Hundreds of New Windsor Park Homes Left to Wait Months for Broadband

Residents of a new housing estate at Windsor Park, which sits just south of Buckingham town in England and includes 700 new build homes, are furious after being left waiting for a broadband and phone service to arrive via BT since before Christmas.

The Windsor Park development, which appears to exist within the fairly well equipped Buckingham telephone exchange area (FTTC enabled and lots of LLU ISPs but no Virgin Media), is said to offer a “great choice” of three, four and five bedroom homes with prices that range from £244,995 to £494,995 (see a picture for the first phase of the development below – there are also several more phases, not shown).

But as one of several residents, who completed their purchases towards the end of last year, told the Buckingham Advertiser, “If I’d been told I wouldn’t be able to get broadband for four or five months, I definitely would have thought twice. I work from home quite regularly and it’s absolutely key to my livelihood.” In the meantime some locals have opted to make do with restrictive Mobile Broadband links.

Regular readers of ISPreview.co.uk will know that new build homes can often take a bit longer to get online, which can be due to a combination of issues. For example, poor pre-planning by the developer and BT can result in significant delays to completion of the necessary infrastructure. Similarly it can often take several months for the postcode / phone number based ordering systems used by ISPs to recognise a new address, which in turn makes it difficult to order the service.

In this instance it appears as if the developers’ consortium has fallen short in more areas than just broadband and phone, with local county councillor Robin Stuchbury noting that BT has had to wait until Anglian Water completed its phase of the work.

A Spokesman from BTOpenreach said:

“BT have been working closely with Bucks County Council to provide service to the new housing estate at Windsor Park. Openreach are at the engineering stage, which requires road closures maximising the safety for residents. The engineering work is complex and time-consuming and Openreach are working as fast as they can to complete the work as soon as possible.”

Thankfully Anglian Water is expected to finish its work within the next week, which means that BT will then be able to complete their cable ducting and hopefully start to connect local homes. But as BT’s statement above suggests, it won’t happen overnight.