A district councillor angry at unreliable broadband speeds wants local politicians to join her in her quest to put pressure BT, after spending two years failing to get an adequate answer from the communications giant about insufficient broadband connectivity.
Amy Plenderleith, councillor for South Derbyshire district council, has been asking BT for two years for an answer as to why broadband from the Etwall exchange near the village of Hilton is so unreliable.
"People don't know where else to turn they've tried to contact their ISP and just been told it's a problem at the exchange," she said.
While BT says the exchange should offer 8Mbps, most users get far slower connections, which often cut out, she told IT PRO. An online survey of 126 Hilton residents shows 58 per cent get under 1Mbps, with just seven per cent topping 2.5Mbps. A local school is stuck with a connection of just 0.256Mbps.
More importantly, according to Plenderleith, the service is also unreliable.
"We just want a reliable service. That's the problem. They say that the exchange is enabled for up to 8Mbps, but it's not a reliable service," she explained.
The Etwall exchange serves a new estate in Hilton, which is just a decade old.
"I want to know what's in the exchange, what we can achieve, and why aren't we getting this reliably. It's a new network, it's new houses, it must be new wiring, it can't have degraded this much in 10 years. That's the frustrating thing," she said.
With current tactics and discussions not yielding much success, Plenderleith is hoping to get some support from other councils.
"It might be an interesting exercise to see what other councils are doing, see what problems they have, because we know we're not alone in this," Plenderleith explained. "We know it's not a problem unique to South Derbyshire. We figured if enough of us got together than BT would have to listen, wouldn't they?"
Small business woes
The situation is having an affect on local small businesses, with at least two moving out of the area in order to get better connections.
"Small companies set up in someone's study or what have you there's been a couple of occasions where these a few in the last six or eight months where they've said without the reliable broadband they're moving out of the village," she said, noting on two occasions SMBs, including a software programmer, have moved out of the district.
While she admits such stories are anecdotal, she's also heard from others in the area unable to work from home.
"It affects people who want to work from home," she noted. "That's another big grumble I've had. People who work for other companies who want to do four days in the office and one day work from home. They can't because they can't connect adequately to the office."
It's not just about keeping businesses going during extreme weather like the recent snow, either. "It's also about fitting around family life," she said. "It's quite a young village, it's a big new estate, and there's lots of young kids about, so some more family-friendly working would be great, for people to be more flexible and do that."
Not looking for superfast
Despite local Labour MP Mark Todd bringing up the low speeds in parliament last year, Plenderleith isn't even looking for fibre investment.
She said she understands the business model behind giving urban centres superfast broadband first, but said it does seem a bit "back to front at times."
Indeed, she noted that while urban centres get fibre, and so-called not-spots' get funding from the Government, places like South Derbyshire aren't being dealt with - they're not rural, they're not urban, and they have some access, but it's still not good enough.
"It's funny. [Business secretary] Peter Mandelson's promise is going to go to those areas that don't have broadband, whereas we do have broadband, it's just not very reliable," she said.
"Our concern is if money's being targetted at the nots', and at the urban centres to get the superfast, we're kind of caught between, aren't we? And it's just getting the focus back on us. It might take five years, but we don't want to be forgotten."
BT's response
A BT spokesperson told IT PRO that it was still in talks with South Derbyshire but called for more investment.
"Almost all of BT's exchanges across the UK support broadband speeds of up to 8Mbps ensuring that rural areas in the UK enjoy a high level of broadband availability," a statement issued by BT said.
"This contrasts strongly with other countries where broadband roll-out has been focused on urban areas at the expense of rural communities. However we are aware that there are a number of homes in rural areas that receive slower broadband speeds as a result of being too far away from the exchange."
"We are in active discussions with the local authority in South Derbyshire to understand the broadband challenges they are facing and are investigating all possible options. This could simply involve customers fitting an i-Plate to their telephone socket to reduce the electromagnetic interference in the home that can affect broadband speeds," the statement continued.
"Fibre-to-the-cabinet could also potentially form part of the solution, however the commercial case for rolling out fibre to rural areas is extremely challenging and so a level of public funding would be required to help with the costs of deployment."
