The last few weeks have been full of news. So the readers of this column could be forgiven for having missed the fact that free wifi is being provided in the centre of Dorchester.

By itself, this may seem a modest advance. But it is part of a larger picture. Gradually, West Dorset is being equipped with high speed broadband and the latest mobile technology.

It won't be long now before this process is completed, with a universal service obligation to provide at least 10 mbps of broadband and the completion of the first 5G mobile network.

The economic importance of connecting West Dorset in these ways is enormous.

But I have discovered two less palatable truths.

The first is that, when things improve because a need (like the need for super fast broadband) is met in one place this makes the inhabitants of a place next door even more concerned than they were before.

The result is that, when something is actually getting quite rapidly better, the feeling that there is a problem intensifies.

One might call this the 'proximity pang'.

But the second phenomenon that has come to light is much less inevitable.

The broadband rollout has shown that the systems within BT Openreach just aren't good enough.

I should make it clear that the particular, long suffering individuals at BT Openreach with whom I have been engaged in what must seem to them an endlessly aggravating correspondence has been unfailingly helpful. But I have lost count of the number of times on which I have discovered that the information reaching the BT Openreach high-command does not match the reality on the ground.

It is an irony that an organisation devoted to enabling the rest of us to communicate better is so incompetent when it comes to communicating with itself.