UPD2 London AM Andrew Dismore Criticises BT’s Community Fibre Scheme

The London Assembly Member for Barnet and Camden, Andrew Dismore (Labour), has accused BT of “putting profits before people” through its Community Fibre Partnerships scheme, which works to co-fund the roll-out of “fibre broadband” into areas that have yet to benefit from faster connectivity.

Sadly some areas in the final 5% of the United Kingdom continue to exist outside of the Government’s on-going Broadband Delivery UK programme, often because they would be too expensive to upgrade. None of this means that future contracts won’t include such areas, but sometimes residents in the affected areas would rather pay for something now than wait in uncertainty.

In those locations Openreach offers the option of a co-funding FTTC model, which requires local residents and businesses to cover any costs that rise above those of BT’s own commercial model for the area. Once agreed, 50% of the gap funding must be paid prior to work starting and the final 50% on completion.

Back in February 2016 BT confirmed that 50 such communities had already benefited from this approach, which has helped to cover an extra 25,000 premises across the UK. However not everybody views this as a good idea, with some expressing unease at the idea that any community should feel as if it has no other option than to donate money to get better broadband from BT.

AM Andrew Dismore said (Times):

“There are many examples of BT putting their profits before their obligation to the public to provide broadband access, but even when they get the money they still don’t get on with it.

BT decided that from their point of view it was uneconomic to connect a road of 170 homes in Totteridge. To be connected, BT demanded that the residents would have to pay £26,000.

Over a year ago, the residents paid up to Openreach and signed BTs contract. You might have thought that once they got the money, Openreach would get on with it, but the residents are still not connected.”

In fairness BT are not a grand social enterprise, they are a commercial business. At present there’s no strict obligation for BT to deliver superfast broadband services into areas where it makes no economic sense for them to do so. The alternative would be to offer no extra options for such communities at all.

However the forthcoming 10Mbps Universal Service Obligation (USO) may change that, although the onus for supplying it may ultimately rest with more technology choices and operators than just the fixed lines delivered by KCOM (Hull only) and BT. But the USO won’t be enforced until 2020, which still leaves plenty of potential for new co-funded partnerships.

Equally BT aren’t the only game in town and a savvy authority might well hunt around to see if any of the alternative network providers, such as Gigaclear, Hyperoptic or B4RN etc. are able to come up with a better solution than the national incumbent.

In the meantime London’s new Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has agreed with Dismore and said that he would lobby the Government to ensure that BT is made to work in the interests of the public. We asked Openreach for a comment before writing this and are currently awaiting their reply.

UPDATE 12:40pm

The full response from BT is below.

An Openreach Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We’re as frustrated as anyone by the delays to our co-funded project in Totteridge, and we have been updating the community regularly on the situation.

As we advised the Assembly Member earlier this month, we have faced protracted negotiations with a local landowner and their representatives, which have obstructed our plan to install and power a new fibre cabinet in the area.

Clearly we have to comply with legislation, so we have been powerless to act until the landowners or their agents give us written permission to proceed.

We are working hard to make fibre broadband available to local residents as soon as possible.”

UPDATE 30th June 2016

Apparently the project actually involves two cabinets so, out of the 170 homes, over 100 residents can already order the service and have been able to for two months now as one of the cabs has already been deployed. The other one should be following soon.