So, the Prince of Pod is having problems getting BT Broadband in Guildford. Welcome to the UK, Adam! ;-)

I have until now resisted the temptation to rant here about BT's general incompetence in delivering (or not delivering) broadband. My problem was not with getting connected, but with staying connected. From time to time my connection would suddenly drop--for anything between a few seconds and several minutes: not what you want when you are running several mailservers and websites. The first time was one night when I was asleep in a hotel outside Cologne at the start of a fortnight's trip to Venice, and was awoken by an automatic SMS from my ISP. The problem persisted for several months. BT were completely hopeless, fielding staff who couldn't tell a plug from a socket and it was only because of the dogged persistence of my excellent ISP, Andrews and Arnold and myself that we eventually persuaded BT to find someone who understood broadband to do what had obviously needed doing all along, namely change the equipment at the exchange end of the line.

Adam: if you are dealing with BT direct: forget it. Give Andrews and Arnold a call: they are a relatively small outfit and customer service is good. They know what they are doing and have oodles of experience dealing with BT, who they ultimately have to deal with as the UK's monopoly supplier of local loops. The will also get you some fixed IP addresses which are more difficult to come by from BT.

Update 5/12/04: The saga has moved to the Ipodder weblog. It seems that wireless broadband may be available in Guildford (but at what cost?). This could turn out to be a high profile test case for Broadband Britain.