// Home / News / Broadband

BT drops village broadband bill from £550,000 to £100

By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 9 Sep 2010 at 15:05

For residents in the Welsh community of Erbistock near Wrexham the broadband revolution has been like waiting for buses. Nothing for years, and then two services arrive at once.

The hitherto "notspot" has until now been without any form of broadband, lying too far from BT's telephone exchange to receive ADSL, but things are about to change.

When BT came back saying it was going to cost more than £500,000 for them to help us, and that we would have to fund this cost, we started looking at other options

The village was at the centre of a telecoms row earlier this week when it was revealed that BT had quoted village campaigners, who were willing to pay for infrastructure costs for a connection, a staggering £550,000 to connect the community.

"We can't get broadband in Erbistock because we're too far away from the BT exchange,” Alison Fletcher, who had campaigned for five years to get the community connected, told the BBC earlier this week. "When BT came back saying it was going to cost more than £500,000 for them to help us, and that we would have to fund this cost, we started looking at other options."

Step forward Rutland Telecom, which said it could do the job for a mere £50,000 by upgrading the copper cabling to fibre, promising a 40Mbits/sec service going live as early as next month.

The residents were further bouyed by the fact that the Welsh Assembly would meet much of the cost through broadband grants.

After years of campaigning, it must have come as a shock for residents, then, when BT suddenly found that it could, after all, implement a relatively simple £100-a-home change to get residents connected.

Only two days ago, BT told PC Pro that “the 500k figure was provided initially on the basis of us having to essentially build an entirely new copper network in the area. This full copper uplift job would have required major civil engineering work. We are still exploring alternative solutions for the area.”

Switching exchanges

The company now believes it has overcome this challenge by offering residents the option of transferring their line from the Bangor-on-Dee exchange to the closer exchange at Overton-on-Dee.

BT says the solution would allow all 80 residents a stable copper broadband service of between 1Mbit/sec and 4Mbits/sec via any chosen ISP.

Residents choosing this path will have to change their phone numbers and incur a charge of £100, and residents may feel this is a case of BT closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Nonetheless, BT says its efforts show a commitment to bringing broadband to all of Britain. “We have bent over backwards to find a broadband solution for Erbistock and have been exploring possible solutions for more than a year now,” said BT strategy director Olivia Garfield in a statement.

“We take our responsibility to deliver broadband to as many homes in the UK as possible very seriously. We’re urging as many Erbistock residents as possible to take up the offer of moving their line to the Overton-on-Dee exchange so that they can start to enjoy the benefits of broadband.”

The news of BT's sudden about face may come as a shock to Rutland Telecom. Coincidentally, PC Pro had been due to speak with Rutland managing director David Lewis at the very moment the announcement from BT dropped into our inbox and he has since cancelled the conference call, saying he can no longer talk about the situation.

Subscribe to PC Pro magazine. We'll give you 3 issues for £1 plus a free gift - click here

From around the web

User comments

Big Brother BT ?

Isn't it about time that 'remote' Communities asked about Satellite Broadband Systems ?
The Satellites are already up there ... NO digging up of pavements, Roads etc., and NOT dependent on where you are in relation to a BT controlled copper wire exchange !
Isn't it time to break the BT stranglehold in REAL terms and NOT just pander to the Monopolists ?
The more people used Satellite Broadband the cheaper it would be for all !
Let's start the Revolution here !

By JetMorgan on 9 Sep 2010

@JetMorgan

Nice idea - unfortunately Satellite Broadband is download only - you still need a 'phone line for uploading & sending.

Has anyone asked BT how much to install a fibre connection, instead of copper?

By greemble on 9 Sep 2010

I do hope the residents are forward thinking enough to tell BT where to go. Why pay anything for the technology of yesteryear?

And, if they drop Rutland in favour of BT, how likely is it that they will be in the same boat in 10 years time when other communities have FTTC or FTTP and they are languishing on 1-4Mbit.

BT needs to be sent a clear message that it cannot sit on its hands and monopoly until there is a sniff of competition and then expect to be able to play the knight in shining armour!

By Fraz_pro on 9 Sep 2010

Mobile broadband

Why not mobile broadband? Then residents and visitors to the area can benefit.

By halsteadk on 9 Sep 2010

Poor Rutland

I feel sorry for Rutland Telecom, which could lose big to BT after putting so much time and effort into helping the area.

Also, according to this page, Satellite also does uploads and doesn't always need a phone line for uploading (that's the old one-way solution).

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/broadband_satellite.php

By Mark535 on 10 Sep 2010

Poor Rutland

By Mark535 on 10 Sep 2010

1-4M or 40M that is a tough call

Rutland has got to be the better option .. let's hope the Welsh Assembly send a message by choosing the better technology.

By redgar3 on 10 Sep 2010

@Mark535

The link you provide about satellite broadband basically says it's a non-starter for this type of application (very low data caps and >500ms ping time). Also @halsteadk's suggestion of mobile broadband would never be economic because of data caps.
I'm not sure what the regulatory situation is for deploying WiMAX or shared WiFi -both of which could offer the sort of bandwidth required for this application. Ultimately though 40 people using iPlayer or similar needs >100Mbps of back-haul and only broadband cable or fibre do that properly.

By milliganp on 10 Sep 2010

BT Monopolistic practice

It would seem that the villagers of Erbistock have been campaigning for 5 years to get decent broadband -and in all that time BT never thought of moving them to a closer exchange.
BT won't invest in small communities until they find themselves in a competitive situation -and then they will stifle the rise of any potential competitor.

By milliganp on 10 Sep 2010

I was thinking the same...

as milliganp. However, the residents aren't forced to take up BT's offer, are they? The rival sounds like a better deal to me.

I live 50m from my exchange but the most I can get is 5Mbps. Bah! yes, I'm greedy!

By mviracca on 10 Sep 2010

@milliganp

According to Wikipedia, Erbistock had a population of 409 at the 2001 census. The chance of 40 of them using iPlayer at once is remote. For a community of this size, a shared wireless infrastructure could be a very viable solution, especially if the geography would make fixed line installation economically burdensome. At the end of the day, though, fixed or wireless, you still need backhaul, and I imagine that is the sticking point.

By flyingbadger on 10 Sep 2010

BT drops village broadband bill from £550,000 to £8,000

If it's £100 per house and there's 80 house then surely the title is wrong.

I think £50,000 for 40Mbits/sec is a better deal than £8,000 for 1Mbit/sec.

By peterm2k on 10 Sep 2010

MARK HOLDING

This Village should go with Rutland, and tell BT where to go. Why on earth has BT now decided that they can do a broadband installation? Simple, because they know that if the Village went with Rutland, then they would loose out. BT should be offering all new customers fibre optic, not the old copper lines, which are out of date. If I were the Village I would go with Rutland and see what the Welsh Assembley can do as regards help with the cost. If people start to demand a better service, then maybe BT will have no choice and get it's act together. It's been the number one for too long, and hasn't invested in it's technologies for the future.

By airborne_warrior on 10 Sep 2010

Leave a comment

You need to Login or Register to comment.