The USC doesn't work - I tried with #moat

I did my best with my impoverished kit to record what happened last night. A manhunt was going on near to our neighbourhood (my friends were up there buying a combine harvester at lunchtime and had phoned me to ask for directions from Google Maps as the sat nav couldn't find the postcode). Therefore, I had a very close interest in the area yesterday.

The connection I was on at the time, which I managed to record at 1.96Mbps down and a mere 400kbps up, ie the proposed USC, ***FAILED*** utterly to cope with today's apps.

This blog post can be read at http://5tth.blogspot.com

This was the speed test I did yesterday

before the story become what it did.

I then proceeded to try and watch the unfolding of the #moat gate drama. Without turning on a TV.

If you follow me on Twitter, you will see I posted links to the Real Radio interview with Gazza, talked about 5Live radio, was blatantly watching Sky News HD (I do not have a Sky pot), and was also trying to watch BBC News 24 whilst listening to Real Radio and others to get the latest news. Online, on the above connection.

I think that would be a fairly standard news consumption for a major breaking news story. I'm not a journalist. Just a person who spent hours as a baby and adult nr the River Coquet, and who had friends who unwittingly found themsleves in the vicinity. Or who was interested. There were THOUSANDS of people on twitter, radio stations, TV etc who could claim that level of interest and more last night.

I do NOT have a video of the farce that was the 2Mbps connection when I tried to stream Sky, BBC News and Radio5, real radio etc, but I do have a video of much earlier in the day. No-one could accuse me of trying to push the connection to the limits (which perhaps you might like to argue I was later on in the night, as a standard consumer endeavouring to follow a breaking story on my doorstep).

All I can say is this:

If you think 2Mbps in a rural area will work, it bloody won't. And if you think FTTC will work, then you have failed to understand what WE, the people, intend to do in the future....if a story like this breaks on my doorstep, and I am drowning in journos screwing up the mobile network, then I'll be uploading this to citizentube.com over my own fat pipe (not a limited one) in full HD cos my iphone can do that TODAY.

(P.S. Please note: it has taken me nigh on an hour and a half to write this blog post because of the uploads that should have taken about 5-8 mins on a decent connection. No wonder my productivity as an SME is dropping..... I am still battling the video upload, it may turn up later - UGH) Please come back and watch it.

Also posted on 5tth.blogspot.com