The Daily Telegraph has been discussing the state of UK Broadband and reported on a Which Magazine report  which has come up with some startling results.  The article in the Telegraph on the 22nd October on page 11 had the title of: Broadband Problems Hit Half of All Users:  First of all I am extremely happy that other people apart from myself are upset with their Broadband provider.  In fact in many cases it is the same provider who also has a foothold in the UK market.   And they are a colour that is the national colour of my darling wifes home country of Holland.   This article ties in with a lot of the discussion I am having (with myself in this blog looking at the hit rate) – It is becoming more and more clear that Quality of Service is far far more important than football matches over the Internet.  The biggest issue is repeated an lengthy periods of disconnection and failing equipment.  60% of the people had to contact customer services…and the shocking part of the report is that it states that whilst most of the problems were rectified inside a week; INSIDE A WEEK! That 16% took longer to solve and 8% remain UNRESOLVED.   Now you may have never had a problem with your Broadband provider but I ask you one thing; Have you ever had such outages on your Cable, Satellite or Terrestrial TV Service.  Some might answer YES! However I would imagine that not until you went DIGITAL did this happen.  I am a technologist at heart and a fan of technology having been a Telepringter mechanic in the Royal Air Force working on Creed 7B and NCR thermal printers of yesteryear.  I have lived like many throught the Sinclair Spectrum days and bought a Viglen AT Compatible (Had I have known it was an Alan Sugar Company I might have thought twice) so I know all about this stuff.   MANY PEOPLE DO NOT and that is the point of this story.  We want to bring IPTV and Internet TV and OTT Services to an infrastructure that is NOT READY OR ABLE TO GIVE 100% Service as does the airwaves.  Will you be compnestaed if you cannot get to your Email, Webpages, Blog, Wave, IM, Twitter, Facebook, Telephone, TV, Hybrid, Converged Multimedia services and Burglar Alarm service (yes my alarm is connected via the Broadband system to the control centre…NO YOU WILL NOT because I lost my Broadband Connection for 22 Days last November and I never even got an apology from ORANGE who are featured in the report from Which.

We are also told that only major urban centres benefit from Broadband of any speed.  There is a Daily Telegraph campaign for better Rural Broadband.  The TV Signals are not beset by such boundaries to the point that a large ex patriot community enjoy UK TV whilst outside the UK…If we go Internet TV only the favoured few will actually be able to watch anything and then at an extra cost over and above any TV licenses.