My wife and I recently moved to Devon. Although we are in an area where broadband is available, BT are unable to provide a broadband connection as there is a cable splitter on the line. They will not do the work to remedy the situation because it will be too costly. We also happen to be in a 3G black hole, so we can't use a mobile connection. Joe Mulvey
BT says all its Devon exchanges now have broadband, but it seems your phone line has been DACSed to provide two lines from one. There's a good guide to that here. BT could still give you your line back and use DACS on someone else's line, if they don't have broadband. Otherwise you could use a dial-up connection with a maximum speed of 33.6kbps, or come to a more formal sharing arrangement with your neighbour, who is currently lending you his Wi-Fi.
In the long term, there are other possibilities for rural broadband. The main ones are WiMax, which is a kind of long-range Wi-Fi, and Power Line Carrier (PLC), which sends broadband over mains electricity cables. Intel is a strong WiMax backer and will soon enable dual Wi-Fi and WiMax capabilities in cheap notebook PCs using its Echo Peak technology. It would also be simple and effective -- but expensive -- to put a WiMax mast on top of every BT exchange. The UK WiMax rollout is now going ahead: check the freedom4.com site (formerly Pipex Wireless) for progress. Freedom4 owns a national licence that enables it to provide WiMax.
PLC broadband is making slow progress: it seems to have been going nowhere for more than a decade. However, it does work well within the home, using standard HomePlug devices.
One thing I can't recommend is a satellite connection: these are slow and expensive, and you still need a dial-up connection for the "back channel". Also, the system suffers from latency problems as signals have to go into space and back.
