Villagers express their frustration

Some villagers have expressed their frustration with Openreach by buring an effigy on bonfire night. Mentioned on Radio 4 this morning. One complaint was the difficulty of making contact with Openreach themselves.

Devon council made it clear when they rejected BT from phase II I thought

So do these residents want the council to get BT back and sign more contracts

Robertos linked to this news item yesterday ...........

I personally find it somewhat unpleasant that they chose to do this.

If I chose to burn an effigy of something typically to do with Devon in protest I daresay I'd be shouted down pretty quickly.

If you used a Devon Cream Tea, the Cornish would approve .

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Devon council made it clear when they rejected BT from phase II I thought

So do these residents want the council to get BT back and sign more contracts

What makes me laugh (a bit) is that the Andy mentioned in that article appears to work for the NHS. So this Network Architect who moved to a remote part of the country hoping to telecommute is presumably helping design and maintain N3.

Hands up those of you surprised by this :-/

Edited by Andrue (Tue 07-Nov-17 09:06:52)

A point also noted by Adrian Kennard with this blog article:

http://www.revk.uk/2017/11/burning-openreach-van-eff...

With regard to contacting Openreach, the latest OTA2 bulletin ( http://www.offta.org.uk/updates/otaupdate2017October... talks about "The FTTC PCP trial which allows engineers to contact the customer in certain circumstances has shown a sustained improvement in the Early Life Failure rate by around 1%. Openreach are now proposing to include this as a standard approach for this product variant and will be making proposals to Industry.( My underlining)

So if CPs take this up at Least OR engineers will be allowed to contact the customer!

I have just read the article using the link.

I think it makes some very reasonable points. BT is a business, not state owned, so it is simple economics.

Zarjaz also makes a valid point. Burning an effigy of certain other things may well have got a visit from the hate police!

At least they are burning an effigy of an object that represents an organisation - Lewis quite regularly burn effigy's of living people which is a whole lot less acceptable.

In reply to a post by Sylcol:

I have just read the article using the link.

I think it makes some very reasonable points. BT is a business, not state owned, so it is simple economics.

Zarjaz also makes a valid point. Burning an effigy of certain other things may well have got a visit from the hate police!

Your one line says it all ... and what people also conveniently forget is that BT do go out of their way to help small communities and villages often installing equipment or providing services that with never present a payback (example below *) - but other providers will often say no and not even do any basic cost and return calculations, just a straight NO.

* In the North of Scotland you will often see a red BT phone box. These are maintained to provide an emergency contact facility for the village or hamlet and a BT Technician may visit every 3 to 6 months. The cost of the visit could be £200 or more when time and travel are considered - the revenue from some of those phone boxes is often measured in pounds per year. not even tens of pounds, just pounds.