucessive governments regarded skipping on infrastructure investment as an easy way to save money. Sure the regulators could tell them off, but if the investment wasn't forthcoming, there was nothing being done. By removing these industries from the government teat, and by enforcing the regulations on the new private owners, the infrastructure is only now beginning to come up to the required standards. Sure it may end up costing more, but its a far better situation than waiting for unmaintained infrastructure the collapse.
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
Call me crazy, but as a fairly socially libreal/libertarian UK citizen, it shocks me what people in the US put up with. The DMCA? The family entertainment copyright bill? Infinite copyrights for lovable animated mice? A president whose facial expressions are hilarious?
But anyway, here in the UK taxes seem reasonable to me. I have to pay for society afterall.
Healthcare seems fine.
I don't notice the cameras really.
Yeah the bureacuracy sucks.
TV Licenses are cheap and the result is great, advert-free, TV, great radio stations and a great bbc online resource. At the very least it pays for Doctor Who.
Speed Cameras make it less likely that some speeding arsehole will get me killed, and don't bother me because I don't break the speed limit! The fines aren't much really, I think it's the 3 points on the license that hurt.
I don't mind cameras, speed cameras, etc. Who the fuck cares if they're getting watched? I'd much rather be safe on the streets and the roads, which I believe these cameras assist.
US federal Income tax:
Rate: 25%
Income Band: $29,051 - $70,350
UK income tax:
You were saying? The UK has one of the lowest income tax rates in the developed world. It makes me laugh (and cry) when I hear people complaining about the "high" rate of tax in the UK.Rate: 22% + (1-3% for National Insurance)
Income Band: £2,091 - £32,400 ($4k - 60k)
Sources:i ncome_tax_rates/index/life/tax/income_tax_rates.ht m
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/itax/2004taxrates.asp
http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/n6w/index/life/tax/
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rates/nic.htm
Mandatory, expensive and mediocre health care.
That comes out of of the 1-3% mentioned above. What does your government do with that 1-3%? Invade countries? Build space weapons systems? Subsidise cotton farmers? I think I'd rather have my free health service, ta.
Cameras everywhere
Not sure what you mean by that.
A sensationalistic press that makes Fox look bi-partisan.
Umm... not really. Having read both US and UK papers, I've seen nothing in the US to compare to the Guardian or the Independent. People take as much notice of the Sun and Mirror as they do of the National Inquirer.
Out of control, bureaucratic utilities
BT is the last one, but yes.
Television licenses along with warrant-less searches of homes suspected of running an unlicensed television.
TV licenses pay for the largest (ad free) news site on the web, plus a whole bunch of programs that wouldn't get made otherwise (The Office, HHGTTG, Little Britain, The League of Gentlemen, etc). Warrantless searches is bollocks. The TV License people have no more right to enter my house than you do, or the police do, for that matter.
Speed traps everywhere, set to excessively low limits and with giant fines.
Speed traps yes, they are a fucking pain in the arse, but not in their self a reason not to live here. "Excessivly low speed limits" is a bit rich coming from a yank. What's the interstate limit? 55mph? jebus!
Cameras monitoring every meaningful inch of public space.
I guess that's a repeat of No. 2 above. Don't know where you got that from. Don't believe everything you read on slashdot.
wtf does libertarian mean in the US?! I can't believe you put up with the possibility of being shot by the police after being stopped for traffic incidents; a transparently corrupt political system; unrestricted development on a beautiful countryside; blatant society-wide racism; a massively powerful religious right-wing movement; advertising on every inch of spare space;
Now THAT is taking up the arse.
BTW, you wouldn't have been able to live here even if you wanted to, yanks can't get permanent residence without marriage, academia or intelligence.