Having experienced living in the country, I can tell you that one major disadvantage is internet speed. For months I was stuck on a 512Kbits “broadband” connection (you read it correctly: KILOBITS!).

Luckily I realised that I lived close enough to a telephone exchange to be getting speeds that should be theoretically higher (around 3Mbits), so I decided to get BT’s broadband accelerator (basically a new BT master socket faceplate which filters out noise on the bellwire). And voila! My speed indeed went to a pretty stable 2.5 – 3 Mbps. Installing the new faceplate took seconds, and only a few hours later the connection speed had increased effectively by 6x.

So, the moral of the story is: before shunning your internet speeds and complaining to BT and the like, get a BT broadband accelerator. They are free for all BT Broadband customers (excluding Postage and Packaging), and it’s worth a try even if you don’t think it would make any difference

Link: BT BB Accelerator