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Too Much Free Time

by Mike Masnick

Wed, Oct 13th 2004 9:24am





BT's Stunning Discovery: Routers!

from the will-they-patent-the-idea? dept

A few years back, BT made quite a bit of news for claiming they owned a patent on hyperlinks and proceeded to sue some ISPs for daring to allow hyperlinks to happen without, you know, paying BT their tithe. Well, it appears that, once again, BT is a bit behind the ball. While (we hope) they're not talking about patenting anything, it appears that the folks at BT have just discovered that routers can help you use more than one computer on a single internet connection. Cisco must be thrilled. According to the announcement: "The frustration, up until now, has been that only one could ever be used at any one time - This is set to change." I'd guess that frustration was limited to clueless BT employees who couldn't be bothered to go down to the local electronics store (or, well, call up a website) and see the stacks and stacks of routers. Next thing you know, they'll tell us about this amazing "magic" wireless technology that lets you connect more than one computer without wires!

4 Comments | Leave a Comment

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  1.  
    identicon
    BoilerBob, Oct 13th, 2004 @ 11:42am

    2 Count 'em 2

    With a Voyager 205 customers can connect two computers
    Wow 2 whole ports. What will the think of next!

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    identicon
    Mikester, Oct 13th, 2004 @ 3:46pm

    pay per click

    Of course they couldn't check out da Intraweb for info on routers, the employees would probably have to pay BT $ for each hyperlink they clicked on.
    :p

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    identicon
    Tony Gentile, Oct 14th, 2004 @ 12:33am

    Whaaa?!

    Without wires? That's craaaazy talk. ;)

    Speaking of clueless... I read an article this morning about social networking... appearantly users and VC's are flocking (yea, flocking, like birds) to them. They're gonna be huge. Who knew.

    My fingers are crossed that these folks eventually get a feed reader and keep up on their own industries.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    euman, Oct 14th, 2004 @ 2:03am

    Come on!

    BT are not stupid. They know their market - just because you know about routers doesn't mean the huge numbers of their customers do. Never underestimate the ignorance of people, and of course remember they are selling in the UK where the electronics market is entirely different from the US - routers are not piled high in the shops, only tech savvy people use routers.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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