Wifi

Q. I am not expected to pay rent at the cottage which has been lent to me by a super-kind friend-of-a-friend who stepped in when she heard I would be homeless in the short-term. Unfortunately she didn’t mention that, although there is wifi in the cottage, the signal is so patchy it effectively means I can’t work here. Even mobile phone calls keep cutting out and I have to walk for a mile up a hill to be able to speak to anyone. How can I, without seeming ungrateful, get across the message that, generous as she has been, in 2020 a cottage without reliable wifi is no good to anyone except a hermit? — Name and address withheld A. Rather than grumbling, why not take the reins on this issue and ring the broadband provider to see what the difficulties are?

In the recent debate over Britain’s 5G infrastructure, one dog didn’t bark in the night. At no point did anyone dare suggest that, regardless of the supplier, upgrading our mobile networks to 5G might be premature. In saner parts of the economy, an investment requires something called a ‘use case’ or a cost-benefit analysis. In other words, you need to provide some immediate benefits which will arise as a result of your investment. Anything that can be dressed up as next-generation technology is somehow spared that tedious level of scrutiny. All it takes is for the techno-consulting complex to claim that ‘without this we risk being left behind’ and next thing you know there’s a blank cheque.