For the last 24 hours I've had connectivity issues through my ADSL connection to the Internet.

The reason for this is currently not clear (it has been fine for months), but I am unfortunte enough to be right on the borderline of the acceptable distance for 512Kbps, at over 6km from the exchange.

Ironically, I'm not that far from the center of a major town, just a couple of miles, but the distance to the exchange is much further.

This is a problem, not just currently for me, but also in the long term if we expect more and more people to be connected to the Internet and if we expect people to use their Internet connections for more than just web browsing. VoIP is an obvious part of this. Companies - even British Telecom (the main phone, and physical cable company in the UK) are promoting VoIP, but that isn't going to work without an Internet connection.