BT Infinity and #34 Scepticism

Monday was designated the day that BT would provide my Infinity at home.

Many reminders were sent (and received) warning me that I needed to be at home between 08:00 and 13:00 (possibly even longer) and that I needed to have power available at the 'Main' BT socket as this would be where the new equipment was located. I also had a delivery ready for the day of install.

New BT supplied modem

I got a call from the BT engineer at around 11:00 and was told that he'd be doing some work at the cabinet ahead of visit to the home and that this would be around 20 minutes or so later. The engineer arrived as he said he would. He was a pleasant guy who took his shoes off (snow here in London) and ran through what would be done, he was in fact able to put the new Openreach modem and Hub at one of the extension sockets which was far more convenient and the whole operation took I reckon less than an hour. Broadband speeds much improved and only thing I had to supply was an extra 13A outlet for the new Openreach modem (this connects between new BT faceplate on socket and  BT Homehub )  modem. I do now have a spare Homehub 3 and a load of ADSL filters which I understand are not required. The engineer told me that the fibre runs to BT cabinet (I estimate about quarter of a mile from here) and from there the connection is copper. Have tried various of the speed testers that you can find and maximum has been around 28 Mbps download - have noticed that the Powerline adapters do not cope as well as I'd expect. (about 14Mbps currently on this desktop with adapter that is designated 85 Mbps)  BT advise that the speed can improve after the initial install so will check over the next week or so. Must say I'm favourably impressed by the work and very pleased that I don't have to add further etherenet or power cabling as I had feared.

And if I'd been sceptical about the work I no longer am.. (number 34)

Lord Bragg

Defined as  a personal disposition toward doubt or incredulity of facts, persons, or institutions. In philosophy scepticism is considered  the idea that it may be impossible to know anything with absolute certainty. Ideas on Scepticism were formulated by ancient Greek philosophers.
Socrates said that the only thing he knew for certain was that he knew nothing.
Great radio programme from Melvyn Bragg on the topic here.