I've had a number of BT engineers visit the house to try to get DSL working. And they've done some work on the line to improve the signal strength. They conclude that it ain't going to happen; anecdotally, because the line is mainly buried, old, and waterlogged.

As they have reached this conclusion, they've marked my phone line on their database as "cannot get broadband" ... and that's it. They'll make no further attempt / take no further interest / decline any further order from me for broadband.

I cannot give a precise distance to the exchange; the straight line distance looks about 4km, by the roads probably 6 or 7. I know the house a half mile before mine in the direction of the exchange can get a slow broadband. And communities all around mine can get broadband, albeit in a number of cases, from different exchanges.

I'm in discussions with my MP, who's talking, as they do, to the useless secretary of state for business (his advice dated 12 months ago: wait for the market to provide, or maybe knit your own in your spare time - I kid you not), and also to BT regional management and the local development agency.

Concerned as I am with slow speeds, I'm more concerned that I cannot at home get broadband at all because there's insufficient regulation of the monopoly landline supplier. BT is not interested in fixing the twisted pair arriving at my house such that ADSL will work. The UK government is not interested in extending the Universal Service Obligation - the thing that forces the monopoly to connect you to the phone system for voice calls - to broadband.

HMG's insistence that broadband is of economic and social importance is just so much humbug and cant if they will not bother themselves to lift a regulatory finger to ensure that the whole population can access at least a basic service.

Perish the thought that the vast additional profit arising out of millions of DSL connections should be put towards improving the basic infrastructure.

But I can get 2kbps downstream (yup, that's right) through my 2.5 or 3G connection. Yay. I think I was getting better than that on dialup in about 1995.