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Data rates? Of course people care, both wired and wireless users!

As the world and technology become more complex, greater efforts are expended to try and hide that complexity from those who don't want, or who aren't encouraged, to deal with it. But under the bonnet of that idea lurk a multitude of motivations.

This week sees BT announcing that end users don't care about how fast their broadband connection is running. Instead, argues one of BT Wholesale's bosses, they care about the applications.

Well, yes, if the word "yes" actually means "Up to a point, Lord Copper" as in Evelyn Waugh's novel, Scoop. Or, to put it another way, no!

Just as car engines are now shrouded in plastic and inaccessible to anyone without the right tools, so BT is attempting to smother its lack of interest in developing and offering faster broadband speeds. Those who are remain connected to a BT-owned, unbundled line -- which is almost everyone -- can only ever get a link that's as fast as BT wants to make it.

Meanwhile, unbundled lines are being offered at much higher speeds than BT's ADSL Max, which runs at some eight megabits per second.

Of course, you only get that speed if you live inside the exchange, the wind is in the right direction, and no-one else is using the network at the time. Live in the countryside, and you're at the mercy of dry joints, lines swinging about in the breeze several miles from the exchange, and mis-diagnosis of low broadband speeds.

Subscribers in one area of Cumbria are still living with a maximum data rate of 512 kilobits per second, and in some cases, even lower than that. Not for them are the joys of voice over IP, let alone IPTV.

And what of those lucky denizens of the city? Packed cheek by jowl, they at least have an exchange not too far away. But as broadband usage grows, so too do contention ratios, and bandwidth falls.

People notice poor data rates. They might care about the applications more than the raw speed, but if you can't get the applications to them, the data rate is what they care about. And right now, the picture is by no means as rosy as BT would like us to believe.

Of course, it would be uncharitable to conclude that the company has little intention of building a fibre network out to the home or increasing rates using technology that aggregates copper connections, simply because it's too expensive. But it's hard not to be uncharitable, when smug statements emanate from a company in a near-monopolistic position.

Not everyone wants to drive at 150mph. But they want to get to 70mph quickly and with capacity to spare.