Rural Broadband

If my internet connection was a person, I would have gone beyond the “having a stern word” moment and would be dragging them down the stairs into the garden and kicking the shit out of them.

Most of us have something in life that makes us want to unfold a set of collapsible steps, climb on them and scream to anyone who pauses to listen. My subject of choice would be the internet at my house, with BT being a close second and Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs racing home into third place.

Aside from my Ban Ploughing Campaign which would enable me and wet-dishcloth-horse to roam the countryside all year round, I’m going to start a “Stop Exploiting People in Rural Areas by charging them for a Broadband Service which is Frankly Not Fit for Purpose” Campaign. I know it would be a fairly long hashtag but I’m certain I would get one hell of a following.

Paying £20 a month for the privilege of clicking on the Google Chrome icon on my laptop and the Amazon Firestick starting to buffer has always grated on me. How is that fair? How can they expect me to pay the same as someone who has a 17 Mb/s download speed? My landlady has a beautiful holiday house and the only complaint that she ever receives from her guests is that the mobile phone signal is patchy and the broadband is slow. To be fair, if you come on holiday to rural Northumberland, you would think there may be one or two things to do to distract you from the vague mobile phone reception and sloth-like internet speed. And I would like to remind these people that the speed they are experiencing in the posh holiday house is as fast as lightning in comparison to what I experience every day.

The issue at my home is that we are at the very end of the line at the furthest away point from the telephone exchange. Tractor-Driving-Brother has the same problem. He lives a mile south of me and is at the very end of the line from a different exchange. This drives (no pun intended) Tractor-Driving-Brother luminous with rage because the high speed Optic Fibre cable is under the ground less than 6 feet from his house and yet he has no access to it.

In previous years and on numerous occasions, I have argued my case with BT as to why I should pay £20 a month for an internet connection that runs so slowly. But unfortunately all of the call handlers at BT must be brainwashed with the same stupid terminology. I have lost count of the times I have been promised “speeds up to 17Mb/s” which is about as probable as Ryanair winning World’s Best Airline at the 2017 World Airline Awards. I also used to laugh down the telephone when BT rang me to ask if I would like to buy BT vision or super fast broadband and took great delight in telling them my internet speed was 2 Mb/s. They usually backtracked fairly sharply after that, when it dawned on them that the commission cupboard at the Jodhpurs household was well and truly bare.

The last time I tried to get BT to agree to a discount, the idiot gentleman that I was speaking to informed me that the charge for the internet was not based on the amount of internet that I was using, the charge was actually for the speed that my property was receiving. I stabbed several razor sharp pins into my BT Advisor Voo Doo Doll and through gritted my teeth asked him how he felt it was ethically correct to charge me for a service that I could not use to the full, because the speed that I was paying for could not be met? He then reassured me that BT provided the most excellent service for their customers because they get internet priority over other internet providers’ customers. As I knew this was a lie so enormous that it had it’s own HR department, crèche and underground parking; I hung up and rang Sky to see if they would mind providing me with an equally shit internet connection, but at a fraction of the price. Sky was delighted to accept my custom and I asked if they could add a note to my account that simply said “This woman hates BT”.

When we are trying to browse the web, pages with lots of photographs take over a decade to load. You might as well click on what you want to look at and then clean the bathroom while you wait for them to appear in their entirety. In a nutshell, my internet has always been inadequate but lately it has reached absolutely calamitous proportions and I have had to contact my provider a couple of times to see what could be done about it.

Initially Sky told me there was nothing they could do and despite running speed check after speed check they were adamant that my interweb was running to the best of its scrawny ability and sent an Openreach engineer. This gentleman telephoned at 8 o’clock the next day and despite Britney (Not her real name) telling him that she was alone in the house and that her Mum and Dad wouldn’t be back until after 10 o’clock, we had his coffee made and he was set to work by 8.20am. He managed to contain his exasperation at the line being Fibre and he explained that Fibre only works if you are within 1800 metres of the cabinet and we are actually 2300 metres from the cabinet.

He managed to get a reading of 2 Mb/s, shook his head, sucked his teeth and probably silently thanked God that he lived in Newcastle. By the time the second engineer from Openreach came a week later, the internet was crawling so slowly along the line that he couldn’t get a speed reading at all. I sipped my coffee and raised my eyebrows to this piece of information, I would have laughed but was worried that he would think I was deranged.

In truth of course, I’m so prepared for the Openreach engineer telling me that my broadband is rubbish; that his words are literally like water running from a duck’s back. And the Openreach lads are brilliant. They have even written on my account for any internet supplier to see that Fibre Broadband is unsuitable for this property. This means that I can cancel my contract with Sky as they are not providing me with the minimum 2 Mb/s that they promised me.

I rang them and when they said that they couldn’t downgrade me to an ADSL line, they offered me a deal. £10 a month for the broadband, a discount on my line rental and call charges and no termination fees should I find a free internet service with anyone else and wish to move.

And I accepted it; because I hate BT more than I hate my weak, wounded and pathetic internet connection and the people at Sky are nice.

And I hate BT.

I Hate BT

If you are a regular follower of my sporadic and woeful ramblings here on Jodhpurs on the School Run, you may remember that a few years ago I wrote a piece about rural broadband and the misery imposed when your internet is shambling along slower than a very stoned, 3 legged sloth.

I laughed merrily when my friends asked me if I had Netflix, I left laptops attempting a Windows update to work alone through the night and my whole family knew that if something was being watched on the Amazon Firestick no-one else was allowed access the internet. It was a bit like having an old dial up connection but without the screechy sound effects.

However, at the beginning of December my Very Tall Landlord informed me that Superfast Broadband was available at my home. Unable to believe this, I ran an internet speed check and discovered that my broadband was hitting speeds of as much as 5 megabits per second which was a vast improvement on the 1.7Mbps we were used to.

Sky has provided our internet and telephone for a few years and they always do me a terrific deal as they are essentially unable to provide the speed that I pay for. They have real people that you can in fact speak to and once when I rang to negotiate my new contract I spoke to Darren in “Sunny Dumfries”. He assured me at the start of the call that he was going to do me such a great deal, that I would “immediately want to open a bottle of wine and say, my God, I never believed I was going to get such a great deal from Sky”. He honestly did say that and also knocked £15 off my monthly payment for my broadband.

So upon hearing that it was possible that I could run more than 2 internet-dependant devices all at the same time without buffering; I rang Sky.

When I asked the nice lady for a price for Unlimited Superfast Fibre Broadband, she sounded as though I had just asked to borrow her Rolex for a magic trick involving a hammer. This was because it turned out, I was already paying for Superfast Fibre but Sky were unable to provide it.

As the lady prepared to put me through to technical support, I rudely hung up and began searching for another provider who could deliver enough internet for me to browse the clearance items on equestrian websites while Britney (Not her real name) watches nail art tutorials on MyTube.

I got the most unpleasant shock.

The only company with the infrastructure and therefore ability to deliver Superfast Fibre Broadband to my home was BT.

And I hate BT.

I hate BT more than I hate the sound of nails scratching down a chalkboard and the feeling of bare feet on a cold kitchen floor. I hate them more than a wet weekend that follows a week of sunshine and battling with Britney over her maths homework. I hate them more than my horse losing a shoe on a bank holiday weekend, more than my sock slowly sliding off my foot inside my welly, more than World Book Day, Trick or Treating and more than I hate people who steal from the elderly. I hate them more than people who hog the middle lane, more than people who throw their Macdonald’s rubbish out of their car windows and more than people who think it’s amusing to feed their chips to Seagulls.

I even hate them more than I hate bloody Chris Packham and that is saying something.

Nevertheless, determined to have the lightning fast access to Ebay and the Daily Mail that I was entitled to, I swallowed my pride and rang them.

My order was placed quickly and when I put the phone down, I was astonished how easy it had been. The engineer was booked to come to my house on 31^st December to connect us to the fantastic fast internet that I had been paying Sky for and we would have mammoth fast interweb browsing that very day.

Due to the chaotic festive period and multitude of Christingles, Christmas plays and parties, I sort of forgot about the Openreach lad coming on New Year’s Eve until the day before when I suddenly realised that I had not received confirmation of his visit.

So I rang BT.

The nice lady I spoke to apologised profusely that I had not been informed about this, but my broadband order had been cancelled as I had failed a credit check.

Absolute rubbish, I told her. I’ve never failed a credit check in my life, there’s more chance of the Chief Cashier at the Bank of England getting turned down for credit than me. She sympathised and gave me the details of Equifax who run BT’s credit checks and told me to contact them.

The telephone number she gave me was incorrect but I discovered (using my sloth-like internet connection) that an account with Equifax is free for the first 28 days and after emailing them a copy of a utility bill and my driving licence I was advised that my very own credit report would be available shortly.

The next day I was able to download this important life-changing document and discovered that my credit score was excellent and that no UK company should refuse me credit.

So I rang BT.

The nice lady who I spoke to, sympathised, agreed that it was ridiculous I had been turned down for credit as my credit score was excellent and once again tried to place an order for my broadband. After 30 seconds she informed me that I had again failed the credit check and she advised me to contact Equifax as they would be able to explain why I was failing a credit check for a broadband order which someone of no fixed abode could set up without issue.

So I rang Equifax.

I’ll just point out here that should you ever be in the regrettable position where you need to contact Equifax, always turn the volume on your phone to “high”. All the call handlers (or at least the ones that I spoke to) speak with a foreign accent and sound as though they are speaking through a very thick, woolly sock.

The lady at Equifax told me that she didn’t know what criteria BT check on a credit report but that I had possibly been refused credit as I wasn’t on the electoral role.

I replied that I had been on the electoral roll at my current address for 11 years, and I knew this for definite as I had been able to vote at the last election which took place less than a month ago.

Ah, she replied, but Equifax don’t get the updated electoral role until the end of January, so I would be able to apply for credit then.

So I rang BT.

The nice lady sympathised, listened to my tale of woe and put me through to Cruella de Vil in the accounts department. Cruella told me that there was a discrepancy between the personal details that I had just given her for security clearance and my personal details on my credit report, namely; my date of birth was not the same.

I replied that the 2 dates of birth were exactly the same and I knew this because I was currently looking at my credit report, and this was the same as the date of birth I had just given her, my real and actual date of birth.

She replied that they were definitely different.

So I rang Equifax.

The gentleman I spoke to told me that my date of birth was correct (I knew this) that I was on the electoral role (I knew this too) and told me to email my credit report to BT and ask then to do a manual check.

So I rang BT.

By this point I had found my old BT voodoo doll and was not only viciously twisting its head and stabbing pins through it, I was also holding it over a naked flame as I waited to be connected to an adviser.

Luckily, Lauren could hear that I was at the end of my tether with her employer. To be fair, I gave her a very clear sign that I was at the end of my tether as when she picked up my call I told her that I was going to kill myself because I really, really wanted to give BT some money in return for a product that I was absolutely certain they wanted to provide me with.

After putting me on hold for 7 and a half minutes she told me that I had already spoken to 3 of her colleagues over the past 2 days and her Supervisor had advised her to put the order through from her broadband services desk and not run it through the sales department as it would be rejected again, thanks to my apparently fictitious credit report.

Initially Lauren said she couldn’t find my landline which we both thought was a bit odd as I was actually using it to make the call, however she told me not to worry as she would put in an order for a new line and the lad from Openreach would disregard this when he came to my house as he would be able to detect the line then.

It took over half an hour for Lauren to complete this and she even called me back once the order was placed to confirm that it was definitely going through. I was so pleased with this information, I instructed Lauren to tell her Supervisor that she and the rest of her team should receive a free bottle of wine every Friday and a short city break at a European venue of their choice as a thank you for their exceptional service.

So the Openreach lads came, gave me a new phone number as they couldn’t find the landline I have been using for the past 11 years and left me running internet speed checks for pure novelty value.

And so, we have speeds of over 100Mbs now, my phone is running at the dizzy height of 114Mbs and when our computers start an update instead of having to leave them overnight, it’s complete in a few seconds. It’s absolutely amazing.

Until a month ago, when I discovered that our internet service had been turned off.

I checked the details on the My BT App on my phone and it assured me that as I paid by direct debit on or just after the 3^rd of the month, I had nothing to pay and did not need to do anything.

Instead of ringing BT, because frankly I just did not have the energy or the patience, I began an online chat with Soumyadip who told me that my first direct debit had been declined.

ME: When did you attempt to take the payment?

I typed very loudly and with a muscle twitching ferociously in my jaw.

SOUMYADIP: We tried to collect the payment on 25^th January 2020 and it was declined by your bank

Came the reply.

ME: I have not had any notification from my bank that a payment has been declined and as My BT says you were taking the payment on or just after the 3^rd February as agreed when I placed the order why did you decide to try and take the payment 9 days earlier than agreed???

I was so incensed at this point that the only punctuation I would be bothered to use was an exclamation mark.

SOUMYADIP: As a valued BT Customer I can only advise you to contact your bank but I am turning your service back on now then you can use this link to make payment…….

So I rang BT.

I paid what was owed using their very quick automated payment service and 2 hours later, Britney was back on Yourtube and I was able to surf the net for items I could not afford.

All was well with our superfast surfing experience until 2 weeks ago when I received an automated call from my friend BT saying that I had not paid my bill.

So I rang BT.

But this time instead of calling the number they had given me which only leads to an automated payment system, I found a number on the internet where I could be connected to a real human person who I could shout at converse with.

I spoke to Joanne, who asked me for my account number which I recited from the My BT App. There was a long silence before she told me that account number did not exist – and then the penny dropped. My BT was showing me my original account that I opened at the beginning of December and despite the original order being cancelled owing to my credit report stating that I was a terrorist and a habitual money launderer, the account had not been completely closed.

So Soumyadip had told me a lie so big it should be on a specialist diet plan. My bank hadn’t declined the payment as the payment had never been requested, because the direct debit set up on the old unused account had not been transferred to the new account.

This made me exceptionally furious with Soumyadip but as he/she probably already has a new job with a diligent employer there was very little point in taking the subject further.

Joanne very nearly restored my faith in BT, as she has credited all the charges on my account as an apology for how utterly shit BT is. She even reimbursed the charges that the robbing bastards had charged me for my internet to be reconnected and has given me a month of superfast surfing for free.

Ironically Sky did ring me to ask why I had left them. I told them that unfortunately they are currently unable to supply my house with Superfast Fibre Broadband. The lady replied that they are rolling out Superfast to lots of rural areas and that in the future they should be able to provide me with the service that I want.

So this rant of a blog post is really a message for Sky; urging them to get on with rolling out Superfast Fibre Broadband to those half-forgotten rural areas as quickly as they can. Because Sky, as soon as you do, I’ll be on the phone to Darren in Sunny Dumfries, I’ll have the bottle of wine at the ready and I won’t even ask him to strike a deal with me.

And I hate BT.

Good For The Soul

Other Half has found out about my Glossy Magazine addiction.

I have ferociously protested that the heap of magazines hidden underneath the spare room bed were all donated to me, but he has still banned me from spending any money on publications that are full of adverts for bathrooms and kitchens.

I have been going cold turkey for a few weeks now; in a sense. Because I have managed to satisfy my addiction to the lovely photographs in these magazines by visiting their websites instead. This (aside from the horrendous cost of my painfully slow and frankly futile broadband) is free. It also means that you can read articles that were written months ago without a towering heap of magazines on your sofa or under the spare bed.

I’ve just looked at good old Country Living’s website and was thrilled to read that living in the countryside is “good for your soul” and to emphasise this they gave me 8 reasons as to why. I’m not quite sure why they supplied me with only 8. Perhaps they couldn’t think of 10.

So, living in the countryside is meant to be better for you, both physically and mentally. After I’d read the first paragraph of the article I knew for certain that this piece had been written by someone who lives somewhere which is served by both public transport and a super fast internet connection, because the term “closer to nature” had been used.

Apparently living in the countryside makes you more mindful and therefore you notice the weather, the birdsong and the sounds and smells of the countryside as everything is enhanced.

True.

I am aware of the weather because for 6 months of the year I am wading through sludge. In the winter, I wash so much mud off my wellies that I half expect my landlord to turn up with an invoice. And I’m certainly aware of birdsong during the summer months, although when a pheasant is screeching away on the grass margin outside your bedroom window at 5.30am you could be forgiven for shooting it even though it’s 5 months out of season.

If you are lucky enough to live in an area where humans outnumber pheasants or where there are none of the stupid birds at all, you will be unaware that they are really rather good at throwing themselves at moving cars. They have an exceptional technique to achieve this and I can only assume that the skill has been passed down through the generations.

To begin with they usually loiter at the side of the road and as you approach them, they run to the middle of the road. As soon as your foot moves towards the brake pedal, the idiotic bird will then return to the side of the road. This is all part of their cunning plan to lull you into a false sense of security because when you are within kicking distance of the dim fowl, it will suddenly make a frantic effort to reach the other side of the road. When you are about to run the brainless thing over, the bird will then make an attempt at flight. This means that instead of making contact with the underside of your car, it collides with the bodywork of your car and this in turn costs a lot of money. The pheasant is a plump, weighty bird and is capable of breaking bumpers, aerials, headlights, windscreens, number plates, fog lights and giving motorcyclists a terrible headache.

Aside from the annoying, screechy, Asian-imported, poor excuse for a bird with a death wish, you will develop an appreciation for your planet if you live in the country. Apparently seeing “Flash floods stream down country lanes” and “snow blanketing untouched fields” will make you appreciate the power of the world that we live in. Unless you live in a house that has previously flooded which means that a flash flood of any kind notifies you that you need to instantaneously lift all of your furniture to waist height and set your flood alarms. Blankets of snow might delight Britney (not her real name) but to anyone over the age of 12, snow is just something that makes country life even more difficult. Snow means that there is a higher than normal risk of crashing your car on the narrow ungritted roads and the white stuff also makes the journey to work take longer than normal. Because, and this may well come as a gigantic surprise to residents of urban areas, people in the countryside do in fact have jobs to go to as well.

Country Living also reports that there is a slower pace of life in the country and that “although people who live in the countryside can still lead busy and hectic lives, the peace of their surroundings helps to bring them to a gentle halt and remind them not to rush life away”.

When I am driving over close to the legal limit to get Britney to school on time or when my car is in the garage and I have to ask people for lifts because the nearest Bus Stop is 3 miles away, I am rarely in a position where I can consider being brought to a gentle halt. I’m surprised that people who live in the countryside aren’t given Valium on a repeat prescription.

Another thing about living where a bus is a rarity is that there is the “Possibility of adventure”. Because “without having a plethora of transport and social activities on your doorstep, both children and adults can be left with just their imagination and senses to take them on an adventure”. The author then suggests that a “walk, a bike ride or building a den in a forest will all give you a different perspective”.

Firstly, if you try to walk anywhere in the countryside without a canine, you will be offered a lift by every passing car. No one walks anywhere in the countryside. If I announced on Facetube that I was about to walk to the local shop to collect the Sunday papers, 15 people would then offer to drive me and ask if my car is broken.

Yes okay, there isn’t the plethora of social activities on the doorstep, but we do still have them. It might mean you have to drive 7 miles to get to the gym but to those of us who reside in the country; this is quite normal. Come to think of it, it almost certainly keeps us healthier as we can’t have 5 pints of lager after visiting the gym as we have to drive home afterwards.

I have to agree that the bike riding facilities in the country are fabulous as there are a lot of rural roads with little traffic. This mode of transport is also convenient because it allows us to have 5 pints of lager and ride home legally.

The whole building a den in the forest thing is never going to happen because whichever “forest” you choose is owned by someone. Generally, landowners don’t take kindly to den building and should you decide to have a quaint campfire beside your bushcraft creation, an alarm automatically sounds in the local Game Keeper’s house. I can assure you that your campfire won’t even have reached the smouldering stage before he appears with a shotgun, 9 dogs and a very cross expression on his face.

Point 5 in the article suggests that you will make “friends for life” in the country.

I suppose this is partially true, there are many occasions when you have to ask a neighbour for help in these less densely populated areas. Whether it’s the neighbour with the 4x4 when the snow is 2 foot deep, or the neighbour who has a chainsaw and there’s a fallen tree blocking the road, people in the country definitely rally around to help you.

As long as you were born here.

Even if you have lived in the country for 30 something years and are a Parish Councillor; you are still not a local. On occasions even people who have lived in the country for 58 years, will still be referred to as “the new people”. It’s just the way it is.

The article also tells me that it is a much “healthier way of living” in the country because of all the organic produce. No one I know can afford to buy organic produce so the only organic objects we eat are grown in our gardens. That’s if the carrots don’t get Carrot Fly and the tomatoes and the potatoes don’t get Blight. Then we just go to Aldi like every one else.

But living in the country does give you a “happier mind” because we mustn’t “underestimate the happiness we get from the small things in life.” This is a good point, life is too short to walk around with blinkers on and ignore the good stuff.

The final point suggests that you will have a “more active body” through rural living because it appears that there are “huge physical benefits from just one hour in the garden”. Now this is truly marvellous news. I didn’t realise that I was actually benefiting physically from sitting on the patio with a gin & tonic.

I will make absolutely certain that I do it much more often.