Reading the latest technology topic from Geoff Varrall of RTT on the development of TV serviced by radio waves against the telephone connected by cable, I was struck by my personal experiences over the past couple of months with wireless connectivity.

I live within the M25 in a commuter town in Surrey but have appalling mobile phone reception at home. I am also unable to get BT fast broadband because initially we were too far from the exchange and now there are too many people wanting it.

Conversely, I have been renovating a property in the Purbeck area of Dorset where I have excellent mobile phone reception and superfast broadband into the home. Oh, the joy of fast downloads!

What Varrall discusses in his topic is where communication technology is heading and at what speed.

He believes that it is a’ vanishing minority’ that still have fixed line telephones. Is this true? I know that people moving house today, especially in London, rarely sign up for a landline but I would guess that the majority of the country still relies on having a fixed phone in the home.

On the TV front there is still a battle between terrestrial delivered through the UHF band and streaming services via cable. Being a low-level TV watcher I have stuck with aerial delivered content in both places – but once again Dorset wins on quality, even though the signal comes across the Solent from the Isle of Wight. The signal coming from Crystal Palace across SW London is subject to more degradation and is likely to push me to cable in the near future.

However, Varrall believes that we may well be looking to the heavens in the future for efficient delivery of media to the home. He suggests that using satellites is the way forward now that the allocation of bandwidths has changed, launch costs have lowered and the cost of the hardware itself.

I would say it is a case of “watch this space”!