Marlborough News Online asked for a briefing on the progress of Wiltshire Council’s superfast broadband scheme – and met with Deputy Leader Councillor John Thomson and project officer Sarah Cosentino:
We have been trying to find a driver in the area who has not been left tapping their steering wheels over the last months while held at temporary traffic signals and an array of BT Openreach vans and diggers. So far no luck and for many, drivers and non-drivers, in our area the promised superfast broadband has not yet arrived – but the forecast is good.
One of the reasons the scheme has been going a bit more slowly than planned is down the last two years of flooding. BT Openreach have found many of their cable ducts filled with mud – some completely blocked by it. They have been able to flush some out so they can get fibre cable through them. Some ducts have had to be replaced.
Why are we being told so little about Wiltshire Council’s multi-million pound scheme? It all comes down to the government’s ‘framework’ contract and the fact that this is a mixture of public money and private companies with BT Openreach doing the work.
Wiltshire Council’s cabinet member in charge of the scheme, John Thomson, is just as frustrated as the next chap about this: “The government contract made it challenging for us to be open with our communities. The contract is very restrictive in what we can actually say. We have pushed the boundaries to give as much info as possible.”
The new fibre optic rollout has to result in an ‘open network’ – that’s one that any internet service provider can pay BT to use. And so that no provider gets commercial advantage, information about progress has to be available to the whole industry at the same time. This makes press releases about the installation of a new fibre optic box in Lower Upton a non-starter.
It was probably part of the reason that BT representatives did not turn up to November’s meeting of the Marlborough Area Board. In their place Wiltshire Council project officer Marie Nash gave a very clear summary of the scheme. She and her colleague Sarah Cosentino, who both work part-time, make up the team overseeing the project.
“It is”, John Thomson, tells Marlborough News Online, “a value for money team who work very hard and have become experts – they know a lot more, much more about it than I do!”
John Thomson says the Council decided to invest in this infrastructure because business leaders had convinced them that “High speed broadband was the number one priority to maintain businesses in the county and attract new business. It would protect jobs and bring new jobs into the county. We can only invest public money in areas that won’t be picked up commercially.”
This government-backed scheme is for Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire. Wiltshire Council is spending £15.5million and South Gloucestershire £2million, with £4.6million from the government and £700,000 from the EU – and £12.8million from BT. How, we asked John Thomson, has working with BT been? “It’s been a very happy ship. BT have been a pleasure to work with – very open, very honest.”
Phase One of the Wiltshire broadband project aims to put 91 per cent of the county’s premises onto Superfast Broadband by this time next year. Phase Two which will pick up most of the other nine per cent, is now out to tender and we will know by mid-May who has the job and what technology they intend to use for those households beyond the current reach of the fibre optic spine.
Even Phase Two will not get superfast to one hundred per cent of premises. The Council is lobbying the government to commit to Phase Three: “My feeling is the government should bite the bullet and go for 100 per cent coverage. After all, if the government want to switch most of their services to the internet, people need the better services.
Part of the complexity of the whole project is that copper phone lines were not laid out with parish or any other boundaries in mind and obviously with no thought about the capabilities of fibre optic. The Marlborough Area has eight different exchanges and will get 25 new fibre cabinets. And each of these cabinets needs an electricity supply as they are fan cooled.
The majority of Phase One work in the Marlborough area has been done – the fibre spine is nearly complete. More households will get superfast broadband by the end of this month and Phase One should be complete across the area by the summer – giving 4,500 households the chance to sign up for superfast services.
You will know when you can access superfast services when you receive the Wiltshire Council pack explaining what happens next. One thing to remember: superfast broadband is not a free council service, you have to pay your provider for it.
There is a very specific ‘clawback’ formula whereby if public money gives BT or other ISPs too much revenue, they repay the Council. Anything over 20 per cent take up and the Council start to be paid clawback money. John Thomson: “It’s a very positive thing – we hope to get lots of clawback – the people of Wiltshire will start getting money back that we can re-invest.”
But he sounds a warning note about superfast broadband. When more television sets include computers and there is more and more downloading of films and programmes and more live-streaming: “We may find we have capacity problems on superfast networks.”
So far so good and the team are delighted to get congratulatory emails from people who have been able to take up superfast services from their providers.
The downside is that people are confused about who is doing what with broadband and the Wiltshire Council team get complaints that the broadband has gone down or keeps dropping out: “We have become a bit of a dumping ground for everyone’s grousing about BT.”
There was criticism in the New Year when government advertisements claimed Britain was now a ‘Superfast nation.’ The defence was that superfast broadband was available in 78 per cent of homes and business in the UK and investment was guaranteed – “We therefore feel that the description of the country as a ‘superfast nation’ is justified, and unlikely to mislead consumers.”
However, the newspaper advertisements have now been toned down. The headline is now: “It’s time for superfast” and the emphasis is on the investment rather than the assumed achievement.
It will soon be ‘time for superfast’ in the Marlborough area – most if it.
