Romsey Residents Angered by “Eyesore” BT FTTC Broadband Cabinet

Residents and politicians in Romsey, a small market town in the county of Hampshire (England), have become the latest group to moan of an “eyesore” after BTOpenreach installed one of its large (1.6 metres high) green superfast broadband (FTTC) street cabinets on the pavement of a busy high-street.

The cabinet is said to have been placed, under Permitted Development rights, in a conservation area around the middle of “The Hundred” (part of the local high street), just near the bike racks and postbox outside The Tavern Inn.

Speaking as somebody who sometimes passes through this part of Romsey at the weekends, the cabinet appears to be a completely new install rather than an upgrade and to be honest it didn’t look terribly out of place when we walked by recently (i.e. no more so than the nearby bin or bike rack etc.).

Never the less locals, including several councillors, have told the Romsey Advertiser that its “deplorable” and in the wrong place. Many of those complaining have also listed a variety of other potential locations for the cabinet, although placement of such infrastructure is often limited by access to a good power supply and the underlying communications cables.

We suspect that locals, many of which still welcome the underlying broadband improvement, might be distinctly less pleased if BT dug the whole street up just to reposition it. Meanwhile a spokesman for Test Valley Borough Council said, “We are writing to the suppliers of the broadband apparatus to invite them to investigate, with the council, any possible alternative position for the cabinet.”

A BTOpenreach Spokesman said:

“Openreach have been liaising with Test Valley planners to agree the best cost-effective location for each cabinet. There is some more engineering work to do before the cabinet at The Hundred is fully operational, which will include painting it black. Openreach is installing a number of cabinets in the Romsey area that will provide access to fibre broadband to more than 2,000 homes and businesses this year.”

Complaints about BT’s cabinets are nothing new and we’ve covered countless similar gripes in the past, although only one or two have had much merit. In many cases the gripes overlook the often significant improvement to local connectivity and the potential uptick in local house price values. In case anybody has forgotten what FTTC cabs look like then here’s a picture from somewhere else.