Manchester City Centre Broadband Petition

A bunch of councillors in Manchester City Centre are claiming:

"Businesses in the city centre have access to ultra fast high speed broadband but BT have not committed the same level of investment to provide this service to residents. As a result residents suffer from a poor service and deserve better. We ask BT to reconsider the business case to upgrade the service available to residential properties in the city centre."

and so have launched this petition: www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/bt-give-manchester-residents-access-to-ultra-fast-high-speed-broadband

Will the strength of public opinion be enough to force BT OpenReach to re-consider those cabs that they deem are not financially viable to upgrade?

Thoughts please

Edited by deleted (Thu 22-May-14 12:08:32)

I doubt any petition will work, BT no doubt knows the percentage of broadband users per street cab and the figures don't warrant an upgrade. My street cab is one that's uneconomical to upgrade so my only option (I guess I'm fortunate to have another option) is Virgin. For the moment I'll stick to ADSL via Zen.

My guess, unless someone wants to inject lots of cash it won't make a blind bit of difference.

In reply to a post by ian72:

My guess, unless someone wants to inject lots of cash it won't make a blind bit of difference.

This is exactly what I have said to them too!

A few random thoughts:

1. BT added the extra £50m project for infill in 30 cities; we haven't seen any indication of where & when this will be spent. Have the councillors found that this won't be spent in Manchester?

2. Greater Manchester was allocated some BDUK SEP funding. Do the councillors know that none of this will be spent in Manchester itself?

3. Counties that received phase 1 BDUK funding had to put their hands into their own pockets too. Even though Manchester didn't get a BDUK allocation, I'm not convinced that this would stop Manchester council from having their own project, using their own funds, if they wanted to. The EU generic approval ought to work in Manchester (like the rest of Greater Manchester), even if it just uses its own money.

Surrey, for example, chose to add a lot more money themselves, and aimed at 99% coverage instead.

If Manchester councillors want to improve something for their residents, why didn't they take the same steps that other councils have done?

Leeds is certainly included in the West Yorkshire BDUK project.

4. Perhaps Manchester should have worked harder to use some of their UBF subsidy to help fund residents, rather than (in the end) putting it into business-based vouchers and wifi.

In the original plans for ultra-fast, some plans got kyboshed because of overlay of commercial ultra-fast networks. However, Bristol certainly intended to use a portion for mere superfast to the city-dwellers left out of the rural BDUK funding.

In reworking the plans, Manchester and Salford did try to add a "residential connection voucher" scheme (£0.5m each), but this was rejected by central government. What did they try to do to further these ideas?

If they could have got that money re-allocated from UBF into BDUK, and put into the whole GM scheme, they might have been able to use it for residential purposes.

5. Concentrated targeting of the UBF vouchers to businesses in certain areas might have the effect of improving services to residents too. Has anyone put together a programme to do this?

6. Manchester has an aim to be a top-20 global digital city by 2020 - and that isn't going to happen without considered intervention: doing the bare minimum when BDUK and UBF come around is not going to get the city there. (Frankly, just appealing to BT for FTTC coverage isn't going to do it either, even if they say yes)

Getting a top-20 spot will need Manchester to think like Stockholm, or Amsterdam. It will need to take active steps to put together partnerships, like the CityFibre/Sky/TalkTalk thing going on in York.

7. Why concentrate on BT? If these areas have failed to get superfast speeds, then all other companies have failed too, including Virgin Media. Even B4RN.

8. Back when BDUK was a gleam in government's eyes, you saw BT suddenly start to act very strictly. An area either met their conditions for viability and was included, or it didn't - so was ripe for BDUK inclusion. They stopped responding to communities wanting to pay for their own cabinets.

It was obvious to me that BT *had* to start acting strictly, everywhere in the country. It had rules of viability, and had to enforce them across the entire country - if it made any exceptions, then the whole of the tendering in the 45+ regions could go up in smoke.

The projects are still going on, and BT still have to apply the criteria strictly. The boat still can't be rocked... and PAC is madly trying to push. Unfortunately, that means the Manchester councillors are unlikely to get any special allowances.

9. BT have become more open to community funding for cabinets again. If the strength of public opinion is backed by some community dosh, things might get somewhere. The councillors are definitely in a position to help these discussions along.

10. Some technologies and techniques are now becoming more standard in the BDUK projects, which won't have been readily considered in the commercial rollout (I'm thinking of things such as FTTRN, adding cabinets at the exchange for EO lines, and copper re-arrangement for longer EO lines). As BT get better (ie cheaper) at doing these, it could be that they could re-consider some of the urban areas too... in which case, the councillors might see a result.

11. The petition is badly titled. The overall aim seems to be about getting plain old "superfast" services (ie 30Mbps+), while the title refers to "ultrafast", which is usually taken to mean 100Mbps+.

12. Following the link, it is good to see that it has had a good response, and references VM, York, and helps push the UBF vouchers for people working at home.

I'd forgotten the aspect that working from home can qualify for a UBF voucher; perhaps someone can get together a number of such businesses, pool the vouchers, and use that to "community fund" a cabinet, or better. That way surrounding residents benefit from the new infrastructure as much as the subsidised businesses.

As I said... random thoughts. Some more useful than others.

Thanks for that.

I note that The Manchester Evening News ran a story just before the petition was launched, stating that The EU blocked government funding?:

"Last summer the council was granted cash to roll out fibre optic broadband to nearly 30,000 homes without it.

But at the last minute Brussels blocked the move - arguing subsidies should not be used for services that could be provided by private industry." source: www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/manchester-city-centre-dwellers-launch-6919980

That would sound like the time UBF plans had to be ditched, stopping subsidised ultra-fast (with a considered use of ultra, rather than MEN's non-obvious usage). It was probably right, because there hasn't really been a failure in the market of ultra-fast broadband yet.

But killing those plans also killed the infill of urban superfast services (ie slower than ultrafast) that some cities wanted to include. I know Bristol was one, but from the MEN article, it looks like Manchester tried too.

In the end, central government stopped the usage of UBF to directly subsidise any infrastructure, which is why it became a voucher scheme.

Does it seem like Manchester City Council (MCC) have exhausted all other realistic opportunities in order to secure any public funding for this?

I personally do not believe that this petition holds water and I think it has "manipulated" (indeed stretched) the expectations of local residents by "leading" potential voters to side with the council/councillors to blame BT for the lack of investment and so the locals aware of the petition now believe BT should be funding FTTC. (albeit for the vociferous few!) therefore making the council/councillors looks like the goodies and BT - the badies!

The timing of both the M.E.N article and the petition is conveniently at a time in the short run up to today's local council elections too! = dangling the carrot for more votes perhaps? Forgive me, but I think politics is largely at work here rather than for the sole intention of the greater good!

Like you say "If Manchester councillors want to improve something for their residents, why didn't they take the same steps that other councils have done?"

I think locals should be focussing their attention on the performance of the council putting direct questions to them rather than now (being lead into) expecting a private company (OpenReach) run by it's shareholders to put up the money for cabinet upgrades that they do not view as financially viable!

Edited by deleted (Thu 22-May-14 15:06:22)

my understanding is the voucherss cannot be used to fund cabinets as these are infrastructure and subject to state aid) the vouchers can only fund connecitons

I thought BDUK would provide additional funding if the local authority coughed up the money? The local council here decided not to be park of Superfast West Yorkshire because they "couldn't see the business value". Bunch of muppets IMO

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

If Manchester councillors want to improve something for their residents, why didn't they take the same steps that other councils have done?

You'd have to be born and have lived in Manchester to know what sort of a dreck council they have had for years.

In reply to a post by DrTeeth:

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

If Manchester councillors want to improve something for their residents, why didn't they take the same steps that other councils have done?

You'd have to be born and have lived in Manchester to know what sort of a dreck council they have had for years.

I moved to Manchester City Centre - 7 years ago and that quickly became apparent to me I call it the "Soviet Republic of Manchester" as it's all one sided here and they have had Carte Blanche for way too long!

According to the Manchester Evening News. Cllr Kevin Peal claims to have led a broadband campaign which has now resulted in Hyperoptic coming to the city of Manchester to deliver their service to thousands of residents in the city centre!

However, didn't Hyperoptic announce back in 2013 that they were planning to expand to Manchester (Liverpool and Leeds) anyway? At the end of May 2014, they publicly confirmed their plans which I do not believe had anything to do with Manchester City Council's campaign.

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-...

Edited by deleted (Tue 21-Oct-14 15:19:40)

In reply to a post by cisco_kid75:

Will the strength of public opinion be enough to force BT OpenReach to re-consider those cabs that they deem are not financially viable to upgrade?

Reconsider? Possibly.
Come to a different conclusion? Unlikely.

Edited by Andrue (Tue 21-Oct-14 15:52:22)

I find it disappointing that Hyperoptic have enabled an apartment in Salford then Manchester City Centre is seen as "covered".

I live in a rather significant apartment of 19 floors in the City Centre right next to the Arndale Centre. Got a decent number of other residents to sign up to Hyperoptic with no feedback. Currently stuck on 12mbit ADSL+ which is painful coming from 152mbit Virgin Media previously.

What is even more a shame is the cab which is about 10m from my apartment and has fibre enabled

You need to get either the freeholder or the managing agents to contact Hyperoptic as there's a fair bit more to getting them on-board than saying you would like to use their service.

As for a cab 10m away being FTTC enabled, is this the cab serving your line or are you on another cab or perhaps an EO line?