A holy trinity of acronyms

Why do you keep denigrating them? he asked. Many of us are shareholders, and your attacks are both ill-informed and damaging! Defend yourselves!

Quite frankly, we couldn't summon up the energy to do so that particular week, but fear not: we do not have an anti-BT bias. It's just that people better informed than we are keep telling us things like this...

The Telecoms Managers Association, which renamed itself the Communications Managers Association (CMA) this week, conducted a poll of over 400 senior comms professionals to garner their opinions of broadband rollout in the UK.

Seventy-eight per cent think Oftel has failed to deliver effective competition in all parts of the UK. Seventy-four per cent said competitive service could only be obtained in major cities. Eighty-six per cent regard the roll-out of ADSL too slow, while 49 per cent said they would not have access to ADSL for at least two years.

David Harrington, the director general of the CMA, even went as far as to accuse BT of going slow to protect its own interests.

He told us: "BT is protecting its traditional marketplace and will only go ahead once ADSL is ready for itself and not the competition, and Oftel hasn't done anything to control it."

In the spirit of balanced reporting, BT (who are slowly getting better at talking to the press) had this to say: "The UK and BT has got the most aggressive rollout of ADSL in the world. Already, 45 per cent of the UK can get access to ADSL through BT."

Shame then that on Wednesday, the Times printed some of a leaked BT internal memo, which revealed that more than a third of Britain's population will not be able to access broadband services because they live in "deadzones" - namely totally insignificant areas like Cornwall, Wales, the North East, North West, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The document says that commercial and technical reasons prevent ADSL roll-out in these locations.

On the very same day, Paul Chisholm, the head of Colt Telecom, told the Independent newspaper: "The UK process that was set up between BT and Oftel does not work. Are we annoyed? Absolutely."

Also on Thursday, Neil Holloway, the UK MD of Microsoft, told Reuters: "It's not in BT's interest to get everyone else to roll it out. The longer they can delay it the better."

Both Colt (because it's a telecoms company) and Microsoft (because of its ties with Telewest) have vested interests.

But here at silicon.com, we're more interested in the experiences of the hapless individual at the receiving end of BT's bizarre practices.

Take this gentleman, who got in touch with us last week. Mr X told BT that he had two existing BT lines at home, one analogue line for private use, and one ISDN line for work. He wanted the ISDN connection converted to ADSL.

BT said no problem - we need to convert your ISDN line to an analogue line to perform an ADSL test. If it's OK, we can use that line for ADSL. If it fails, we'll have to charge you £99 to convert the line back to ISDN. Oh, and once it's been converted to analogue, it'll take about two weeks to switch it back to ISDN again.

You can imagine Mr X's reaction. Flabbergasted is a good (and apt) word. He soon regained his composure and asked: what other options are there?

The BT rep responded: you could convert your other line for a test?

Not an option - it's his private family line. Any other suggestions?

BT said: you could install a new analogue line. If that tests OK, you could then get the ADSL installed and then change the number to your ISDN number.

Mr X was tempted... until BT capped the whole debacle with this: 'Of course, if the ADSL test fails, we would not hold you to your year's contract. But you would have to pay the £99 installation charge.'

So, in a nutshell, if Mr X wants to find out if he can get ADSL, he'll have to risk £99. Mr X spoke to a senior manager at BT to confirm that his ears hadn't been playing tricks on him. He was told that his take on the situation was accurate. He is now awaiting a response from the head of BT Openworld.

If anyone can explain how this state of affairs is fair, we'd like to hear from them too. just so we can correct our unfounded anti-BT bias, of course.

And so for those three acronyms: BT, ADSL, SNAFU.

And in news of another one of our favourite companies...

Microsoft has won the right to have its anti-trust appeal heard in the appellate court. This is highly significant, and a minor victory for the company in its battle with the Department of Justice. The DoJ wanted the case to go straight to the Supreme Court in order to hasten its resolution. Now Microsoft can carry on as normal for the time being, and will get the chance to appeal again if its this current appeal is rejected. This one's gonna run and run and run...

Anyone got a floppy?

And finally, the Guardian brought us news on Thursday that one in ten women using the internet have made love to a man they first met online in the workplace.

The women, surveyed at newwomanonline.co.uk, spent an average of 102 minutes a day chatting online or emailing potential lovers - with Londoners apparently the most likely to swap motherboard for headboard.

One hundred and two minutes a day? Blimey. I'm surprised the objects of their amour can keep their connections up that long.

The Round-Up will pop up again next Friday.