A bit of black humour for you, from the IrelandOffline forums. This is a true story.
“This chap explained to my Dad that one of the main reasons for the slowness of technologies like ADSL getting rolled out in Ireland was because of (hinderances) like the weather … My dad went on to tell him about Canada. …”
“Yer man of course had no answer to this and eventually he gave in and admitted that Eircom are failing in so many areas that he’s actively seeking employment elsewhere. He’s had his fill of being managed by so many different managers and being told different things from different people every day and and (every) time he’s tried to be helpful to a customer by bringing the matter up with someone senior he gets fobbed off to some other manager and so on and so forth until in the end he has no option but to give up and just tell the customer there is nothing he can do even though he can do it but not without permission and this permission is impossible to get.”
There’s plenty more like this. “The bad weather in Ireland prevents Eircom from rolling out DSL”. You can only laugh. The best bit is, of course, that DSL is basically a modem and a few DSLAMs installed in the exchange.
Maybe that’s why it’s a problem? Could be Eircom forgot to install a roof on their exchanges — and telco equipment typically is not at its best when fully exposed to the elements. sounds likely enough to me…