A professional in rural Oxfordshire has greeted faster broadband with mixed feelings after discovering that his colleagues can now see exactly when he is not listening.
For years, freelance consultant Adrian Cole enjoyed a respected technical limitation. His connection froze at useful moments, his camera remained understandably unavailable and important questions occasionally disappeared into the countryside.
The new fibre service has removed this entire professional ecosystem. His video is crisp, his audio is immediate and the sentence “I think you’re breaking up” now requires a level of acting he did not anticipate needing in consultancy.
Cole says the upgrade has also allowed clients to send larger files containing the same unclear instructions. Previously a presentation might take several minutes to arrive, giving everyone time to reconsider. It now arrives before regret can intervene.
His household is delighted to stream simultaneously. Cole is less pleased that broadband speed has exposed the true bottleneck in his business, which appears to be him.
He has explored other ways to protect thinking time. A planned network interruption was rejected by his wife, who was watching something. He is now considering the radical measure of declining a meeting, although this remains untested in his region.
