Battisford: Village considers legal action against BT

The village of Battisford, near Stowmarket, has been battling BT for months over the issue.

The parish council, along with local MP David Ruffley, organised a meeting with a BT boss in June to air its concerns.

But now the village is taking its complaints a step further by issuing the company with an ultimatum.

Parish chairman Chris Knock said: �Everyone is very hacked off, it�s a general feeling of disquiet, we have not seen anything positive from BT and we would like to see a positive response to the real issues which exist in the village

http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/battisford_village_consid...

Would be interesting to find out more about the lack of emergency call coverage from fixed line telephone.

Core voice services is the only think BT is legally obliged to provide and a 28 Kbps functional Internet access.

Apparently the telephone problems have been on going for years http://battisford.onesuffolk.net/assets/Uploads/Batt...

There are many villages in Suffolk with dial-up speed broadband and useless mobile signals, despite all the first Suffolk Fibre cab switch on in Kesgrave this week. Always was left behind.

what, no Altnets ?

dial-up speed broadband ? Is that what unicorns use.

Quite possibly, though the Unicorns of my old village have got fed up with waiting for BT to get off their backside. You will note that 7Mbps is considered 'Super Fast' in that neck of the woods!
http://www.altonbb.net/

Edited by professor973 (Sat 10-Aug-13 11:22:57)

Is that not why the esteemed Government setup the BDUK and USC - so is this a case that the project has avoided these villages or just not delivering to the time scale?

Labour had promised 2 Mbps for all by 2012 in 2010, Con/LibDem changed that to 2015

Haven't a clue, though the outlook there is bleak whatever the timescale. Last time I visited it was one eighth of the promised 2Mb down the copper. That is typical of how most of Suffolk is always left behind. My Market 1 exchange that serves over 2,500 properties is not even being considered for fibre at the moment, let alone on some distant list. Luckily I am happy enough with my speed, though most that fell for the TT LLU patter are not.

Edited by professor973 (Sat 10-Aug-13 12:30:32)

Does anyone believe the time scale for the USC? As you note it has slipped from 2012 to 2015 officially. In practice, all of the BDUK contracts mean imply that the real deadline now is 2017. Even then, without concrete plans for implementing or enforcing the target the USC has to be regarded as an "aspirational goal" rather than something that anyone might rely on.

The problem in Battisford is similar to that in (probably) hundreds or thousands of village where landline services are erratic, BT Openreach or Wholesale takes an age to fix breakdowns (we have an exchange at which all voice services failed and weren't repaired for 5 days), and eventually residents get fed up with the permanent struggle to maintain basic services. By comparison with, say, electricity distribution BT Openreach seems to be uninterested in looking after its core network. Part of the problem may lie in the division of responsibilities between the different entities within the organisation.

Not having the most advanced technology or fastest speeds is only a small part of the story. Most people who live in small villages are realistic about what can be expected if one chooses to live in a thinly populated rural area. These problems are exacerbated by the incapacity of anyone at BT Retail call centres to record and respond to the fact that there are repeated failures on the same lines. So the time wasted in trying to deal with breakdowns becomes extremely wearing. Nonetheless, I doubt whether a threat of legal action will get them anything other than more promises: for example which bit of BT do they sue?

So the projects that talk of completion by 2016 are lying?

Should the focus be changed from superfast to a basic 2 Mbps for all, no matter what the cost?

Hate to point out, but 5 days for fault fixes is common in the cities. 4 days is the aim for residential, but shorter if you take the paid options for higher care levels.

The question we need to find the answer for, is if BT is so consistently bad at keeping phone lines working and rolling out broadband, why do others not bother to make a killing as people would jump at the chance of a better alternative.

As a nation we have become more reliant on Telco infrastructure, but the race to competition and lower prices has removed slack to cope with the period fault problems