Woke up on Wednesday morning to hear OH plaintively calling out "there's no internet!" from down the hallway. Not being minded to get up and sort some geeky problem out I pretended I hadn't heard him. But indeed there was no internet access and, on checking the second phone line, this was easily explained. There were no phone lines either! Several fruitless calls to BT produced, eventually, the message "There is a major problem on your exchange, we hope to get it fixed by next week, possibly".

Basically a whole village has been taken out (they won't tell us how) and 45m of underground cable needs to be relaid. The cable has been ordered and "may arrive on Monday" - like BT don't have cable??? - and in the meantime their advice was to use mobile phones and get over it. They also confirmed that they weren't giving the job priority.  A quick word to a mate on the regional newspaper got it covered in the press. They asked some pertinent questions about how the elderly population without mobile phones were expected to cope and why, in a deeply rural area it was more important than ever to be able to communicate. So perhaps this might go some way to explain the mysterious reappearance of the broadband this morning - and at an awesome speed it has to be said! Still no phone lines though.

I'm ashamed to admit just how much I've missed the internet though and take this as a cautionary warning to get out more!!! But first I have to read all the topics I've missed on here of course...:D

We have had a lot of computer problems and over christmas a virus which meant we were seperated from the computer.  My husband has informed me I am evil not to mention my daughter who couldnt get to chat to her mates on MSM.

You dont realise how much you miss them until they are gone.

Karen

I can sympathise with you Roz.

Not that I have anything constructive to add :D

Where I used to live was extremely rural and there was only 5 houses in the area. To see a car go by usually meant it was lost:rolleyes:

We lost our phone and internet connection for 4 weeks once And like you, BT said that we would have to use mobiles and they weren't treating it as priority. It turned out that a Combine Harvester had taken the line down. Ours were overhead cables not underground.

We explained to them that we were reliant on all services because we worked from home. They weren't interested, all they said was that they would divert all home calls to our mobile. Then on the next bill the cheeky s*ds tried to charge us for deversion calls!

I still live in an isolated place and am waiting for it to happen again.

Took me a month to catch up on my emails and CD of course :D I felt like my right arm had been cut off and yes, I need to get out more too :P

We have a community rural broadband set up and it is always going wrong :rolleyes:

We are sticking with it though as we are hoping through some development of the service we will have CCTV set up which I think is such a good idea :)

It will stop crime and stop those people who think it is ok the let their dogs poo all over the pavements as I am getting so naffed of with it :(