After a week - yes a whole week - we still don’t have BT Broadband. “Yes, there was a problem, but that’s now fixed, no there hasn’t be a problem, no we don’t support that router, thank you for patience we are very busy at the moment….whirr, click”.

Do BT have the worst customer services of any faceless profit greedy global corporation?

In the meantime have gone out and bought a wi-fi modem which is GREAT.

What it does illustrate is the phenomenal reliance on ‘networks’ and the fact that there can’t be more than 1% of the population who understand how these networks actually work, or the routers and other components need to connect to them and make them work.

This should mean that network engineers are an extraordinary powerful group of workers. I will be interesting to see what might happen should they ever decide to go on strike for higher wages. Something that must cross the minds of people working to supply these technologies; and at an increasingly global level. What we now have is a corporation called BT that is dependant for its global power on a global workforce; what did Mr Marx say about capitalism building its own gravediggers? Only this time, unlike the localised example of Russia in 1917, the potential is there on a global scale - even the language is similar. We can phone India and talk to people in English.

If there isn’t a global telecommunications union, someone should set one up.