What is bias when you have an ology?

As ever, there are reminders and new lessons to be learned from any relocation. One of those that stays with me is our telecoms story. As you will appreciate, our business is heavily reliant upon the internet, or more accurately a fast broadband connection. This was a feature of the initial requirements for any new premises and in truth is probably true of most residential requirements as well.

Initial confirmation from the estate agent suggested that the broadband at The Old Mill was “fine”, after all the previous tenants had run their business successfully. When we checked this with the provider formerly known as Buzby or Beatie, I was rather alarmed to see pretty much the slowest speed available, the equivalent of a carrier pigeon in the modern age. This was verified online and over the phone. After numerous attempts, Debbie managed to track down someone a little more helpful who suggested that we read the serial number on the existing box. This suggested, rather contradictorily that we would be able to have a fast fibre connection.

Anyway, as you will likely have experienced, we were sent a boxed box with too many cables, which we dutifully plugged in and hey presto… nada! Not a thing. The lights were on but nobody home (yes, we did follow the instructions properly). So a somewhat exasperated Debbie calls our contact and after some trials and tests, concludes that there is a fault and an engineer is sent to investigate and hopefully resolve.

Our preparations were made in advance of moving in, thanks to what I hope is a good landlord relationship. On the Saturday morning that the engineer arrived, (promptly to his credit) my assumptions about what keys were needed we found wanting and I apologised for my faux pas and for wasting his time. In conversation he asked about the problem and suggested that it may be as simple as having the connecting cable in the wrong (cancelled) port (socket). I asked if it were that simple, why wouldn’t the team on the phone have suggested that to us. Rightly or wrongly, he told me that due to regulation from OFCOM, his company formerly known as BT Openreach were thought to be biased towards BT customers and that was why they are now known as Openreach. He said that he suspects that due to concerns about being construed as biased towards any of the different tech providers that make the boxes, handsets and hubs they steer clear of resolving specific problems to do with the hardware or expressing a view, for fear of being deemed biased.

I have no idea if this is really the case, but on the one hand it doesn’t matter if it is or isn’t accurate, as this is the perceived experience. As a result, an engineer will be dispatched to resolve a problem that could probably be fixed much more quickly over the phone, or at least, if not fixed, attempted and ruled out.

When I regained access to the new office, I did as he had instructed me and lo, there was light… purple light and a high-speed connection. In fact, our IT guy says that it’s the fastest he has seen.

The irony is that privatisation of Beatie was meant to usher in competition. Whilst at home you might have a few choices about your broadband, in practice a bloke with a typewriter could have tendered for our new office telecoms as BT were the only practical option for a high-speed connection. Has privatisation of telecoms really worked? I know we are all spending a lot on mobile phones and broadband along with all the associated apps and subscriptions, but there are many times when I am not convinced that we have a more competitive market are you?