Britain’s internet connections have fallen behind the Third World’s

SIR – In 2011 we returned home after a spell abroad and asked Sky to provide us with satellite TV, telephone and internet. It took BT Openreach (Letters, January 23) three months to reconnect us, giving Sky (as you cannot contact Openreach yourself) excuse after excuse about why they were taking so long.

We have just been backpacking in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. There was hardly a day when we were not able to connect with the internet even in some quite remote villages. Speeds averaged 2-5 Mbps. In England, we live barely 30 minutes from Plymouth, less than five minutes from a town of 6,000. On a good day, we might get 2Mbps. After 4pm, it slows to 1Mbp.

How can “Third World” countries fare better than the UK? M R Humphreys

Callington, Devon SIR – The demand for BT Openreach to be privatised is entirely mistaken. For the internet to be available at high speed in rural areas, where the traffic density would not provide an adequate return to the investor, is the same problem as providing a universal mail service across the country, independently of the cost of delivery of the letter.

The Government must make it a condition of the licence.

Just as in the case of the Royal Mail, if the Government, as a condition of granting BT Openreach the right to provide broadband, required it to provide a minimum of say 10Mbps everywhere, we would soon have the best service in the world.

Harry Fuchs

Flecknoe, Warwickshire SIR – The recommendations of the British Infrastructure Group of MPs on high-speed broadband are to be commended. My own tortuous but unavailing discussions with BT Openreach made it abundantly clear that there is pressure to increase data rates, but this is at the expense of reliability and availability of service.

BT’s policy is to disconnect (“drop out”) the service when it becomes overloaded, instead of gracefully degrading the data rate for existing connections. For most activities other than large downloads, data rate is less important than reliability.

In fact, for most tasks, the older, slow broadband was far more reliable, with drop-outs rare. This matters because, to reconnect, the subscriber must reset the router, which takes minutes and, particularly for financial transactions, leaves one in limbo.

After months of fruitless investigations, with many low-level apologies but no high-level action, BT’s final recommendation was for me to complain to Ofcom, which of course has no power to influence the way that BT conducts its business.

Yes, Britain needs greatly improved broadband coverage, but let it be available at all times. In the meantime, perhaps BT Openreach could hire fibre-optic capability from companies that do have suitable technology.

Paul Ives

East Horsley, Surrey