It took Me nearly a year to get our bt connection from the nearest exchange.
Excuses -We have to wait for the cable to be ordered from China and it is a slow boat that brings it over
You had shower of rain followed by- some snow fell on one day
and our Liverpool contractors dont work in inclement weather

Terry Morgan, Milford Haven, wales

I agree that poor Old BT never cease to get a beating. That said my village look far too long to get ADSL because BT operated the scheme where so many people had to register before they would install the equipment (was there ever a more cynical plot?).
This lady could have tried the 3G "mobile broadband" services offered with a fixed cost. However my experience is that unless you are slap bang in the City of London then the coverage is a complete joke (so why did the Telcos pay £20Bn for the licences?).

Simon , Tunbridge Wells, UK

I'm sure BT did all that work because of the possibility of gaining more customers is the area.

Chris , Chatham, Kent

Yes yes, aren't BT terrible?

News articles like this make me angry, because the writer obviously doesn't have any idea what he is talking about.

Does he even begin to understand the logistics involved in laying high-speed telephony and data cables that never existed before? You can't just bang some poles into the ground, and dangle some wire between them.

Dave, Manchester,

First of all the cost - $80,000 (not in UK but UK citizen), as the previous comment mentioned what about satellite? Satelite not only gets you superb results but can be shared by several households. Which leads me to think that it is just one person and her business - the travel agency. How is it that BT did not option this into the cost? How come, if she is running a business BT said she would nave this option and, she is not finding other options.
How come they offer such a thing? I have lived and travelled all over Asia and find that this is not a problem. ADSL (although not as superior as cable broadband) allows you to operate reasonably smoothly and this in many circumstances, is a shared satellite connection with anything up to 20 users, many of which share my $350 'Desktop' server for their meagre business interests.
Ms Brackpool should count her lucky stars and chide herself for being so technically inept in light of "online travel agency", and the pic depicting her as IT savvy

GlennMalcolm, Saigon, Vietnam

Perhaps I have misunderstood her comments. It sounds to me that she was frustrated that it took so long, but was grateful once it was completed. After reading comments from others about not being able to get the service, I can understand their frustrations, as to why she was able to get it. As for satellite perhaps the lady did not know it was available Most people here in the States don’t know that the Internet is available vie Satellite. For what ever reason that BT did it, I say, “Hat off, and a job well done”.

Richard, Marietta, Ga, U.S.A.

Well that's gratitude for you! BT move Heaven and Earth to get this woman connected and what do they get? This!

Huw, Swansea,

She should have used adblock and SeaMonkey or Firefox in the meantime. Eliminating all the junk from the web makes it 20x faster just by itself. Makes it work better on older PCs too! Waiting for ads to load doesn't do the user any good, so why load them at all? Just to enrich some distant ad hosting company? No thanks...

Jason Kennerly, Tempe, Arizona

BT is still running like a nationalised industry. It should be open to full competition.

Johnny Norfolk, Mileham Norfolk,

As Mrs Brackpool's need for broadband was business critical,
I wonder whether she could have made use of a Satellite Connection to the internet for a year. Quick search has turned up various 6 month contracts at about £20 a month. Also, since Swaffham is only around than 3 miles away as the crow flies, it would cost about £500 to buy equipment for a wireless link.

Jamie, London, England

Yet another huge amount of the countryside dug up and destroyed just so someone can get on the internet. Will we ever learn. She should have done as she said and got another job instead of ruining yet more of this country for the sake of personal gain.

OSJ, Rutland

OSJ, Ankara,

She should thank herself lucky. Our large village had to prove to BT that there was a high enough demand to warrant Broadband before they enabled it at the exchange (which is actually in the village)
Took a year before it was enabled.

Phill Barlow, The Wirral, England

How come that in Norfolk BT spent this amount on one person, but in the rest of the country (I only live 8 miles from Perth) we will never have cable and will be stuck with the same BT copper wires that we've always had, as BT won't allow unbundling of local loops?

David Leslie, Perth, Scotland

this work cost £40000 the customer has not paid a penny. gas,electricity and water would have charged the customer for this work but not BT, and she has the front to complain. this lady could now go to a service provider and silly BT get nothing, call this far competition!

Alice louis, suffolk,

We were regretfully subscribed to NTL for many years for telephone and TV, but had to rely on a dial up connection through AOL for our internet needs. On several occasions we requested a cable broadband service only to be told that the facility was 'not yet' available in our area, even though we live on a main thoroughfare through the city.

With the arrival of set-top boxes which provided more channels than NTL for free, and our last conversation with NTL in which we were basically told to 'deal with it'. we wished them a 'fond' farewell and switched to BT who had our broadband sorted within a week.

Fair play to BT for pulling out the stops to help Suzanne Brackpool even if it did take considerable time. NTL would simply had told her to move house

Paul Ritchie, Southampton,

The villagers of Isfield in East Sussex have been trying for many years to obtain Broadband through BT but have been told that, because there is an alternative commercial company willing to provide this service, albeit at a very expensive price, then BT are not interested!
Properties in the area are not selling once potential buyers find that there is no BT Broadband and are not willing to pay 'over the odds' for the alternative service.
Children are having to stay after school to use the school computer for their homework and farms and businesses are unable to expand again without the easy accessibility of Broadband.
Good Luck to Mrs Brackpool...........l just wish we were all as lucky as she is !!

Dr B. Penhaligan, Isfield, East Sussex, U.K