shame iplayer is so rubbish on android. Seems daft that I can view live news 24 but not yesterdays news as iplayer is not a good android app.

At that time of night I'm dreaming

Dreaming of 2 Mb/s plus. But I have a Panasonic intelligent HD Freeview PVR and it manages BBC iPlayer at 2Mb/s without degradation so you can squeeze a lot into relatively slow speeds provided only you are using the line.

may be worth it

But only if an ISP could link a cluster of customers. Put it into my house, serve 9 others wirelessly and at worst we'd have 30Meg if we all download together. Bet that's not allowed though!

Just retuned twice

We've just lost analogue up here in the North East so 2 retunes. I had to do the work on several other households in the village where the elderly owners were't aware/tech savvy.

Leave it alone - we went for years on analogue without all this fuss. I have a TV, a Freeview PVR and an HD Freeview PVR so 3 things to retune each time at home as it is .

Hooray for Fujitsu

BT Openreach has perforemed well by NOT investing in local network. In this part of N Yorkshire we have 2 bits of damp string to link to the cabinet. Fujitsu is suggesting a wireless option for us in rural areas and even as a BT shareholder I congratulate them Openreach cares notr a toss for the broadband user unless they are bribed by the Government and even then FTTC won't solve the problem of aluminium cable or 0.5mm copper on long lines

About time

BDUK said in October 2010 that they hoped to place contracts in N Yorkshire in 2011. Yet 2012 beckons and no plan has been submitted yet.

There will always be places where broadband will be impossible even by satellite but most of us in rural areas want to retain our ISP and get the benefit of the packages on offer. There is a danger that the obvious but least competitively acceptable route of bribing BT to equip every exchange with FTTC which would give all properties within 3 miles of a cabinet OK broadband and many very fast will go down the pan and a plethora of one off solutions which the big ISPs will refuse to conect over will result.

The only alternative is a carrier with both a local network and a backhaul one and for those of us outside the big towns (they tell me they have buses and Post Offices and Libraries as well) that's pie in the sky

my petition

For what its worth I have an e petition on this. All Customs and Excise have to do is to define a book by content not medium. It seems our bureaucrats are stuck in the paper and red tape age.

Reality

In rural areas - I'm in wensleydale - BT has all the aces. poles, ducts , cable (a lt of rubbish aluminium) and exchanges. Mobile operators don't want to know as they work on resident numbers not visitors - hey you get 2 million people a year, sorry says 3 can't give you 3G.

Th only ways are 4g via a new (nationalised?) company or bribing BT.

And BT only has to provide lines capble of 56k data, if data transmission existed 100 years ago they could achieve it then.

Not surprised

Took BT Wholesale a month to cure my broadband fault - but they sent BT Openreach engineers out 4 times before realising their own equipment was at fault.

Seems bonkers

My neighbour has solar panels and gets 43p per unit. Her cable and mine share a connector so her excess is basically bought ny me at around 13p per unit. Somebosy has to pay the 30p difference. Also she uses high drain appliances after dark so she buys cheap power and sells expensive stuff.

Copper would be nice

Just had BT remaking a joint between copper and aluminium to restore service. Aluminium was introduced late 70s/early 80s due to copper prices and by 1986 had proved to be a maintenance nightmare. Yet over 30 years on we still suffer lousy broadband in the Yorkshire Dales because BT has yet to catch up copper let alone fibre. Cables used to be depreciated financially over 20 years so they've had their wear out aluminum

Don't forget the EU insists on VAT on e-books. Sign the petition for abolition in the UK at http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/114

First year fine, why further years?

If I have a mobile contract I'm locked in for a predetermined time then the contract ends and I'm free to stay or move at any time. BT is just greedy. I've been a BT customer for 36 years yet it still wants to lock me in for a whole year at a time. Can't be for my benefit I feel

But what about VAT

Once the e-petition site gets a new wick try signing my e-petiton to abolish VAT on e-books. If it's on a cloud or a download it isn't a book so pays VAT, on paper it's a book so no VAT - bomkers EU ruling

When is stealing stealing?

I can't (yet) lend a Kindle book to anyone and will never be able to give one away I guess. But I've loaned paper books and given them away. Did the people who received them "steal" them? No so the ebook is better for publishers as is really 1 buyer 1 reader. Just reflect that in your price fixing Penguin et al

HTC is there

My wife's HTC Desire has a micro USB but my Hero has a miniature USB though the socket is an odd shape. It will take standard leads but the HTC supplied lead won't fit any other miniature USB socket due to the non-standard profile. So I threw the lead way and used a stadard.

Kindle uses micro USB so there is wider standardisation - but how do we stop the chargers coming - I have 7 that will take a USB lead at the charger end

What about the VAT?

The government has its snout in the trough - VAT on ebooks but not paper ones

Ebook rip offs

There are 2 rip off with ebooks (nothing to do with the hardware or retailer)

1. The government charges VAT despite the green credentials of something that needs no trees to die and no diesel to distribute. Bonkers

2. Publishers like Penguin seem to be able to insist on a minimum price often higher than the paper version - banned on paper books - even though the books can't (yet) be loaned or given away or sold secondhand so are truly 1 buyer 1 reader thus increasing sales and the zero cost of printing (well they have to convert the file to a different format), warehousing, distribution and then the remaindering of unsold stock.

So write to your MP and ask why the government charges VAT on ebooks but not paper ones and why publishers can flout the ruling on the abolition of the Net Book Agreement.

But what about Android Skype?

I changed my 3 Sony Ericcson for an HTC Hero - Skype on the oldphone, no Skype on the new. As 3 churns customers onto smartphones they'll lose Skype customers. I use Skype in for my business, a pain now no mobile version

Willetts correct

And as for primary school children, tax their pocket money and send them up chimneys if they can't pay! All those rich Oxbridge (free ) educated people in Government!

Mariella Frostrup for me

Fancy Smith would bully you to turn, men would go anywhere for Mariella's purr. Joanna Lumley would reason with you and you'd realise that by doing what she wanted you were doing the right thing. Silence guaranteed with Margaret Thatcher - she's not for turning!

Thank heavens

Sense at last - once the last Government got the ID card idea it couldn't lose face and change direction. Maggie did the same with poll tax. Seems governments have great difficulty saying Ooops we were wrong

Amazon not as clever as thought

Amazon has decreed that Nationwide credit card holders are not welcome to buy big ticket items from it. For large purchases Nationwide require the 3 digit code on the back of teh card to be provided and preferably also use Verified by Visa. Amazon cannot and will not comply. So they are happy to ignore hundreds of thousands of potential big ticket buyers. I had to call Nationwide to get them to release money for a netbook - such a palaver I'll go elsewhere for the other gear I want

So what did Peter Gershon manage himeself?

Why Standard Telephones and Cables? Not exactly a household name still. Even the compant that bought them, Nortel, is bust. So how about a successful business man telling the Government how to run things?

Why?

What does anyone get out of this except the manufacturers of over priced sets - a bit of wavelength for teh government to sell whilst us poor saps have to fork out millions between us. Perhaps Lords don't listen to the radio in the car, too busy uncorking the champers

Dogging?

I thought dogging was jogging with my Labrador until i discovered Smirnoff

Won't help us In National Parks

Whilst the drop wires are still allowed to be from pole to house, all main cables are underground in this National Park so pole use not an option. Electricity distribution is also generally underground so their poles not available either. Cabling ducts much more expensive than using poles and will lead to arguments if a duct is shared should damge occur to a BT cable whilst a competitor is installing their cable. Whither wireless?

No history students then?

BT strung fibre from poles in Wales around 30 years ago and proved it worked. Virgin needs to catch up

Suggest they ask DVLA

Cars have to be registered and insured - I believe something like 20% aren't. DVLA uses number

the number plate isn't false.So with dogs we'll have kerbside chip readers linked to a massive insurance database to ensure that the people most likely not to care a toss about the law, the people causing the problem at present, don't avoid it.

Recorded calls - an offence has been committed

As well as using TPS who will argue about whether it really is a marketing callit is an offence to make recorded calls to people who have not agreed to receive them. Formal complaints can be made to the Information Commissioner's Office.You would have thought BT would know the law affecting its own business

They do it here

I asked Vodafomne for a refund to teh card that I had used to top up credit when they stopped my PAYG - they refused though they knew who I was. I now have a contract 3 mobile. When will these people learn that if you upset a customer you mat never see them again. They are thieves though it is perfectly legal

Not the only bust bank security

After preventing me renewing my Skype in despite using "Verified by Visa" my bank tells me that it does not consider that system "foolproof" . In fact it says no system is foolproof - funny how banks usually say the opposite .

So Verified by Visa that uses a separate secure site with a passowrd only known to the user is rubbish according to a leading High Street Bank. Thought it was supposed to guarantee secure online transaction

Cheapest time to phone your friends

is when they're out!

Network upgrade for Southerners only?

The 3 upgrade map shows the South getting all the attention. Few people live where I do but a million or so visit - with little or no 3 coverage

Why no Freesat

With HD easier on Freesat an integrated tuner would make it attractive to me.

Today's Guardian Photos prove it

They show City of London plain clothes intelligence officers at the recent punch up in London - wielding batons. Now that's intelligence gathering. And the boss of the policing was so intelligent he denied to MPs there were any plain clothes police there.

How about "In Stock" or "despatched" - the John Lewis way

Gets you to buy rather than find another supplier but Johnlewis.com have a new meaning - not on John Lewis premises. Indeed in my case not even on the supplier's premises or even capable of being manufactured as discontinued. Then there's "desptached". JL think that this means that is between 2 warehouses and not on its way to the customer but nobody really knows where it is so meaningless. It seems they have 2 ways of selling you a high price item (over £1,000 in my case) - if they have it in a nearby shiop you can have it in a couple of days, if not then somebody in Germany may or may not be making it and you can have it in a couple of weeks possibly. An interesting internet shopping experience!

Lawyers' priorities

Wouldn't it be great if the lawyers concerned who have no doubt earned a lot of money from all this activity should use their expertise to get maximum recompense for the poor victims of the dumping of waste in an African country and who are being given probably less than any one of the lawyers earns in 10 minutes for their real pains. Whether the lawyers clients were involved in the illegal dumping or not is immaterial but it seems that poor people are not as worthy in the eyes of the law or lawyers rather as rich companies. The largest single category of MP is, I understand, ex lawyers - says a lot.

What about spam phone calls?

Not the ones the TPS can stop but those International ones selling shares or telling you you've won a cruise or worse the silent ones. I find answering them in German or French is fun. But this is a spin off of VoIP hwere it is impossible to stop the perpetrators who are now causing real grief to vulnerable people. Come on EU talk to the US and Indian governments and get a clamp down on them as most calls seem to originate from those places

Suicide risk inMK?

With the news about Orange's ownes, France Telecom. expect Milton Keynes residents to suicide. Having been there though can't blame Orange

Tom Tom is often barmy but I still use it

I have a Tom Tom and feed back errors to the makers but still it tells me to go through the unmade car park of a heritage railway station or to use a farm track with gates on it rather than the B road that I should take near our village. Ofen i can't even see the track it claims I should take. But it doesn't take a Nobel prize winner to spot that Tom Tom just uses Ordnance Survey maps without checking whether a marked track is actually suitable for a car so you have to be aware that you can, literally, be led up the garden path.

Amateur radio under threat

On this issue many radio amateurs are either limited to under 10 watts or choose to work at low wattages or are trying to hear very faint signals from around the world. Having somebody's mains wiring acting as a giant aerial close by makes this tricky - bet if the amateur's transmissions interfered with their broadband the response would be different. I'll just warm up my morse key with some single sideband.

Also with the shortage of frequencies it seems that those allocated to amateurs over many years internationally may come under threat from new services where the regulator, Lord Mandy, operators and suppliers of wireless gizmos can't agree on what should use which part of the spectrum and the easy way would be to steal it from other less legal action prone users like amateurs.

Perhaps they could get their website to work

Can't indicate netwrok using either IE or Firefox so can't register

BT has lost the plot

BT and its forebears have been maintaining the copper network for over 100 years. if they haven't worked out how to do it economically by now what hope is there for the rest of the business given they can't manage computer systems either? If you're a phone company surely this is core?

And remember when Railtrack used contractors - Potters Bar and Hatfield. Potential for service to suffer to bolster the profits of third parties with no link to the end customer and buttressed from feedback by BT Indian Call Centre staff.

as the old saying goes

There's no such thing as a free launch

Ofcom pathetic

I listened to teh interview with the head of Ofcom today - all talk no action, denies the rest of the world are better at it than the UK. And the figures used were doctored to be as if there was no line distance lag - real amounts would have been far less. I'm on 1.4Mb/s today, way up on my usual 700-900k due to distance from the exchange. Who cares which ISP I use, none of them can offer me high speeds and Ofcom will (costing us a bomb) continue to dither and procrastinate whilst the rest of teh world shows how broadband should be done

Photograph without fear of arrest

Oddly webcams for Chatham on the BBC site and weather-forecast.com sites don't work but go to http://www.lordswoodonline.co.uk/localwebcam.htm and there's a lovely picture of Rochester High Street just up the road (sorry) courtesy of Medway Council.

And if Kent Plod reads this you need to go to

Gun Wharf

Dock Rd, Chatham, ME4 and arrect Medway Council Chief Exec.