Unrest in South Derbyshire
South Derbyshire District Council have for some time now being raising questions about the standard of broadband provision in their district and challenging BT to address the problem.
Using our exchange checker we can see that three of the exchanges in the area (Swadlincote, Peartree and Mickleover) have a full set of LLU services so there is ample choice in the provider of the broadband service over BT Openreach phone lines. Swadlincote is also due to get BT’s WBC ADSL2+ service late this year. In this respect the area has some quite good broadband provision and plenty of wholesale supplier choice, as well as the usual retail choices.
The area does include some large areas of countryside and from personal experience there are lines that are over 7km long which need quite a bit of effort to establish any broadband service at all, in some cases a service can’t be achieved. S Derbyshire is not unique in having notspots like this, with villages in Lincolnshire and elsewhere in a similar predicament.
Some of the comments recorded in the Council minutes suggest that a portion of the complaints arise from poor ISP service or low throughput at peak times. One wonders if “BT the retail ISP” is the problem here, or BT Wholesale in general or a specific ISP. Most users, or councillors, don’t care about the details of the service and are just vocalising dissatisfaction with their experiences. It is difficult or impossible for BT or anyone to respond constructively to this without digging into the detail of each case.
There does appear to be a cable franchise issued to cover at least part of the area, as Google reveals a company called “Derbyshire Cablevision Limited” that no doubt is now part of Virgin Media’s cable business. Perhaps the council should also be asking them why they aren’t providing a service, or getting them involved proactively at the planning stage of new developments.
BT Openreach have also developed a Fibre to the Home product and expressed an interest in using this for new developments rather than the traditional copper local loop so again there is an opportunity there for the Council to get leading edge broadband technology into new developments.
Meanwhile they are doing a good job for their residents raising the profile of an issue, although the broad brush consumer advocacy approach does make it difficult to understand the precise nature of the individual complaints.
Tags: BT Openreach, BT Wholesale
