About a month ago I posted about the trials and tribulations of communications via broadband here on Lewis and the feeling of frustration with the seeming insensitive incompetence (am I being too hard?) of BT. Well things have changed.
Shortly after my post a neighbour sent me a message saying that we (the three houses at the end of the township) could now get hi-speed broadband. Her son popped over to show me the actual message on his laptop. Within a few hours I had ordered hi-speed broadband from BT and been given this morning as the date for the engineer to install it and make the necessary changes at the 'green box' and the exchange.
The many (and I mean many) messages by text, email and phone reminding me that I had to be in this morning to receive the engineer were greeted with some scepticism by friends and family who have had such messages but not had the promised visit.
However by mid morning I had hi-speed broadband. Whoopee.
Within an hour, however, I had no broadband and no telephone. What's the opposite of 'whoopee'?
Long phone call to Laura at BT (very helpful), and many texts from, BT and I eventually got a call mid afternoon from a (different) engineer saying that he had mended my line between the green box and the exchange and all should now be hunky-dory. And so, this evening it seems to remain.
Instead of 1.6 Mbps I now have 32 Mbps.
Long may it continue. Now, perhaps, I'll be able to read a blog and make a comment without having to wait ages for every stage to load.
Why BT have told my other two neighbours that they cannot get it remains one of those interminable BT mysteries which I really hope will soon sort itself out.
Well done Graham I am delighted for you :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks Heron. I'm pretty chuffed too as it's still working well nearly 48 hours later!
DeleteThe opposite of "Whoopee" is "Eepoohw" pronounced "Ee poo!" which in Yorkshireish means "Oh shit!"
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the modern world! Let's hope the hi-speed connection keeps working.
YP thank you for enlightening me. I shall adopt my best Yorkshire accent next time I wish to adopt that particular expletive. Yes. Despite the inanities of Jeremy Vine we out here in the sticks need modern communication all the more.
DeleteWe really don't need all these snafus to keep us busy. Anyway you'r on high speed. enjoy it.
ReplyDeleteI am Red, I am.
DeleteWorth celebrating! How wonderful for you! :)
ReplyDeleteYes Lee I had to have two G n Ts just to calm myself down.
DeleteWe too are about to upgrade our internet connection... the NBN is about to arrive in our suburb via fibre-optic cables?? At the moment we use broadband and our speed is about 6 somethings. We are hoping for a big improvement but we ae about 700m from the hub so time will tell. fingers crossed !!
ReplyDeleteHelsie if I'd been on 6 I'd have been delighted. I'm about 750 metres from the Green Box where the fibre optic stops and several miles from the exchange itself I'm getting 32Mbps so I should think you should get a reasonable speed. I hope so anyway.
DeleteChrist on a Bike. That is fast. Well done.
ReplyDeleteThanks Adrian. It is pretty dam good.
DeleteCongratulations! I have just checked what my router tells me about my broadband connection. It says "18144 kBit/s".
ReplyDeleteMeike, one megabyte (M) is equal to one thousand kilobytes (k). Therefore, your 18144 kilobytes per second equates to 18 megabytes per second. (I don't think you mean kilobits; bits are something else and are very small, even a thousand of them.) Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.
DeleteMeike and Bob I'm not sure it's quite that simple. I'd have to look it up (and should do I suppose) but I think that Mbps is Megabits per second and is a transfer rate for data. A Megabyte is, I think, generally used for data storage sizes. But then it may not be that simple because I do remember that a kilobyte is 8 times the size of a kilobit. Well having now muddied the waters perhaps someone who really knows what they are talking about will enlighten us.
DeleteYou are correct. A bit is the the basic binary unit and can only have a value of 0 or 1. On or off to a computer circuit. The Byte is also a base unit of 8 bits, this being the number of bits required for one character.
DeleteThis assumes you are not called Diane Abbot in which case there will be 30,000 or maybe 1/7 bits to a Kbyte, sometimes 100,000,000. It depends whether the month has a 'R' in.
I'm so old I remember 6-bit bytes and octal (base 8) arithmetic with 36-bit "words" with the IBM 7090. Then about 1965 the IBM 360 came along and suddenly there were 8-bit bytes, hexadecimal (base 16) arithmetic with 32-bit words and even 16-bit halfwords. BCD (binary coded decimal) was replaced by EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code), ASCII faded into history, and time marched on, leaving all of us to wonder what happened.
DeleteThanks to all of your for your... erm... explanations ;-)
DeleteI simply copied (not typed) what the UI of my router says, so it is spelled exactly as it is shown there.
When years ago I entered into this particular contract for my internet connection, landline etc., this was offered to me as "superfast DSL", and I can not complain, no matter whether I am watching a film or just reading something online.
Heron I was too ashamed to say that I did some computer programming in Fortran and Cobol as part of my post grad back in the late 60s/early 70s. I can't recall any of it.
DeleteAmazing! Isn't it ridiculous that they can do it in the Outer Hebrides, yet there are many places in Wales and even in parts of cities around the country which just don't have it?
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more Jenny. It's not difficult either. My Cottage in New Zealand was a long way from any overland cable routing so I (and many in the area) had a microwave connection. It's also possible to use spare bandwidth from the television signal. And of course there is always satellite. However at the end of the day everything comes down to cost and what people can or are prepared to pay.
DeleteCongratulations! How very exciting it must be for you.
ReplyDeleteThe opposite of Whoopee is a four letter work that doesn't start with Ess. There are other options, of course.
Yes Maywyn and many of the other options have occasionally passed my delicate lips.
DeleteHope it has continued to work - I haven't "seen you around" today...
ReplyDeleteI'm around now Monica and have today caught up with all my Blogland friends (even if I haven't commented on every post). Mind you Blogger was particularly reticent in responding earlier on this morning - possibly a busy time.
DeleteIt's good you're finally back with the living lol, makes me wonder how we managed without the internet in the first place
ReplyDeleteAmy I'm afraid that I have relied on the internet for so long now that being separated from it really does my head in. Sad really but there we are.
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