Ridiculous situation with slow broadband - who to complain to?!

timbob

timbob

timbob

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So, the traditional story - my new build development on the outskirts of a major town has rubbish broadband.

The houses opposite me on the street are connected to the cabinet about 250m up the road which is fibre enabled - they have lovely fast connections. That cabinet ran out of "slots", so BT/Openreach put a brand new cabinet in only 50m from my house.

Except, in their infinite wisdom, it is not fibre enabled. The fibre infrastructure stops 200m away up the road, but we have instead been connected by a roundabout 9km copper line to an exchange in an outlying village. My download speed is 0.8mbps in the quiet daytime hours, and half that at peak times in the evening - not even enough to watch a 240p youtube video, and frustratingly slow web browsing. No streaming possible at all really - even low quality web radio continually buffers. I'm fairly sure I could download at more than 50KB/s about a decade ago in my old village in the sticks.

The cabinet I'm connected to isn't even on the council's list of cabinets in the superfast broadband rollout for the county which stretches as far into the future as 2019...

- The council fob me off with the "it's not our fault, we can't use our superfast broadband rollout grant money to prop up a developer that should have organised it themselves - it's for places with existing old infrastructure which needs upgrading, but we'll see what we can do" line...

- The housing developer are accusing BT/Openreach of failing to provide the infrastructure that was promised when they built the development...

- BT won't take my complaint because it's Openreach responsible for the infrastucture

- And Openreach won't talk to me because I'm not the customer - technically that's BT (very clever...)

I refuse to accept that living only across the street from houses which are already fibre enabled, in a suburb of a county town in the SE of England, it's going to take 4 or more years to get a broadband speed above 1mbps.

How do you get this sorted?!
 
You on Bedford meadows fella?

I had a house on the first phase and could get 3mb. I then sold that and got a place opposite which is bigger and got fibre to the property.

It is a mickey take. It took 6 months to get the fibre in btw!!
 
I'm not sure who's at fault, it sounds like Openreach to me...

But to be honest, if the developer has built X amount of houses, why didn't Openreach provision enough cabinet(s) initially to accommodate the volume of homes being built?

Surely when the developers request Openreach come and lay the fibre/copper and deploy a cabinet for the phone lines, they make OR aware of the amount of houses being built? So OR should then deploy capacity accordingly...

Or am I over-simplifying the issue and logic behind this?
 
Find someone over the road who doesn't use it and don't mind hosting a wireless router with a decent omni-directional aerial? :D

Does sound the developer who originally sold you the house is likely the one to be talking to. BT will have plumbed in whatever they ordered. You bought the house with "fibre enabled" as an expected part of the deal, that's been missed, they should be brought to task about it.
 
Bottom line you're trying to clime a slippery wall with no handholds. The chances of BT tearing the road up for 1 person are slim to none.

If you all have bad service then you can form a community group and approach "en mass" which will get you more of a voice.
 
Steveocee said:
If you all have bad service then you can form a community group and approach "en mass" which will get you more of a voice.
Click to expand...

This. Get all the residents together and write letters and emails. Lots of them. Start with one a week and increase the frequency until you get proper responses.
 
Can you not get the developer to progress issue with BT? Was the property sold to you as having fibre etc as that would be miss selling on their part if it was.
 
Get some one Across the road to run some Cat6e over to your house and pay them to use their broadband.

Not a real suggestion but its what popped into my head first.

BT are right when saying it is Openreaches responsibility but "BT Openreach" wont speak to EU/customers (End users) directly. Which means you need to relay through BT but sounds like BT cant be arsed with that.
 
Unfortunately the housing developer are saying that BT told them there was spare capacity for x number of houses in the old fibre enabled cabinet when there actually wasn't. The housing developer have put up x number of houses and BT put in this new cabinet to make up for the error - so they're very sorry but it's not their issue.

Again, unfortunately, x is only in the order of a dozen or so, so there's only one small street of us connected to the new cabinet. We've been informed that until the whole development is built (in another 3-5 years time) there won't be enough of a financial return in terms of customers signing up to fibre to make the upgrade cost worthwhile for them. Very sorry but not BT's issue either.

There is no Virgin in the street, and again, not enough demand to get anywhere with "cable my street".

No, property wasn't sold as fibre enabled, but as a new build property just along the road from a fibre enabled cabinet, I felt reasonably confident, and the developer gave a (verbal and non binding) indication that we should expect decent speeds being so close to the existing cabinet - I was quite aware of the common issues with new builds and broadband, so I did ask.

I've written to my MP, let's see if that comes to anything.
 
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Steveocee said:
It may be worth investigating alternative non copper providers. Sat, wireless or 4G.
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Already done - 4G is expensive, and limited data caps which run out very quickly with any streaming.

Satellite is expensive also in terms of initial outlay, and then also has strict data caps, which get very expensive the higher you go - £1/GB/month - and there are no unlimited caps. £100 a month for £100GB (which would remove most headaches in terms of streaming usage is unaffordable). Also suffers with very high pings.

No wireless in our area either.

I've basically spent the last year exhausting any and all available options, and there is nothing... At the moment we're paying £17.99 line rental, £5 BT broadband and another £30 to EE for our £25GB 4G box, which lets me stream a few things a month.
 
E-Mail the story CC'd to head of open reach, BT CEO, couple of media outlets, prime minsters office and just about anyone with any vague relevance heh.

Dunno if they'd be able to do anything similar here but in the past with a connection issue BT mailed us a 3G dongle with a generous data allowance until it was sorted.
 
Definitely email the BT CEO.

Do you have line of sight to one of the houses with fibre? Ask if you can install a wireless bridge and pay for their connection and share with them?
 
Something similar will be happening to buyers of new builds where I live. I found a friend who works for Openreach pulling a cable which he said was 500 pair. 'Copper is the new fibre' he said and that it would be okay for voice but useless for broadband.
 
Go around your neighbours and send a letter to your MP.

I would also look at getting enough interest for someone like hyperoptic to come and install their kit.
 
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