A scene from the last BT strategy meeting

BT is no longer interested in pimpin’ your broadband; its media boffins have thought of another ingenious way to ‘get down’ with ‘the kids’: appropriate a jaunty Sam Sparro song title into your lastest media campaign.

How do they do it? I wish I possessed merely a fraction of BT’s creative expertise.

So anyway, the BT ‘Black and Gold’ (only joking), the BT ‘21st Century Life’ report dropped into my inbox this morning with a running man and a blur of dayglo MC Hammer pants. Despite the obvious steal in the title, some interesting facts are contained therein.

I will summarise them just for you dear reader:

• In 1998, only 14% of internet users spent between six and ten hours online. In 2008 this figure jumped to 27%, with a further 23% spending between 11 to 30 hours online.

• 19% of internet users now visit more than 20 different sites in a week.

• In 1998, only 2% of internet users shopped online. Over the last ten years, that figure has rocketed to 41%. 48% of that shopping activity is for flights, while 42% is for clothes. Only 19% of us do our weekly grocery shop online.

• 25% of internet users have tried social networking. Unsurprisingly, the uptake is most prominent in 16 -24 year olds (58%). Downloading music is still a more popular net activity than social networking however, as is listening to internet radio.

• Broadband internet is now in 44% of UK households. Only 6% still use dial-up connections.

• Remarkably, there’s more face to face communication going on in 2008 than 1998, with 68% of BT customers engaging in the lost art of verbal conversation (51% in 1998).

• Fixed line telephone use is down to just 12% in 2008, usurped by mobile phone use, email and face to face conversations.

• Workers check their email an average of 4.9 times per hour.

• When asked how people would improve the internet, the top response was to make it faster.

• A major worry in 2008 is fraud, with 27% of internet users citing this as the single most important area for improvement.

 Right on!

Having entertained statues of John Lennon, art installations sympathetically dedicated to America’s loss during 9/11 and rock concerts by both the Manic Street Preachers and now defunct US supergroup Audioslave, Cuba is about to experience a new phase in 21st century cultural development.

Broadband is coming to Cuba, bueno!

The service will be delivered via undersea fibre optic cable from Venezuela, completely bypassing the US. A 1500 kilometre cable is to be laid connecting Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and Trinidad to the rest of the world, using La Guaira as the conduit.

Cuba currently relies heavily on high-latency, lo-fidelity satellite access, but this new pipeline with allow for high speed broadband capabilities. With the state loosening its grip on citizens by allowing mobile phones and PCs to be imported for home use, public demand for broadband services is strong.

The clamour for popular culture in Havana, Santa Clara and all the way down to the Bayamo has become fervent. In May 2005, Audioslave played a free show to a crowd of over 50,000 star struck fans in Havana’s sprawling, open air La Tribuna Antimperialista José Martí plaza (loosely translated as ‘The House of Anti-Imperialism’, which surely makes the Milton Keynes Bowl sound pretty meaningless by comparison).

Similarly, the Manic Street Preachers entertained a 5000 strong crowd at the equally brilliantly named ‘Karl Marx Theatre’, where the most expensive seats in the house cost 25 cents (17 pence) each.

CVG Telecom (Corporación Venezolana de Guyana) and ETC (Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba) will be implementing the bulk of Cuba’s broadband infrastructure, which aims to improve on the current slow and unreliable dial-up access.

 A BT technician yesterday….

Their words, not mine.

It would seem a certain leading communications provider has enlisted the help of a PR firm from 1998. But let’s not dwell on that. I’m hip to this street jive anyway.

So what does this exciting, youth oriented campaign entail exactly?

Is Tim Westwood going to invite himself over and transform your lousy dial-up connection into a chromed out, warp speed broadband line with one hearty ‘big dogs big dogs here comes another banger’?

No.

Is Xzibit likely to pop round, rifle through your bins, let you know (like a ghetto Gillian McKeith) you’re eating too many ready meals, then turn your PC monitor into a gold plated 72 inch plasma screen with additional taser guns?

Negative.

In actuality, BT plan to ‘pimp’ your broadband in the following way (no rappers or fake MCs involved):

“BT’s Home IT Support service has launched BT Broadband Accelerator, a £90 home visit service to help improve the performance of customers’ computers and speed up their broadband connection.”

Perhaps BT chose to lead with the phrase ‘pimp’ on their press release because it’s only pimps who can afford this service?

However, it gets better:

“Customers are refunded if a 0.5Mb improvement on speed is not achieved.”

That’s more like it. Should you pay for this service and not receive an improvement of 0.5Mb on your connection speed, the £90 fee will be winging its way back to you faster than a fully loaded Nissan Micra.

Let’s face it though, 0.5Mb shouldn’t be too demanding an ask of a trained technician, so it’s unlikely any subscribers to this service will ever see a refund.

I’m yet to read anything in the small print suggesting it will be Starsky and Hutch’s faithful informant Huggy Bear carrying out the repairs, but I’ve still a few pages to go, so I’ll let you know.