Campaigners turn up heat over fibre boxes

 

Gallery

By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 8 Sep 2010 at 16:07

The ill-feeling against BT's bulky new fibre-to-the-cabinet street furniture looks likely to spread, with consumer concerns being taken up by campaign group Civic Voice.

Back in July, residents in Brighton launched an attack on BT's 1.6m street cabinets and the animosity is apparently taking hold.

Civic Voice is to meet with BT Openreach on 22 September to raise its concerns and has a hit list of issues it wants addressing.

The campaigners claimed they are not nimbys and understand the need for a broadband Britain, but said fibre roll-out street cabinets should be sited and designed with more sensitivity.

“Civic Voice is finding too many of these broadband boxes are being poorly located, inflexibly designed and made unnecessarily intrusive,” said campaign spokesman Ian Harvey. “We're calling on BT to go through a number of tests before siting this equipment.”

The campaign's chief gripes are a lack of consultation with local residents and the minimal regulation applied to positioning boxes.

“The new broadband boxes stand 1.6m high and do not require planning consent,” said Harvey. “Even in conservation areas, national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty local planning authorities need only be notified of proposals.

"A legal presumption that such infrastructure should be undergrounded in conservation areas is seemingly ignored on the grounds of questionable “technical difficulties” and “huge cost”.

Civic Voice said it had around 80 community groups involved in a “street clutter” campaign and claimed a high proportion of those groups had complained about street cabinets.

The campaign clan will march on BT armed with a seven-point checklist it believes BT should be address when positioning boxes – among them earlier involvement of local communities, planning safeguards and a choice of colour.

BT said is would work with local authorities to minimise impact.

"The installation of this new equipment, necessary to deliver faster speeds over a fibre network, is essential if residents and businesses in these areas are to reap the benefits of this new technology," the company said in a statement.

"But we are committed to working with local authorities to minimise the visual impact of the new street cabinets, and have done this successfully in other areas.”