We've all been there. You click on a web address, and the dreaded egg timer becomes stuck on the screen. But Mary Collard would give anything just to have that dubious pleasure. That's because the internet connection in her County Durham home is not just slow, it's non-existent.

For a few years she did have an unstable dial-up connection through the telephone. That's now failed, and her attempts to get broadband have repeatedly foundered. More than a dozen BT engineers have come and gone, and none has managed to get her connected. Mary does live in rural Teesdale, but not in the wilds. She's only seven miles from her nearest town.

She finds it incredibly frustrating. The lack of an internet connection forced her to give up her role with the parish council, and makes many everyday tasks impossible. She said: "You can't do internet shopping, pay bills, buy tickets, or file your tax returns. Everyone increasingly expects you to do things online these days, and just can't understand it when you can't. I think it's a basic human right to be able to access the internet."

This is a problem which affects more people than you might think. More than 87,000 people in County Durham can't get a decent broadband connection. And the problems don't stop there. Carlisle has the worst connection problems in the country, with almost two thirds of people not having a decent service.

For more on this story and related news please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-13810042