Take deep breaths, count to ten.......

....think calm thoughts, step back, get some perspective......arghhhhhh, nope, it didn't do it for me! I could spit!

You just know don't you, before I even start what this is going to be about? Yup, more on the broadband saga that is rapidly declining into the none too surprising debacle I feared.

To give those of you not familiar with this saga a little background, it began three years ago. When the rest of the country it seemed was enjoying broadband, we were told that as a tiny rural community with little take up interest, we would have to wait.....and wait we did. Three long years.

Finally there was a light at the end of the tunnel when late last year the great God BT promised us the desperately wanted high speed connection for June 2005. It was of course not to be, we made it to the aforementioned date and were told, 'sorry July', you guessed it, in July we were told August. The promised month dawned and we tried to place an order, only to be told we couldn't do so until the line was enabled. Ok we thought, we can live with that and on the appointed day we duly placed our order first thing in the morning.

The hardware hardware arrived a day later, we were impressed and we set it up, tried to connect and....nothing, zip, a big fat zero. We called the powers that be at BT only to be informed that there had been a 'delay'. yesterday was the new appointed big day and as you know, again we tried to make a connection and again nothing! Again we called our ISP who took us like idiots through the set up having told us we were most definitely enabled....still NOTHING! Late last night 'technical unhelp desk guy number 5', from out of the blue finds a message on his screen telling him we have NOT been enabled. For Gods sake! All was not lost he said, today would most definitely be the day, BT were just a 'tad' behind schedule.

Glum faced and miffed we resigned ourselves to one more night at 45kbps and looked forward to today.

Again we went through the rigmarole and again NOTHING!!!! PG called BT who refused to discuss the matter with him because despite it being their line that has not had the work done on it yet, which is their responsibility and has their engineers appointed to it, they are not our ISP and apparently they 'don't deal with non ISP customers'. They kindly informed us that we had to call our ISP and get them to call BT, who would then discuss the matter. I kid you not, can you believe it? Yes ok you probably can but it is bordering on the insane.

PG then called the ISP, who in turn called BT who in turn informed the ISP that....and this is the really good bit....." there has been a big take up in the area and as many are infront of us we have to wait our turn, they are enabling lines on a first come first served basis and the amount of work exceeds their expectations!!!!!

WTF??? What happened to the 'not enough uptake' that caused the three year wait in the first place and how come there are people infront of us if one cannot order the service before one is enabled and we did so at 9am on the morning we were theoretically supposed to be enabled? What a crock! Methinks there is someone with a vivid imagination and penchant for fibbing at BT!

And so, the sad debacle continues, we are still at 45 kbps, we are now told our connection will become live 'sometime next week', how very professional and specific (not). If I could possibly live without it I would dearly like to tell them to 'shove it' and stick with my dialup, that costs less than half the price and even if it is at a snails pace at least manages to actually make a connection! I won't of course, I will tolerate the crap and persevere because I just have to have my 2 meg, somehow, someway, someday!

Just maybe I'll get there prior to collecting my pension.

Cheers BT, what an utterly, impressively crap fab service!