Posts Tagged ‘BT’
Telecom with a heart – and 50 customers
A UK village which raised £37,000 to offer 200 homes the super-fast broadband that BT could not deliver has launched its network.
Rutland Telecom will offer the residents of Lyddington speeds of up to 40Mbps. Other telecom firms had said it was not economical to provide fast services to the village…
The Rutland Telecom scheme was a joint effort between villagers fed up with slow broadband speeds and a local ICT firm that was reselling BT’s broadband.
“We found that any company could do, on a smaller scale, what Carphone Warehouse has done and take over BT’s network,” said Dr David Lewis, managing director of Rutland Telecom.
They asked Openreach, the BT spin-off that has responsibility for the UK’s telephone network, to supply fibre-optic cable to a street cabinet in the village. It was a slow process and required the intervention of regulator Ofcom but two years later the telco is up and running and already has 50 customers.
“For the first time in UK telecommunications history the telephone lines of customers are completely cut off from the local BT exchange,” said Rutland Telecom director Mark Melluish.
Rutland Telecom has been approached by 40 other rural community groups to see if a similar solution is possible in their area.
We have one community east of my neck of the prairie that’s done something similar. It can be done – though it may not surprise anyone to learn that state and local governments can be your enemy, opposing access as strongly as a national Telcom might.
As for the folks who created Rutland Telecom – Bravo!
Morning glory for a telecom engineer – he snaps rare Sun halo
Ian Collins, who works at the Madley Satellite Communications Centre, operated by BT, took the picture while working on a 32 metre dish.
Lovely, lovely.
Boss of British Telecom has the only broadband home in town
35 miles from London!
British Telecom (BT) has admitted its chairman is the only person in a village on the Oxfordshire-Buckinghamshire border with broadband. Other people in Hambleden were told they could not have broadband because of the distance to the exchange…
In a statement, BT wrote: “Trials of new technologies are often conducted among a company’s own staff so there is nothing unusual in this situation.
“BT has learnt a lot through the trial the chairman participated in and hopefully those lessons will benefit the residents of Hambleden in due course…
Gary Ashworth, who lives in Hambleden, said: “If I was a BT shareholder I’d be upset… I think one can live with it, if it’s a level playing field it’s not a problem.
“It’s this preferential treatment that Sir Michael Rake has had that’s upset most of the villagers…”
The government has promised to provide all homes in the UK with speeds of at least 2Mbps by 2012.
Part of rural life is delayed access to modern technology. We went with DirecTV and satellite television the 3rd month they were in business -back in 1994 – because they simply were the only access possible for “cable” channels.
After three different cable providers sold themselves to higher bidders – and fibre to the home finally reached our community we now have a choice of Comcast – or Comcast – for high-speed internet access. 2½ miles from the city limits.
Folks in Hambledon have my sympathy.
Britain’s “surveillance society” challenged by the European Commission
Fears that Britain was slipping into a surveillance society were heightened yesterday as Brussels initiated legal action after declaring that UK laws guaranteeing data protection were “structurally flawed” and well below the European standard.
The criticism arose after the European Commission investigated the use of “behavioural advertising technology” by British internet service providers, which it found was illegal under European — but not British — law.
“I call on the UK authorities to change their national laws and ensure that national authorities are duly empowered and have proper sanctions at their disposal to enforce EU legislation on the confidentiality of communications,” Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, said.
A Commission statement yesterday said that Brussels had sent several letters to the British authorities since last July asking why the Government had not taken action against BT after the company used Phorm technology — a covert method of targeting advertising based on user browsing habits — to secretly monitor the internet activity of 30,000 broadband customers in trials between 2006 and 2007.
Nice to see the quasi-legal practices of the War on Terror-Brigade challenged in court. I hope.
Europeans have experienced a bit more of life under the thumb of an all-seeing dictatorship courtesy of Herr Hitler and his assorted accomplices. They’re a bit more sensitive and, perhaps, a bit less obedient than Brits and Yanks.
CSR in India sent amorous texts to BT customer
A BT call handler in India has been disciplined after sending amorous text and voicemail messages to a customer.
The female customer from Portsmouth, who does not wish to be identified, went on to the company’s website to set up a new landline last month. She received a phone call and gave her details but soon began receiving text messages from the operator saying he was “attracted” to her voice.
BT said he has been disciplined but would not reveal if he had been sacked.
The customer, known only as Jane, told BBC Radio Solent: “We’ve just moved house and needed a landline so I went onto the BT website and lodged to get reconnected and all those details were processed.
“A few days later I had a call from a call centre from a gentleman who sounded overseas who processed all the order.
“Then I started getting text messages…“
The company has sent her flowers and made an offer of £250 compensation.
Are they certain the flowers actually are from BT? 
