DIARY: How good is your phone network ... well how long is a piece of string?

A fortnight ago I told you that Text 100’s new consumer agency Joe

Public was using cans of beans as promotional items.

But it seems that the cans may be used more practically after the agency

had problems with the service offered by British Telecom.

For the last three weeks Joe Public’s office has been open, but after a

fortnight the BT lines went down, forcing the agency to resort to

mobiles.

While BT is not a Text client, mobile network provider Orange is. Maybe

Orange will take pity and give Joe Public boss Matthew Wood cheap

rates.

Even so, the technology experts have turned to basic physics and are

using the promotional baked bean tin gimmicks to rescue them. Wood

initially told me that the cans, complete with bar-codes ’epitomises a

consumer product and defines our position as a consumer agency’.

Astro-physics expert Wood tells me he is now using the cans for a less

symbolic purpose. His internal phone network is ’a simple piece of

string attached to two empty baked bean tins’.

Great for internal communications but not too effective for external

calls