theAlScott.com / Blog

Living in the House of the Lord… and dealing with His crappy infrastructure. | October 17, 2009

At the moment I am living in a flat inside a converted church. It has upsides; I live right near all the shops and transport links which is convenient, the building itself is quite lovely and also secure. It also has downsides though. The primary downside is that even though it’s barely 100 years old and is in a town with more churches than you could shake a stick at, it is a listed building. Now being listed didn’t stop the council erecting a block of council flats next to it, but it has stopped the phone companies from being able to upgrade the main phone line coming into the building, which was originally installed some time in the 1930′s. There are some 15 flats in this building, all of which are are coming off the same primary geriatric line.

Why do I care? Because the main effect this has is on the internet. I can’t get more than a 2Mb connection, and even then the only chance I would have of actually getting near my 2Mb would be if every other resident in the building disconnected from the internet. On average it floats somewhere around 700Kb, but on weekends and evenings it drops right down to a crawl because of the stress on the lines. For a net-junky like me who relies on the web for both entertainment and employment it is hugely frustrating.

I am very keen on preserving cultural heritage and historic places, but putting in a new phone line isn’t quite like putting up neon signs and satellite dishes, or spraypainting the front of the building glow-in-the-dark pink. We need to embrace our heritage without letting it stop us from embracing the future.