The Tyranny of Broadband

There was a cable theft near my house recently. Copper thefts used to be fairly common... but I'm guessing this must now be a fibre optic theft, which seems odd. But I digress. As a result of this theft (or, actually, as a result of the remediation work following the theft) I've been without broadband.

And it has taught me how dependent on broadband I am.

For instance, I use an Amazon Alexa as an alarm clock. No broadband, no wake up. And I seem to do most of my TV watching via YouTube... which is also gone. My mobile phone signal is pretty terrible. This doesn't usually bother me because of wifi and wifi calling. But today, no data, no calls. Oh, and while I could still listen to audio books... only the ones I had downloaded (and also not via Alexa or the TV).

The time they say it might take to remedy things is, apparently, 2 days.

"That's extraordinary" I thought to myself. "They would never take two days to fix a phone line problem" (Of course they would - and indeed, for people with landlines in my area, I'm guessing that's exactly what it will take). But even so - there is a far higher level of isolation from the world now if you lose your braodband.

Ah well... off I go to a coffee shop then.

Unfortunately, the cable theft happened on the main road out of my village - so that's closed too.

I'm almost tempted to give Musk some money!