The UKs shittest, cheapest Telco and ISP are circling the bowl. One company I won't be sad to see flushed. https://www.cityam.com/talktalk-the-telecoms-titan-on-the-brink/
Actually, there is one glaring problem with the demise of talktalk. They are the operator of last resort for a lot of vulnerable people that can't afford better. I worry that a lot of people, including the elderly, unemployed and disabled will lose a vital lifeline. Shit service is better than no service. The way the world is now, internet access has to be seen as a human right. With so much of our lives conducted online, digital poverty is lethal.
@renbymon BT was privatised in 1984. We didn't get our first ISP until around 1990, which was Pipex!
@fatedfox Ahh there I was misremembering and thinking that BT was privatised in the 90s ^^;
@renbymon The government sold its last stakes in BT in the 90s. Between 1984-1993 it was owned 50/50, public and private.
@renbymon BTNet, the first iteration of BT Broadband was established in 1996 - just a useless fact :)
@fatedfox I remember that I used Freeserve for a while and then went onto Telewest cable sometime in the early 2000s before moving to Sheffield.
@renbymon Telewest installed the first cable broadband service in the UK, in Basildon, the same year that BTNet was launched :)
@fatedfox @renbymon if I recall rightly from Aussies I've spoken with, NBN is definitely absolute horseshit and had been a joke for many years now. Calling it broadband is really stretching the definition apparently. Or at least was. Who knows! Maybe they've updated to early 2010s technology by now!
@renbymon I'm just about old enough to remember when we had one! Australia has the NBN (national broadband network) which is a bit like openreach and an ISP combined, but it's beset with problems and it doesn't reach the places that need it most. I fear it'd be the same here.