Online PR: News and Views from ://CORPORACT

Online PR & Communications Blog: Is BT up to Speed?

I am pleased to learn that within three years, new British Telecom will start upgrading its exchanges to its new technology - ADSL2+ which will provide broadband connections with speeds running at up to 24 megabits per second - three times the present limit of 8Mbps.

The connection speed issue has always been a touch controversial.  Neilson Online says that only 3 per cent of us live close enough to an exchange to even get up to the current 8Mbps.  It seems incredible to me that in areas of docklands, some exchanges can't carry broadband signals the necessary distance to even reach recently built prestigious riverside developments - and that's London.

Currently when the US wake up and go online the servers frequently slow down to crawling pace.  For sure, there are many of us who haven't been receiving the access speeds that we have been paying for.

BT are hoping that more than 850 exchanges should be ADSL2+ enabled by summer 2009, which means a potential end user base of around 13 million; more than 50% of end user lines enabled by Spring 2009.   

This should really help their BT Vision sales efforts and our online experience.   I really hope that this time the up to is really up to speed and BT doesn't fall short of its promises.

Joining the Dots and Adding the E's

Language is a universal characteristic of the human species.  Little is known of its origin and scientists generally accept that it has been in use for so long, that the length of time writing is known to have existed (7,900 years at the most) is trifling by comparison.  But compare the organic development of the English language to the impact made on it by the Internet, in what is a relatively short time span.

With the advent of the PC and the emergence of Apple Mac and Microsoft in the 1970’s, a “language” was developed by the then exclusive group of users known as nerds, hackers and spods.  It was not until the end of the eighties that the PC revolution really began taking off, and people began to realise just how useful the Internet could be and how easy it was to use.  It was no longer only the domain of computer experts

Vocabulary once only used by the nerds began to be adopted by everyone and as more people bought and used computers, the more phrases like “I’m just surfing the net” and “email or text me!” and more recently “blog” became commonplace.

But it is English that is now proliferating across the Internet.  English has always been a difficult language to learn.  For every rule there seems to be a mass of exceptions.  But there’s a reason why this is so: it’s a melting pot of many cultures.  The Romans, Saxons, Normans and Norse, all brought something to the mix of ingredients.  And now their contributions are being digitally enhanced.  Our language’s prehistory in the British Isles is a scaled down model of what’s currently happening to it in a global arena. 

The use of the English language in cyberspace is changing at such a confounding pace, that new words are being put into an Internet context daily and being incorporated into everyday speech. The Oxford English Dictionary must have a devil of a job updating each new edition. 

But these new words are only pings in cyberspace.  There are also numerous common acronyms, signs and abbreviations now used in computer chat and messaging such as GR&D, POS (grinning, running and ducking, parents over shoulder), AFK (away from keyboard), BRB (be right back), or :) (smile). 

So does the future hold an new, enriched global language commonly understood throughout the world?

WYBMADIITY (will you buy me a drink if I tell you)?