Let’s imagine for a second that every time a prayer is uttered a message is sent to God (OK, so it’s a pretty literal interpretation of the act of worship, but I’m no theologist). Then add to that those informal asides in which so many people call for His intervention over even the most trivial matter and it’s pretty clear that God would have His work cut out managing his inbox – and that His spam filter would be working overtime 24/7.
Let’s also imagine for a second that published broadband speeds are accurate and ask, ‘If God used broadband, which package would He go with?’
Well, first of all, He’d need to look at network speeds and download limits. In both cases, He would have to have a view of how many messages reach Him on a monthly basis and how fast He wants to be able to read them.
Given that up to four billion people worldwide claim to be religious and, depending on which god you worship (Suspend disbelief slightly further and let’s say – for the sake of argument – that there is one god with many faces. The fact that He is referred to as God here is not a judgement on their relative merits, it’s just a handy shorthand), prayers might be said at least five times a day, it’s pretty obvious that He would need a very robust package – top of the range in fact.
Add to that the wide range of mass religious events that take place every year then it’s obvious that His broadband would need to be able to cope with some pretty significant spikes in traffic.
The answer on download speed then would have to be ‘How fast does it get?’, whilst an unlimited download package would be a must.
Another question to ponder would be whether to go with ADSL (which uses traditional phone lines and clever software) or cable (which uses ultra fast fibre optics and clever software). Well, apart from the obvious logistical problem with laying cable between some earth bound exchange and ‘God’s house’ (Let’s not get into that debate), there is also the thorny issue of omnipotence. If He is everywhere, where do you put the cable? ADSL it is then.
Finally, you would have to think about what extra benefits come with the package. Presumably (and we’re back to omnipotence again) a free wireless router would be useful, and given that He moves in mysterious ways, some kind of mobile broadband option would be quite handy too (provided He can get a signal).
Security would also be a major concern. He certainly wouldn’t want anyone ‘undesirable’ to be tapping into His broadband and any chance of someone spoofing his Gmail account would surely be a no-no...
So, what would the options be? Well, I think we can rule out Demon for starters. On the face of it Virgin ticks all the right boxes. It is super fast and offers an unlimited package for £51 a month (Let’s face it; surely they’d do a deal on the subs, in exchange for a testimonial). However, it is cable broadband, so maybe not.
Sky is another one with a rather appropriate name. Add to that the fact that is comes with a free router and all manner of security features and it seems OK. Sadly, though it might fall down on download speed – 16Mb is the quickest (compared with 50Mb from Virgin).
Beyond that, it’s really pretty much of a muchness but, on balance, I’d probably suggest O2. Oxygen is, after all, everywhere – like Him - so the name would be acceptable. On top of that, it offers unlimited downloads at up to 20Mb, a free router and free set up along with all the security He’d need. Finally, of course, signing up with O2 would also open the door to discounted mobile broadband - just about covering all the bases, and by my reckoning costing a little over £30 a month in total.
So, there you have it. Based on feeble human intelligence, if God had broadband it would be O2 broadband.
Or not as the case may be. In fact, a (very) crude calculation based on the traffic estimates above (and assuming the average email would be say 50Kb) points out that God would need truly stellar broadband performance.
That is, if four billion people pray on average five times a day, that's 20 billion messages per day. At 50Kb each, that’s a total download of one million Gb per day. There are 86,400 seconds in a day so, assuming steady traffic over 24 hours, He would need a broadband package weighing in with download speeds of about 11Gb per second. Even Bournemouth’s proposed 100MBps broadband would require over 100 parallel connections to cover the demand – and He’d have to move to Bournemouth to get it.
