Madam,

My wife and I live in a cottage, just outside Talybont. Telephone and internet access has always been sporadic, to say the least. We were, however, excited to be informed last week that our service was to be updated and, as a result, the lines would be more resilient and the broad-band quicker. We also heard they’d run a fibre optic cable along poles to within spitting distance of our house. How lucky were we? Alas the ‘upgrade’ down-graded us and we’re left with no incoming phone line. We still have broadband, although at the normal speed of less than 0.5Mb, nowhere near the 14Mb we’re told the village gets. Open Reach have informed us an engineer will attend in nine days to fix the problem, unless of course it’s our fault, where there’ll be £130 ‘fine’. Isn’t it great to be living in this modern age?So think of us poor mortals, in the sticks, with no calls and internet speeds that take 10 minutes to load a web page. If you see a car parked on the side of the road in Talybont, with an angry looking guy in the driving seat, don’t worry, it’ll just be me getting my e-mails.

Yours etc

Anthony Morris

Talybont.