So it is one bit at a time …

Painful so it is, you cannot see the dark side when data is so slow.

Ok, so maybe a witty retort, but one that bears some thinking in our infrastructure rich nation. At the moment, I am in the capital city of a quite affluent and well-managed African nation.

It is not your typical biased image of this continent; infrastructure is good and resources excellent. There is in relative terms little poverty as the people in their own view are relatively comfortable.

So, dear folk in the UK; yes there are areas where bandwidth and connectivity is not at its best. Yes, I do agree, it needs to improve. But here we have a landlocked nation who is totally dependent on its neighbours for connectivity. I can ‘kinda’ sympathise with their frustrations, as the connectivity is up/down like a proverbial fiddlers elbow.

There is an entire university with 25megabits, yet at home, I have 120megabits. For one household, with no more than for occupants, I get five times more bandwidth than an university that has 3000 students in its computing faculty.

The chances are, on our 3G we may get more bandwidth or in those areas with 512K, there is still the chance that we have better uncontended bandwidth.

So, it is my view that we do need to improve our Internet infrastructure in rural areas and on some urban estates. But when we consider what is out there in the rest of the world. Are we really that poorly off?


Worth thinking about, is it not?

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