Farmer John's wallet-bulging broadband
If BT weren't taking the mickey last time, they certainly are now
Our nation's favourite telecommunications monopoly has announced its plan to introduce broadband to rural parts of Britain. Unfortunately for customers in the highlands of Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the service will be made available later this month, the cost is astronomical, making consumer ADSL costs look like peanuts. If the single-user £69.99 (exclusive of VAT) monthly fee isn't bad enough, and the £139.99 monthly fee for the four-user account still doesn't get you down, how about respective installation fees of £899 and £1,299? The services are apparently geared towards business users. So rural business works can look forward to a year's 512Kbps service with no guarantee of throughput or latency (trust me, I'm an ADSL user) for £2,043.18, or £3,500.18 for the four-user version, including installation and VAT. If anybody buys into the new plan, we'd be interested to hear from you. We have some excellent magic beans for sale.