We have reached a new low in this saga. Late on Monday, week after the last fail, OpenReach (in the form of some poor soul in a callcenter in a faraway land) phoned to make a new appointment to complete the work. And even though the work at the house has been completed, they insisted I have to be present for this … then never showed up.

Having to be at the house yesterday was very inconvenient, but I really, really, want this to be over with. The Uber Complex Chief Engineer (if you have not read the previous instalments of this saga now in it’s fourth month, this is an official title) was to be here yesterday in an 8am - 1pm slot. At 12.37pm I received a machine generated text informing me that if the engineer is not at the property (he was not) ‘they might be working on our network. Our engineer will still need an access to your property’.

I was immediately suspicious of the modal ‘might’ here, for implicit in a ‘might’ is always ‘may not’, and we only say ‘might’ when we can’t say ‘is’. Nevertheless I waited for the rest of the day, just in case. As a result, I have lost a full day I could have really done without losing, and the fault is still there (as the red light on the ONT tells me).

But I did put some of the time to a ‘good’ use, and wrote a long and detailed complaint to OFCOM. Not to fix my case, for that is beneath the regulator, but to launch an investigation into the whole shambolic OpenReach fibre rollout in the view of their monopolistic position. They really are not fit to be responsible for the Internet backbone of this country.

We will see, but since I have a good, long, detailed letter already written, it needs only small tweaks before it goes to my MP and MSPs, and I am ready to keep stirring this pot until something changes. Thing is, like all essential utilities, the Internet infrastructure should be in national ownership, and OpenReach are making the case for this very strong.

Anyway, if your experience with OpenReach has also been poor, please do write to OFCOM, not to intervene in your own case (they don’t do that, you are better writing to a newspaper, like the Guardian — on my TODO list), but asking the regulator to investigate the evident abuse of OpenReach’s monopolistic position in the market and it’s implications for the country as a whole.