Hurrah for Oftel! The fearless telecomms regulator has waved its mighty sword, and commanded BT and Kingston to ensure that poor hapless customers must be able to get net access at a reasonable speed. Fantastic! What a fine example of regulatory intervention standing up for the rights of the little people!
Err – not exactly.
What Oftel has actually done is to insist that BT and Kingston are now obliged to provide a network capable of supporting a minimum dial-up speed of 28.8kpbs. Yes, that’s right – 28.8Kbps. I had to check my calendar to make sure that I was still in the year 2003, but yes, I am – and our fearless regulator is demanding a connection speed that would have been regarded as slow in the last millennium.
This tends to sum up Oftel for me – had it not been for their spineless incompetence in the face of a obese and complacent former state monopoly, we might now be in a position where broadband at 512Kbps and above was regarded as the minimum acceptable connection – but instead we’re now able to insist, nay demand of our right to dial-up at 28.8Kbps. How proud they must be…
