Two councillors for the Bath and North East Somerset area in England, Karen Walker and Sarah Bevan, have claimed that around 70 homes in the large village of Peasedown St John have been left without an upgrade to BT’s FTTC based “fibre broadband” network because of an “administrative error.” The village itself is home to around 6,500 people and this makes it one of the largest in the whole of Somerset. Many properties in the village have already been upgraded to support BT’s ‘up to’ 80Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL) infrastructure, but the same cannot be said for a patch of 70 households in the south western area (i.e. Home Farm Close, Wellow Mead and some homes in Wellow Lane). Apparently in this area the local homes, some of which exist within yards of two new Street Cabinets (the Bath Echo doesn’t say precisely how close), haven’t been upgraded and appear to have been left out of the current Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) roll-out programme with BT. Mind you this is true for many such areas across the UK and will remain so until a complete strategy for delivering 100% coverage is fully defined, except in this case the issue has allegedly been caused by an unspecified administrative error. Sarah Bevan, Local Councillor, said: “When Home Farm Close residents recently contacted us about their lack of high speed broadband, we took action to find out why. Now that our research has shown that probably through administrative error certain postcodes have been excluded in BT’s promised coverage, we know it’s just a simple connection problem to existing infrastructure. BT should act straight away to rectify this.” At present there isn’t a firm plan for tackling the problem, with both councillors merely hoping that some lobbying will encourage BT to remedy the issue. Sadly the Bath Echo doesn’t include any feedback from BTOpenreach itself and so we hailed the operator for their position on Monday morning, but as yet we are still awaiting a comment. In the meantime the councillors could perhaps consider pursuing an alternative option, such as from Gigaclear or maybe even the local ISP TrueSpeed Communications. UPDATE 10:54am We finally have a response from Openreach, although they’ve ducked key questions on the administrative error. An Openreach Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk: “Across the South West of England, well over two million households and businesses can now get fibre broadband – and the number is continuing to increase rapidly. We very much understand the frustration of residents who can’t yet get this exciting technology and we are working hard to make it as widely available as possible. Fibre broadband is now available to the great majority of premises in this area, but unfortunately the solution for a relatively small number of premises is more complicated because they are connected directly to the local exchange on ‘exchange only’ lines, rather than via a cabinet. Although these premises are not yet included in any current fibre broadband rollout programme, this most certainly is not the end of the story. One possibility could be a Community Fibre Partnership in which the local community co-funds the extra work with BT’s local network business, Openreach. The Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) partnership has also indicated it is making plans for further superfast broadband investment in Devon and Somerset.”
An administrative error has been blamed for leaving 70 homes in Peasedown St John, Somerset, without BT's fibre broadband. The village has a population of around 6,500 residents, with many properties already upgraded to BT’s 80Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Cabinet network. However, around 70 homes appear to have been left out of BT's rollout programme. Local councillor, Sarah Bevan, said she believed an administrative oversight was responsible for the error, which BT "should act straight away to rectify." BT claimed the issue lay with the premises in question being connected by "exchange only" lines, rather than via a cabinet.