Fixed-line broadband

After a year of struggling with 3’s erratic ‘mobile broadband’ – which often gives little better than dial-up speeds, and sometimes refuses to work at all – I’ve finally accepted that I need broadband I can rely on. Since this house where I’m staying is already set up for Post Office telephone-service, I’ve added Post Office Broadband to the bundle.

Took about a week to set up, but the service went live earlier today. And so far it’s living up to hopes: it does deliver reasonable broadband speeds (around 5Mbps, I believe), and it does stay stable (unlike 3’s system, which switched randomly between medium-speed HSDPA and dialup-speed GPRS, making Skype phone-calls unusable).

It’s also at last giving me shared wi-fi again, which means I can go online with any of the computers here (three Windows laptops and, now, a Mac Mini, which is still a bit of an experiment) without having to disconnect the 3 dongle and connect up each time I want to change computer. I”ll continue with the 3 service – not much choice, I still have another year to go on that contract – but I’ll use it mainly as a backup, and when I travel within Britain, of course, of which I’m doing more again (now that I have a borrowed car that actually works, unlike my still not functioning campervan 🙁 ).

A proper working broadband feels good, anyway. 🙂 And now, back to work on finishing off Silos…