There's good news and bad news.
Ofcom – the UK regulator has got back to my complaint yesterday about the rip-off Wi-Fi hotspot market where BT and T-Mobile charge a ludicrous £6 an hour for Net access for the simple reason that no one else is challenging them.
That was the good news.
The bad news is that I might as well have ran full-pelt at my lounge wall for all the good it's done. This was the response:
Dear Mr McCarthy
Thank you for contacting Ofcom via our website.
Wi-fi is still – relatively – in its infancy. We are monitoring developments in this market and, while we see no clear case for intervention given the immaturity of the market and the emergence of new technologies and new competitors, would not rule this out at a later point if we felt this was appropriate and necessary.
Yours sincerely
Rachel Bennett
Telecoms Support
contact@ofcom.org.uk
What is that? It's good to see the old “leave it alone until it starts shooting people” culture has carried over from Oftel.
As a result, I would really, really urge people reading this to also complain to Ofcom using this link: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/internet/isp/cancelled/adr_unhappy/?itemid=286661
If enough of you complain – and tell me you have complained (provide me with the reference number), I will chase this up and push the issue into the mainstream media where Ofcom won't be able to dismiss it so out-of-hand.
Router madness
Connected to which, I am going to buy a new wireless router in a minute from Fon.com. Not only will it come with Fon software already on it – meaning others can use the network for free and securely – but Fon is actually offering these routers are a discount. Wonderful.
What isn't so wonderful is the £10 I just handed over to Computer Assistance for looking at my old wireless router. Get this: I turned up just now and they said the router was dead, there was nothing I could do.
Fortunately the guy that looked at it was there so I asked him what he'd tried, what he thought might be the issue. This is what he told me: “Yeah, I couldn't get the light on at all. I plugged the cable in, and couldn't get an IP address or anything.”
I said: “You just plugged the Ethernet cable in and it didn't work?”
“Yeah. It's dead.”
“Well did you look at replacing the Ethernet component?”
“Not much point. A new one would cost almost as much as a new router.”
Excuse me but: No it fucking wouldn't. If you had an old router lying about, why not simply strip and switch parts? And a wireless router with four Ethernet ports is not exactly a dirt-cheap item. Even if it was, I would expect a computer shop to fix it because, you know, that what computer shops are supposed to do.
So I cough up £10 for some monkey to plug a cable into a router and go “the light's not on”. I'm going to take it apart tonight see if I can fix it. Knew I should have done that when it went wrong a fortnight ago.
