The stress unreliability causes

 Thank God for another good night's sleep with no physical repercussions. The internet was still down and I was obliged to spend most of the morning trouble shooting this using Direct messaging. This is difficult as the 4G signal is so poor in the front room where the fibre optic socket is located. The problem doesn't seem to be with my equipment, but somewhere away from the house. I started the process after breakfast and it took a couple of hours to get to the stage where I was given a booking for an OpenReach engineer visit. I had no alternative but to confirm the appointment, but within 20 minutes of doing so, the internet connection resumed. This requires me to go through the same rigmarole again to cancel, and I can't do it until this afternoon. Once, a few years back, I did need an engineer visit to install a new cable to the house and that went fine. The last time there was an outage the internet resumed while I was still on Direct Messaging. This time normal service resumed, when I was out of sight of the router, responding to an OpenReach text message on my phone about the booking.

In this system user must confirm OpenReach appointments but cannot cancel them without going through the service provider. TalkTalk now have a WhatsApp account for accessing the same messaging service. I tried to use it, but it requires you to install WhatsApp and refuses to recognise your existing WhatsApp account installation. It puts you into a closed installation loop. It's ridiculously bad, incompetent effort to provide a useful means of communication to clients. I wasted an hour and a half of my day Direct Messaging TalkTalk in a situation where 4G connectivity was weak and unreliable. The stress pushed up my blood pressure and I felt unwell because of this.

Sadly, the major obstacle to obtaining a better service is OpenReach which runs the infrastructure which provides internet services whether you use a 4G mobile device or a landline connection. Inevitably there are going to be times when the network is down for maintenance, but OpenReach doesn't warn each user of down times so they can plan workarounds. I wonder how much this waste of time costs the British economy? 

Society has become utterly dependent on data services and apps delivered on-line. AI tools and the data processing they require consume vast amounts of energy which has its own impact on the environment and contributes to global warming. The infrastructure along which processed data is delivered, like road highways, get congested. Breakdowns and hacks can have catastrophic consequences,  yet we put such faith in their ability to work the way we expect. In my tiny experience, when something relied on so heavily fails, the sense of being helpless and out of control in managing routine affairs on-line is most distressing. I think this entire chaotic setup is not a healthy one for its users.

I think it's time to make an effort to rid myself of the services of TalkTalk, and find something better, more consistently stable. I've started looking at the U-Switch website, and when Owain comes next week I'll enlist his help to find a suitable account to deliver the services I need, and make the change.

It's rained for most of the day, often heavily. I needed fresh air and exercise., but walking in waterproof trousers, managing a brolly with a broken spoke in strong gusts of wind, led to more broken spokes. Not only were drains and gutters flooded but pavements too. Un-mended potholes were driven through with no concern for pedestrians and soaking them. It was daunting. I went out before sunset after finally cancelling tomorrow's OpenReach engineer house visit. It was dark when I returned Some of my step quota was done pacing up and down the house instead. Rain reduced to light drizzle at ten, so I went out and walked again for half an hour to complete my step quota before bed, still wound up in reaction to the stress caused by today's outage. Hoping that a night walk and physical tiredness will help me sleep.

Non-communication

Such a relief to wake up under a blue sky today. I got up and ate breakfast listening to Sunday Worship on Radio Four, celebrated the restoration of Notre Dame de Paris, and its spiritual significance for the city and for the wider world. The cathedral choir sang French Christmas carols and anthems, and the service was led by Dr Isobel Hamley, Principal of Ridley Hall Cambridge, an Anglican born and bred in France. An unusual broadcast service for the first Sunday of Christmastide.

I was in the bathroom getting ready for church when I received a text message notification from OpenReach reminding me of tomorrow's engineer visit, the one that I got confirmation of cancellation on Friday afternoon. I contacted TalkTalk again via Direct Message and went through the same 40 minute cancellation procedure as yesterday. The call handler confirmed actions were taken yesterday but there was a 'technical issue' at their end which meant the message had not been sent or maybe wasn't delivered. 

I received a second confirmation of cancellation from TalkTalk, having requested they ask OpenReach to send me confirmation of cancellation. I also registered a complaint about this procedural failure and was only just in time for church, having had to conclude the message exchange on my way into church. At least I have an audit trail if an engineer turns up tomorrow, and OpenReach decide to penalise me for a call out for which I requested cancellation - screenshots of the relevant Direct Messages and acknowledgement of my complaint.

I slipped into St Catherine's, drained by the effort of all that concentration on the screen keyboard, and with a sore wrist. There were just thirty of us for the Eucharist. I was grateful to receive Communion after what was for me the disappointment of Christmas Day without Communion. We had a delightful family time at Black Patch, though cycling through all the festive season popular songs, and a few carols crooned sentimentally was just a reminder that my sense of duty and devotion to the liturgy of the church isn't shared by my family any more, if it ever was. 

I was reminded of a similar sense of estrangement in church when I heard there will be no Eucharist on New Year's Day, just as there was no Eucharist on St John's Day. It's one of Canton churches Patronal Festivals. My offer to cover services so parish clergy can take a break was not taken up. There seems to be an unspoken change of policy about public worship offered by the Parish. Retired clergy have no say in these affairs unless they are asked personally what they need, and what they have to give. Complaining or politicking over issues of change does nothing to support church leadership, it's just an embarrassing unwelcome nuisance. If I'm angry, resentful, or disappointed about anything, it's up to me to find a way to deal with my heavy heart.

I was in no mood to stop for a drink after the service. We did some shopping at the Co-op, then went home for lunch. I went for a long walk in the park afterwards, checked the verges for snowdrops - just in eight days there are many more appearing and about to flower, but none of them are as large as the plant near the campsite. A single daffodil with a developed bud on it has appeared on the verge near the stables. I got home just before sunset.

There was nothing of interest to watch on telly after supper. I said Evening Prayer then fell asleep in the chair until bed time, though I didn't feel especially tired. This Day of Rest seems to have drained rather than refreshed me.

Foggy journey home

I was in bed by half past nine last night, and awake by six fifteen this morning, unusually early for me. A thin sliver of the waning crescent moon had just appeared in the sky above the hill beyond the cowshed. The fields below the house and across to the horizon, south and west of us were shrouded in mist, and as the air temperature was one degree, there was a layer or frost on the grass and both our cars, thick enough to need scraping off. I unloaded the dishwasher and laid the breakfast and said Morning Prayer before the others began to surface. Thanks to a surfeit of bacon some of us had bacon butties for breakfast along with cereals and fruit, toast and jam. A hearty breakfast for a cold and frosty morning.

We've all eaten well during our stay at Black Patch, incorporating all our Christmas favourite foods, but it still left us with a fridge full of supplies, enough to last us a couple more days, with an excess of cake and assorted cheeses. In other words, we had over catered without realising, and had to share out what remained to take home with us. Both cars seemed as full for the return trip as for the outbound. Loading a collapsible plastic crate, almost full, into the car boot produced an unexpected crisis when it fell apart with loud crack, spilling its contents into the space it was meant to occupy, and out on the ground behind the car. Nothing was broken, or so we thought, but when we off-loaded the content into a big bag at home, we found that a plastic bottle of olive oil had shed its cap under pressure and spilled its contents on to most of the bag containing it. Such a mess to clear up, it took us half an hour.

The ninety mile journey home via Abergavenny and Newport train station was lengthy an difficult, as the sun didn't evaporate away the mist, and visibility was 50-100 metres on B roads, many of them winding and narrow, relying on google maps satnav instructions for the first fifty miles, unable to see anything of the surrounding landscape to be sure of where we were. An ideal two hour trip on roads with light traffic took us three hours with a half hour stop for coffee in Abergavenny. Dropping off Owain on westbound side of Newport station, which I've not visited before was a disaster. The signage for the drop off zone was hard to read in poor lighting conditions as the street lights were off, automatically triggered in low light, so I missed the entrance, confusing it with the taxi drop off, and then had to exit in a bus lane. I will probably get fined for this error.

When I got home, I check to see if the 'optical network terminal' box attached to our router had been fixed remotely in our absence. From the way it misbehaved differently on two separate days, I felt sure it was a matter of a network error outside our property, and requested an OpenReach visit as suggested, in case it was our equipment, which responded as intended when switched on. It took forty minutes to get through diagnosis via TalkTalk's Direct Message thread on the morning we left, to achieve this. Now I had to go through the same exercise to get the visit cancelled and confirmed by TalkTalk. Not what I needed at the end of an exhausting drive home.

It was getting close to sunset by the time I was able to go for a walk in the part to un-stress myself after a demanding journey, but an hour and twenty minutes in the fresh air was all I needed to calm down. Clare cooked veggies to accompany the remainder of the cooked salmon. Then it was time to catch up on three days missed episodes of the Archers. Kath and Anto's journey was more straightforward, and they got back in time to go a panto in Warwick Castle in which Rhiannon's boyfriend Talion was playing a part. For us, a quiet evening and early bed, still savouring our four days of rural beauty and quietness.

Security scandal

Another very cold night under a clear sky which stayed clear all day, sun shining and the temperature around one degree until nightfall, when dropped below zero again. Wonderful, as long as you're dressed up for it. June my sister called on WhatsApp as I was getting up at eight thirty. She's getting used to using a mobile phone, as a replacement for her landline, on which reception deteriorated over a few weeks before going dead a few days ago. 

Landlines for all the apartments in Wexford Lodge are all fed from the same input to a distribution box in her front garden, last accessed a couple of weeks ago by OpenReach engineers and accidentally left open. I suspect her particular line was partly dislodged from its terminal connectors and has worked loose since then. Getting anyone to attend to this is proving to be a nightmare. It's a rehearsal for the day when copper based connections are finally switched off, and there's no alternative to a phone connection, made through a wired or a wireless connection to the router, or directly to a 4G signal.

The King was giving the opening speech to the COP28 gathering in Dubai while we were eating our breakfast. He's the only head of state ever to have been asked to address the seventy thousand strong gathering, including many heads of state of the 130 nations attending. It honours his fifty prophetic years of conservation advocacy, warning the world about biodiversity loss, pollution, and more recently climate change, during which he has often been mocked and derided. He has earned respect for his authority, and is never heard saying "I told you so", but always proposing ways forwards. 

Another roofing contractor came by this morning to examine our roof and give us an estimate for a full replacement job in the new year. While we can still afford it out of savings. I returned to the task of understanding how to send a Mailchimp subscription invitation with Owain's help in finding a YouTube video link. From this I figured out how to do what I needed, and found it worked by sending an invitation to a new subscriber. Then I started on my Sunday sermon, though I had to stop to cook lunch, and continued writing after we'd eaten and made a couple of loaves of bread.

After taking the bread out of the oven, I  started my afternoon walk in perfect winter sunshine, again a bit later than planned, and saw another glorious sunset half way through my park circuit, arriving home in the dark, somewhat chilled. While walking the return stretch I listened to the early evening news. I was amused to hear that Rishi Sunak was photographed at COP28 with the King who was wearing tie patterned with the Greek flag, bought on a trip to Athens, one of many in his wardrobe. The media commentariat are taking this as a message of silent rebuke to Rishi Sunak for his childish refusal to meet with the Greek Prime Minister this week after he mentioned the return of the Parthenon sculptures rescued then stolen by Lord Elgin. 

How dare His Majesty express his opinion like this! But hang on, the King had a great grandmother who married the King of Greece, and became a nun in later life. That's a fair enough reason for wearing such a tie, in my opinion. Funny nobody mentions this, as controversy is needlessly stirred up yet again. Haven't the opinionated commentariat got better things to write about?

The seven days of truce in Gaza came to a violent end this morning. A hundred women and children are home free, but others are still unreleased, and no Israeli citizens or soldiers captured. Hamas is being blamed for the breakdown in the midst of proposal for more hostage exchanges and days of pause in the fighting. I wonder if they know where all the women and children are being held, as there are different factions holding some of them, who may be dictating their own terms for letting them go. Some may well be dead and this is not yet common knowledge. Fight on rather than lose face? It's stupid in the face of certain defeat in this cruel inhumane war.

News is arriving of an American journalist's well researched report into the story behind Israel's already admitted failure to realise the strength and imminence of the Hamas attack. Analysis of intelligence reports from observers on the border of the covert military activity taking place the other side of the Gaza border fence had been presented to security chiefs, but not taken seriously, rather considered only as a theoretical possibility. These reports came from observers using CCTV cameras along the fence. It's said this was a unit of trained women reporting upwards. If so it will shake to the core a male dominated military and government, in a society which thinks it's egalitarian. It'll come out in the post war public enquiry, hopefully.

The return tonight of 'Astrid - murder in Paris' on Channel Four's Walter Presents platform. Very original mystery stories that celebrate the potential of neuro-diverse people and what they can offer to society when given the opportunity and right support. We've seen the first two series of sixteen episodes so far, and there are another sixteen to go. Hopes were dashed of anything new however, by the showing of the first double episode instead of the start of the third series. What a disappointment. 

I was however able to finish watching the finale of 'Hors Saison', which maintained interest right up to the last ten minutes, when an ending destined to reveal evidence of a top cop's serious perversion of of the course of justice is suppressed in the light of the false confession made by an apprehended murder who commits suicide, perhaps because everyone feels sorry for her because of the trauma she has gone through. Also disappointing. 

Installation Day

When the doorbell rang at eight thirty, I wasn't long out of bed and Clare hadn't yet surfaced. The engineer from OpenReach had come to install our new fast fibre broadband. I sped downstairs to acknowledge his arrival and ask a few questions. Most importantly, the location of the new fibre optic network socket.

I was bemused to learn that the existing hole in the wall drilled by NTLWorld at the turn of the century for their first generation fibre-optic cable installation couldn't be used by another service provider, obliging OpenReach to drill their own. I've never imagined a defunct cable network provider owning a hole in our wall!

Anyway the fibre optic broadband line came in from the same pole in the street as the landline - set to be abandoned for no good reason in two years time in favour of an all digital system that doesn't work if there's a power outage. The broadband line is strapped with cable ties to the back of the drainpipe - fine as long as we don't have a drainpipe disaster! A hole was drilled through into the corner of the front room just above the abandoned NTLWorld socket to accomodate the new fibre optic line. 

A new improved router attaches to the fibre optic socket and all works just fine. The only flaws in the grand scheme of things are 1) the distance from the nearest electrical socket and 2) a standard two metre network cable, which isn't long enough to reach the wall socket for attaching to a powerline adaptor, essential for equal internet access around the house in places not reachable by wi-fi. Domestic power extensions needed juggling with to get everything neat and tidy. 

I walked over to Wilson's Electrical Wholesaler's store the other end of the parish and bought a five metre network cable to use for £3.20. All works perfectly, and we have a download speed of 75mbps and upload of 20mbps. This will make a real difference to uploading pictures, as well as having a dozen devices at a time attached to our router. Best of all, it'll cost us less, for the next 18 months at least, but worthwhile in any case to have high quality connectivity.

I had a call from Pidgeon's about a funeral in early January, the first I've done that I can recall since being in Cardiff of Social Services making the arrangements as the man and his next of kin couldn't afford to pay - what used to be referred to when I was young as 'a funeral on the rates' rather than a pauper's funeral. I recall doing several when I was in St Paul's Bristol forty years ago, when there were no next of kin and the deceased was old and poor. Sometimes there would only be me and the funeral director out of respect there in attendance, but we still gave the person a full service.  

After lunch, I drove to Llandough Hospital for an ultrasound scan. I arrived on time and within fifteen minutes I was on my way back to the car, and free to call in to Lidl's for some wine on my way home. No change in the 400mm gallstone, and the gall bladder shows no sign of inflammation. It functions but at a low level of efficiency, as it can never produce enough bile to deal with dairy fats. It would be better to have the gall bladder extracted, in case some random or accidental factor caused it to go out of control. As it's not critical, I suspect there'll be a long queue, but there's no harm in getting my name on the list.

By the time I got back, it was dark, which meant that I had to walk for an hour in the dark before supper. Preparation for the scan meant I had to fast for six hours, but I waited until after my walk to eat what had been cooked for lunch by Clare - it was most welcome indeed. I didn't have much to do in the evening and ended up sleeping in the chair in front of the telly although I had no reason to feel extra tired.

Connectivity restored

As she was leaving for school this morning, Clare saw a big builder's lorry at work removing a dump of rubble from the street a few doors down. It's been there for over a month, doubling in size, taking up nearly three parking bays this past week. A major remodelling of the back of a house has been going on during this time, with the sound of hammering penetrating two sets of walls to reach us, six days a week. No builder's skip was used, and the height of rubble reached over five feet in places, posing a safety risk as well as parking 'claim jumping'.

Was it being done with official permission I wondered and enquired of our local councillors, who weren't exactly forthcoming about it. It was a relief to see the back of this - all those loose bricks and pieces of rubble, so easily accessible, would be so easy for a mischief maker to make trouble with, or some kid to treat as a little adventure playground when no adults are watching. Not all who building workers are quite as considerate or safety aware as they should be for the common good.

Finally, at ten thirty this morning, third time lucky, a visit from an OpenReach telephone engineer to sort out our connectivity problem, 22 year old Liam from Ammanford, four years on the job since leaving school, and only recently moved up to work in Cardiff. 

He needed no elaborate diagnostic devices to start with, he'd spotted the problem by the time he got to the front door. The line running from the pole in the street into the house dates back to 1961, and has deteriorated with the passage of time. It wasn't changed, when the switch was made from old style wooden poles which had to be climbed, to hollow easy to manage metal poles. Overhead lines running to individual houses are now accessed through a small ground level hatch in the pole which connects each to an underground cable linked to the area digital relay cabinet. I haven't seen anyone work on this kind of equipment before so I watched with interest from porch, in the rain. Once a new line had been run into the house, a series of electronic line tests were run, and our broadband is now running at 16mbs down, 9mbs up.

I queried why the speed dropped to less than a tenth of what it should be. Liam explained that if an auto-diagnostic process reveals that if the signal to noise quality of a line drops, or connectivity is intermittent for some other reason, a cut out mechanism operates to forestall a potentially damaging power surge. Our line quality has been poor for quite a while, but gone un-noticed until I ran a few online speed tests. What I thought was the just due to our computers slowing down under Windows 10's excessive and un-necessary recourse to internet resources, and unable to handle two devices updating or uploading at the same time was mainly a line problem. Windows doesn't now run much faster, perhaps a little smoother. From boot to working document page is still 2-3 minutes. Anyway, it's such a relief to have this problem sorted at last.

I cooked lunch for Clare, returning home after teaching a morning session, and before returning to school for a staff meeting, then I went for a four mile walk as the light was fading fast. I collided with a small traffic bollard obscured by deep shadow, placed right on the footpath I was taking at the edge of Llandaff Fields to prevent cars being parked on the path and grazed my shin. ThankfulIy, I didn't fall, but I was reminded of the collision with a buttress I had in the dark on the footpath at Territet a year ago. I guess I'm still in denial about being less able to see as well in low light as I used to, and still don't carry a torch. But I am starting to use a smartphone flashlight if I'm less than confident of ever familiar routes, once it's dark. Feeling my age, damn it!

  

  

On the case

I stayed in all morning, awaiting the arrival of the promised Open Reach telecoms engineer but once more nobody came. I reported this to TalkTalk, and eventually was given another appointment, this  Thursday. When I was out walking, later in the day, I saw a team of six Open Reach workers at the corner of Rectory and Romilly roads, about 150 metres from the main telecoms cabinet for our sector. One was digging a hole and five were watching. I told TalkTalk about this, but they didn't seem to get the real-life joke, and responding by stating that the infrastructure work had no impact on my connectivity failure - as if I didn't know. It's got to be the line outside our property which is behaving badly, as all else has been eliminated, except being unable to log into the router software. 

I took an afternoon appointment with Dr Benjamin the third doctor in our GP practice team whom I haven't seen for a few years. I thought it might be good to have a physical examination by a male doctor for a change. He had a letter on his desk from the UHW surgical team responding to a GP letter on my behalf seeking to prioritise surgery. It explained what I already knew about the delay in processing scan results. But it shows the GP team are on my case. Indeed, he promised to write again, saying my affliction was slowly worsening. 

Last weekend's swab test results confirmed the presence of a low level infection, and he gave me a week's course of a different antibiotic, which I believe may be designed to tackle what sister in law Ann describes as 'deep tissue infection' which may not show up in blood tests until it breaks out of its confinement. As my blood pressure has gone up somewhat worryingly of late, symptomatic of the immune system doing battle as much as additional stress from the discomfort and uncertainty, he also doubled the dose of the newest hypertension medication add-on I've been given. I could be far worse, if I wasn't fit and active and not confined to bed, so I must be grateful, as well a patient, and feel confident others are working on my behalf.

More broadband blues

Yesterday lunchtime I officiated at the funeral at Thornhill crematorium of an 'ancient mariner', a man in his late eighties whose working life had been spent working on board ship, including his war years. His coffin was bedecked with the flag of the Merchant Marine, which was pleasing to see.

Over recent months our domestic broadband speed seems to have deteriorated significantly. It's most noticeable when Windows is updating or I'm uploading photos, which renders other networked attached devices almost unusable, as they're so slow. Running speed tests on Chromebook Windows and Linux devices, shows 1.4mbs download, and 0.7mbs upload speeds with an average seek time of 21-22mbs, occasionally much less. Is it a router fault, an incoming line problem or what? There are also times when the internet goes down altogether for 20 minutes, several times a week. A service which isn't as good as it used to be, and less than I pay for.

In addition, a while ago I tried attaching a storage device via USB and then a network port to the router, but couldn't see it on my computer network. I wondered why the router failed to recognise and attach the device, so tried accessing the router's software to check this detail, but the admin password printed on the router's label wouldn't let me in. I concluded this was a change in Talktalk policy to secure domestic devices, and gave up trying. Now, I'm starting to have doubts. 

This morning, I tweeted a complaint about speed to Talktalk, on by Blackbetter, form the attic, the only place where a reliable signal can be obtained direct from the mast, not from our internal phone signal via router device. It led to a diagnostic conversation via Direct Messaging, without resulting any improvement. I asked about password lockout but got no answer. An afternoon visit from an Open Reach line engineer was booked, but nobody showed up. Maybe an engineer overwhelmed by unresolved Friday calls on his services?

Yr Eifel and Nant Gwrtheyrn

Up behind the hamlet of Pistill, where we're staying is a collection of tall mountains, rising up out of the sea or the inland plain. Driving east on the B4417, ascending to the hill village of Llithfaen, we were able to take the upland road to a parking place from which we could hike up or around the twin peaked Yr Eifel (564m), either to visit the remains of a large Iron Age settlement on its eastern flank, or simply to follow the national coast path over Bwlch yr Eifel pass (350m), which we chose to do.

The summit was hardly visible due to cloud while we were there. For a while it covered the pass as well. I took the track up to the lower peak in the mist, with scant hope of reaching to top, but I did take a look at the exterior of the telecoms installation just below the peak, from professional curiosity. Sure enough it was owned by Aquiva, the infrastructure company that grants a license to use the CBS digital TETRA system. There was no phone signal up there, only on top of the pass, emanating from a cell relay some distance below, I suspect.

We walked back to the car park and had picnic lunch there, admiring the remarkable monument to the men who worked the three marble quarries of Nant Gwrtheyrn in the cliffs along the shore a thousand feet below us. With no haste and great care we descended the narrow road to Nant Gwrtheyrn village. Since the closure of the quarries the village has acquired a second life as a national center for Welsh language learning through residential course and conferences. Clare has wanted to visit here for years, and now she's seen for herself, wants to come and attend a conference here.

The two rows of quarry workers' cottages have been converted into conference accommodation. New classrooms are nearing completion adding to existing facilities. The village chapel has been restored and transformed into a meeting place and visitor centre, recounting the quarry's history. There's a new restaurant and cafe overlooking the sea, with fast and open wi-fi. A long golden beach, is only a short steep walk away. It's not so much a place of pride in Welsh language and culture as a place of delight and loving enthusiasm for it. Yet another place of pilgrimage to add to this week's itinerary. 

Although the summit of Yr Eifel remained in cloud all day, the sun shone down in the valley and on the shore below. I can't believe how fortunate we've been during our stay in here Llyn, connectivity excepted.

Considering how many people come from around Britain and the rest of the world to visit coastal Wales, it really is a scandal the extent to which it is deprived of fast broadband and 4G connectivity. It's not good enough to say it's too costly to upgrade per residential user, when there are millions of transient users who are paying for the service elsewhere in the country and have come to rely upon connected devices for informing themselves about everything, and keeping safely in touch when out and about. Ironic - they say you can get a 4G signal on top of Everest and Snowdon for that matter, but not in Nefyn or the tip of the Llyn Penisula. Perhaps the British Parliament or the Welsh Senedd should meet in Llyn for a week or so, and learn for themselves what others have to put up with.

It's forty five years today since I was ordained priest and ten years this month since I first started writing a blog. Surprised that I'm still going strong, as much in love with the Word and words as ever.

 

 

The illusion that speed means progress

Easter Monday we all rose late. It's quite a while since I last slept ten hours. We didn't do much or go far, as it was still cold and dull. Irritatingly, the internet was intermittently on and off all day, and for the most part slower than usual. Not that unusual with TalkTalk Broadband however. Most nights we're without a reliable connection from nine thirty for two hours.

Easter Tuesday, rising late again. Mary from across the road came over to ask for help with her computer, as she was getting error messages she didn't recognise. It turned out that her internet connection was also very slow and intermittent, making the job of updating an old XP driven computer into a series of long freezes. Now Mary is a BT customer. I've checked all my equipment, connected to TalkTalk broadband, and the problem's the same. This suggests there's an infrastructure problem somewhere not too far away and it's affecting service providors who buy their slice of the information highway from BT Openreach.

My router shows I am connected, the operating systems on various computers in the house show that my  data is being sent out but only a tiny fragment of data is returning, not enough to display a website, only enough to make the browser hang. Then after a while the router displays 'unable to connect to internet' and drops out for several minutes before resuming at a speed too slow to be functional.

Nothing about local outages on the news. Nothing about it on the TalkTalk website - no point in phoning them as their customer service is rarely of any use at the time you need it. Oh yes, the way I know this is because my BT 3G wireless internet dongle still works, enabling me to visit websites and post this. It's lucky I have no urgent need to spend lots of time on-line at the moment. 

I wonder how many people in business, or managing emergencies are wondering what on earth is happening. It makes me realise how dangerously dependent we've become on internet connectivity over the past decade, and just how wicked it is that internet service marketing promotes an illusion of a world in which every service runs perfectly, consistently and powerfully, when in reality it's still a work in progress whose reliability falls far short of being comparable with that of the national electricity grid.

The Big Joke is all the promotional hype Cardiff is getting to do with the roll out of super-fast broadband services intended to improve economic development. What's most needed is consistency and reliability at whatever speed. Without that your plans always unravel and your emergencies are un-manageable.

What are we doing by lying to ourselves about priorities?