The Weekly Round-Up: 23.10.09

We British love our broadband. We're compelled to hug it, to adore it, to nuzzle it lovingly. It is our North, our South, our East and West; our working week and our Sunday rest. It completes us.

Broadband speed is now the number one national preoccupation, just ahead of property prices and gossiping about the neighbours. In fact, as serendipity would have it, news this week manages to combine all of middle England's obsessions: fast internet access, property and what the Joneses are up to.

Broadband speed is becoming a key factor in where we Brits choose to live, believe it or not.

Research by Top 10 Broadband claimed broadband speed is a more important factor in choosing where to live than the proximity to a local pub. At which point The Round-Up shakes its head and wonders what is happening to this country when fat broadband pipes mean more to people than easy access to frothing nut brown ale. Or fizzy lager, depending on your taste.

Anyway, of the surveyed fat pipe enthusiasts, four out of 10 said poor broadband speeds and patchy network connections were likely to actually put them off moving to a new area. Yet more serendipity: the Round-Up moved house recently and while it did in fact check out how close the nearest BT exchange was, more time was definitely spent checking out the local boozers.

Top 10 Broadband helpfully lets you internet fans compare your broadband speed to your neighbours. Not that you'd want to, as it is likely to send you into a spiral of despair - because we Brits also suffer from broadband envy.

The research reported that six out of 10 people admitted they would be both annoyed and envious to find a neighbour was receiving better broadband access than them.

It sounds like the pitch for a dreadful sitcom "Larry realises the next door neighbours have much faster broadband and vows to get the same throughput…with hilarious consequences."

Think The Good Life, with ADSL and without the flares.

If broadband bickering isn't enough to show the dark side of our British obsession with technology, the next story will show how close to some kind of technology-induced nervous breakdown we all really are.

Because once you've recovered from the gnawing envy that results from finding out that the man at number 11 gets twice as many megabits, get ready for an outbreak of call centre rage.

Of all Britons, the Scottish were the most likely to ring up call centres and swear explosively at operatives, with one in eight admitting to 'inappropriate language', according to a survey of consumers and call centre managers. Londoners, another notoriously profane lot, were second rudest. That's according to a study from Corizon of more than 2,000 consumers that promised to reveal regional, gender and age differences in the way Brits express their frustration with contact centres.

According to the study, whether we end up swearing at call centre agents or simply hanging up in frustration may depend on where we live. Or possibly the level of service we receive.

The Round-Up can only assume a survey of call centre agents is a huge challenge. Partly because it took an age to get through the automated customer service systems to a real person ("press 1 to be ignored, press 2 to be put in a queue until you hang-up from boredom…') and partly because the high staff churn at call centres meant that the person answering questions at the start of an interview had often been replaced with someone entirely different by the end.

Men are almost twice as likely to swear than ladies, particularly if they're aged between 18 and 30.

It paints a grim picture doesn't it? A nation of impatient, angry and sweary people.

It doesn't help that the single biggest frustration expressed by customers was long, waiting times.

We just sit there, fuming at the phone, daring a real person to interrupt the cycle of 1980s rock ballads and recorded messages about your 'call being important' and pipe cheerfully:"You're through to Jan, how can I help you?"

But then again, it could be worse, you could actually work in a call centre.

You've probably got a few good tales of how you've broken gadgets. The Round-Up once dropped a mobile phone into a cup of tea while a colleague once admitted to dropping a phone into a urinal.

But this is nothing compared to the life of a police gadget out on the mean streets of Britain.

As one wise policeman told silicon.com this week: "Nothing is copper-proof," before adding "Police officers are not delicate flowers."

So what happens to these gadgets - in this case those of the BlackBerry variety?

Try getting chewed - and eaten. Getting run over by cars. And Land Rovers.

"A dog ate one," silicon.com was told by another policeman. "And you can't do much with that, the whole thing's gone and I don't think much would have survived that."

One supposes it depends a lot on which end it was retrieved from, but you may well be eating right now, so we'll move on.

But if you have a tale of gadget destruction that you really want to share, email editorial@silicon.com and we'll publish the best.

And finally this week, your regular smorgasbord of news nibbles and delectable dispatches:

Windows 7. It's not Vista and it's actually rather good. Did the Round-Up mention it's not Vista. Forget Vista, we want Windows 7, now.

It's not easy being green, so time to learn from the experts (sadly none of which are Kermit the Frog)

What are the top 10 technologies to keep an eye out for next year? Don't think, just click. Specifically, here.