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Missing Paperwork Delays UK Broadband
nk497 writes "UK broadband funding is being delayed... by missing paperwork. The government is doling out £530m to boost UK broadband, but needs European Commission approval first. The department responsible for broadband says it's sent the necessary documents, but the EC says it hasn't received them. It's the latest delay to the funding, following competition concerns over BT's dominance in the market."
What part of something like Registered Return Receipt Mail with Insurance don't these people understand?
If you have Important Document A to get somewhere, you pay the $20 it takes to send it top level Registered, and it gets there.
Quoting from someone I heard from a US Post office, "If you send something Registered, and it doesn't arrive, someone loses a job."
Thread over.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Is it just me or is it Ironic that the UK broadband is being delayed! Perhaps the government have reached their mail-data-limit for the month and are being heavily throttled? On the other hand, it could be as simple as a lost packet!
... the American government was incompetent!
Hey, don't look at me!
-- Julian Assange
Ah... state aid clearances...
The philosophy behind the system is sound - Government subsidies to particular companies distort the market, so in a competitive marketplace, such subsidies shouldn't happen unless there's an over-riding social benefit. And it's important that there's somebody impartial to check whether such a social benefit actually exists. Sounds fair enough to me.
In practice, if you ask any UK civil servant (or, I suspect, a civil/public servant in any EU member state) who has had to deal with it what they think of the process, they will likely curl up in a little ball, clutch their head and rock slowly back and forward while letting out little moans of pain. It's slow (if you can get through it in less than a year, then you have been exceptionally clever or lucky), torturous, confusing, sometimes mired in politics and gives the overal impression of having been designed by Franz Kafka. Oh, and it also seems to involve lots of hard-copies of documents (the spread of electronic working having been a little inconsistent within the EU bureaucracy).
Since when? Did someone steal it all?
I'm not asking for competence - that would require a shipment of registered snowballs to hell!
I'm more grumped out at the *particular* reason they chose, "not receiving a document".
It all came up for me years ago about a contest entry not being received, and the US Post at that particular branch (representing the national system) "we don't guarantee delivery". (!?) "What about proof of mailing?" "No." So getting rather angry by that point, I said something like "if I had to send the oly original copy of an Egyptian Papyrus to a consultant across the country for analysis, how do I make SURE it gets there?" and that's when I heard the particular phrase to use of "Registered Mail".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It's been something like 20+ years ago I've lost my last email.
Because of a failing relay.
Unless this paperwork is really worked on paper. In which case I can guess:
- the envelope has been handed to the post office, but never left it;
- they missed the proper stamp value on the envelope;
- they missed the proper destination address on the envelope;
- the envelope reached the destination but got handed to the wrong office which trashed it;
- the paperwork has been written in English and sent to a German/French/Italian only speaking office;
- the paperwork has been sent to Cowboy Neal;
- all of the above at the same time.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
That's the entire point of that service. It creates a trail to prevent this story's nonsense, and even your good guess.
Sender points to his slip that says his Docuement entered the Black Hole (Mail Service).
Black Hole says that they delivered the Document.
Receiver has to *sign for it*.
So then it just takes a couple questions under perjury to close the gap.
"Did you bother to check the mailbox in question?"
"Did you see the Document package?"
"Why didn't you sign for it to pick it up?"
So yes, in 2012 I don't want to read news stories about people not receiving documents. Make up ANY other excuse than that.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Okay, I see your point. Still I have seen the problem more often than not - "secretary X signed for the document along with 600 other things she received that day. We will ask her where it might have ended up as soon as she returns from her five week vacation."
Also worth noting: sending registered mail internationally is far more complicated and expensive than the $20 originally quoted, and tax payers tend to get annoyed when governments spend money. "What do you mean they spend £X on sending a letter? Why can't they use regular mail like regular folks? Always wasting our money they are!"
They're all at the bloody Olympics rather than working, probably didn't even bother posting the letters
-- MailHosted
Improve broadband = Should have done years ago.
Shame on the UK for not voting in a compitent goverment - Oh wait what were the choices again ;-)
We need someone to start up a Techie party that promises to minisime the number of people involved in pointless administration and finally get the UK into the 21st century. Most of the goverment departments still use their own databases of people and are not linked - so they end up sending paper records to other govement departments for someone to type back into another database.
There are so many examples where they can't seem to plan how to integrate systems securely and third paries charge 100's of millions because they know the specs will change every time the product is delivered. What's that an email wasn't recieved - HIT RESEND.
Any politicians reading this - STOP WASTING OUR MONEY ON ADMIN
There are only really two options for broadband in the UK
1)Virgin media which is cable based
2) ADSL which you can pay various different companies for but they all have to use BT open reach to get the telephone line to your house.
Customer service is poor across the board, Virgin media have always been poor, its been the one constant through their various different owners. The company you buy ADSL for is limited in what it can do because the bottom line for them is no matter how good a customer service they try to provide BT OpenReach will make them look like idiots because:-
A lot of the time they don't bother to turn up to apointments, they don't phone you to let you know either.
Sometimes they do turn up at your house but don't knock the door and put a 'sorry i missed you' card through the door and then leave.
I live in south wales and the current waiting time for an apointment is about 9 weeks. I don't know if this is typical of everywhere in the country but i wouldn't be supprised if it was.
I sent some non-perishable food from mid-west USA to Great Britain, registered and high-priority 3-day guaranteed. Was around $20-$30. That was about 2 years ago, so I'm not sure how much prices have changed.
Obviously the forms will now have to be buried in soft peat for 3 months before being recycled into firelighters before they will lift a finger to do anything about this.
You should start by not assuming the prices are comparable in the other direction. This letter wasn't TO the UK but FROM the UK.
Why does the UK need EU permission to do local utility work?
I sent some non-perishable food from mid-west USA to Great Britain...that was about 2 years ago...
Has it arrived yet?
schadenfreude - schadenfreude/SHädnfroid/
Noun:
Pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune.
I have to admit, part of me is happy this morning upon hearing this news. Another part of me says, quit your whinging.
Fact is: Last time I compared products available for residential broadband in the UK to California, USA : You're years ahead, mate!
I enviously spied speed/price offerings of sub-$50/month for 100Mbps! From three different Carriers. Whoa.... This is not available in my country for any price-point.
I'm struggling over here. w a max of 30Mbps usually less, for a higher price still! So dont' any of you lot complain about Virgin Media....I reckon they're throttling and spying on you less than these ruthless, customer-despising monopolies we call ISPs over here!
Reprint, sign, FedEx/UPS overnight. Problem solved in one day, requires less than a half hour's work. This has to be one of the lamest excuses ever used.
I can't even turn on the kitchen tap without filling out a 27b/6...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Ever street around me can get BT's 'infinity' broadband, with download speeds in the 30-40 meg range, but my street was forgotten about when BT upgraded the exchange and we're stuck with less than a tenth of that speed. Getting this omission dealt with is an ongoing nightmare, BT's 'infinity' division seadfastly refuse to talk to customers. Despite *being* a telephone company, they have no phone number on their website!
After bashing my head against this one for a while I found they will talk to me when I put my 'residents association' hat on, but want to know what funding we have in place to contribute to the cost of putting their mistake right... and here's where it gets Kafaesque:
They won't tell us what the problem is, because we don't have funding. We can't get funding because we don't know the cost of solving the problem, we don't know the cost of solving the problem because we don't know what the problem is. ...but it doesn't stop there...
We DO actually know what the problem is! The green box at the end of our street is the only one in the whole city that doesn't have a new type of green box next to it plastered with BT inifinty stickers. All we need is for BT to put this new box in, which they have already done free of charge for the rest of the city, but because BT won't officially confirm this really is the problem, they won't talk to us about it, or tell us how much it would cost to do, so we can't get funding, even though the council are talking about offering us funding!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
The government is doling out £530m to boost UK broadband, but needs European Commission approval first.
No, they don't. The UK is a sovereign nation whose government does not need permission from Brussels to engage in the normal domestic functions of government such as rolling out basic services to their citizens. This isn't some matter of foreign or trade policy for which EU buyin would be critical. Nor is it some matter with broader continental repercussions.
The UK should just go ahead and do it, the EC will not pick a fight for no reason -- I credit them with far more sense than that.
[ And no, I'm not a rabid anti-internationalist, hence the distinction between foreign policy that requires cooperation/consensus and domestic policy that is best dealt with by the democratically elected and accountable national government. ]
you don't do that kind of thing yourself you head down to the local pub and mention that you might buy a few rounds if that box has an "accident" that way you have plausible deniability .
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Did anyone tell them to check their spam filters?? :p
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
I just checked.
To ship a 200g UPS Envelope from London, UK SW1A 0AA to Brussels, Belgium 1040 is UKP 44.58 via UPS Express Saver
Guaranteed delivery by the end of the next business day, signature required, Internet tracking.
By US Standards, that's outrageous, but there's probably a cheaper way to do for that matter.
(on answering inquiries with an official reply)
Bernard: It just says 'The Minister has asked me to thank you for your letter' and we say something like 'The matter is under consideration', or even, if we feel so inclined, 'under active consideration.'
Hacker: What's the difference?
Bernard: Well, 'under consideration' means 'we've lost the file'; 'under active consideration' means 'we're trying to find it'.
Bingo, both to you and the guy talking about the ticket ahead of me.
I'm quite happy for Secretary X to sign for 600 things then leave for Bermuda. Because then *the news story changes* from "document not received" to "document received but then incompetently mishandled".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine