» BT boss gets preferential broadband

Local villagers incensed by chairman's special treatment in ‘not spot' area

News emerged recently that BT chairman Sir Michael Rake has been receiving broadband to his home in a village where other residents are unable to connect to broadband.

The exchange server in Hambledon, on the Oxfordshire/Buckinghamshire border, is broadband-enabled but most lines are too long for broadband to work, meaning that villagers are among the small proportion of UK residents without broadband internet access.

BT are obviously keen to have their chairman on the net and one solution to the problem could have been a leased line to his home.

A leased line, however, would be a costly solution and what they've gone for instead is a new BT technology being developed called Broadband Enabling Technology (BET), which is a cheaper and more cost effective solution to leased lines, allowing broadband to work over extended distances.

The use of a leased line in this situation would have been of benefit to the chairman, providing him with a dedicated, speedy broadband connection, but not helped the village as a whole get any closer to a broadband connection.

Installing a leased line to just one home would cost in the region of £3000 and a leased line solution for the whole village would not be feasible. Testing their new BET systems should give villagers some hope of a broadband connection in the future, however, as it is a more realistic and sustainable option than that of leased lines.