If you live in tne right area, it's been an interesting ride.
Urban and inner subbirban seem to fare best, with the outer suburbs and the rest being more spotty. I was with AOL when it started for me. They were one of the go-to ISPs if you wanted unlimited dial-up, and broadband started with a cold call from them. 512Kbps was quite a revelation, but the modem was a clunky solution. A router quickly followed, and this enabled me to effectively work from home for the first time. AOL soon upgraded me to 1024 and then 2048. Then they were taken over by TalkTalk who, to this day, still treat the legacy AOL customers (still on ADSL1?) like a separate, unconnected thing.
Then the second cold call came, from BT. An upgrade to ADSL2 and 16Mbps (maxed out at 12, for us) and free BT sports followed. That certainly made NetFlix more reliable. Then the new cabinet appeared, just around the corner. Infinity 2 is overkill, but at least we're 4K ready.
But want about the rest of the poor sods out there? The government has paid a small fortune to the former state monopoly, ostensibly to improve coverage in the not spots? It seems that BT has done as little as they could possibly get away with, for that investment of tax payers' money. I certainly don't buy the idea you should be forced to choose where you live based on broadband quality.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
