On Friday, a press release landed in my mailbox which made me ask exactly what do people expect from low cost services. It contains a quote from an individual describing himself as a “business owner” who had a problem with his broadband service provider who was in dispute with its supplier. Apparently he operates an “Internet retail business” and says that his business would have gone under if his broadband service had been down for six weeks.

This is where I have a problem.. How can a business have no contingency plans in place to cope with a fairly sizeable risk that a single broadband connection could be down for an extended time period? Are they hosting their website on the end of their £10.99 DSL line? If you run a business which is so dependent on your connection, then get a leased line, or at least multiple broadband connections with different providers, and ideally different technologies.