Friday, March 29th, 2024

Connectivity Rant

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It never fails to amaze me just how poor the UK is in terms of Internet connectivity outside of the home or office. I usually laugh at all the comments about next generation gadgets as I know that deep down the network infrastructure we have for wireless is just so poor and unable to cope. Live streaming of TV might be fine on a clear day at 5AM with nobody else around, but totally impractical if you’re sitting in a bar at 3PM on a busy Saturday afternoon.

Take travelling out of central London to Cambridge for example. There are over 13 blackspots where cell coverage completely drops. Totally and utterly useless if you want to do something online on the train back home from London. Even at Kings Cross, WiFi is very touch and good- strangely the best way of getting a connection to to stand by an East Coast train and tag onto it’s free WiFi service.

At work is similar for connecting my iPhone. Sitting in the lobby and there’s no O2 3G signal, even though the base station is just a stone-throw away.

Starbucks is one of the few places that you can reliably get Internet connectivity, but even that occasionally lets me down. Apple Stores are similar.

Surely someone has to wake up to this problem and offer a solution ? I agree it must be expensive to implement, but the amount of revenue generated from wireless services must be huge and the problem is only going to get worse over time.

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