BT hasn’t put the money into broadband because it hasn’t been forced to

Lack of competition leaves rural Britain beyond the reach of fibre-optic delivery

Before we moved, we filled boxes. "Why are you packing those CDs?" asked my wife, eyeing them. "You've put them all on a hard disk, and with streaming services you can get what you want."

I opened my mouth to offer a devastating rebuttal. No sound emerged. In other news, it turns out that charity shops love secondhand CDs. I looked forward to streaming it all.We last moved in 2006, when I noted here how essential broadband had already become. (And also, hilariously, that six megabits was "adequate for nearly everything we do today". To be fair, the BBC's iPlayer was then more than two years from launch.)

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