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New Housing Estate Locals Complain FTTH Broadband ISP Has a Monopoly

Saturday, Aug 16th, 2014 (8:06 am) - Score 12,404

A new 200 acre housing development in South Gloucestershire (Charlton Hayes), which once complete will include 2,200 homes (inc. a school, business space and shops) and is situated near to the notorious Internet slowspot of Bradley Stoke, has seen its first residents complain about the lack of ISP choice because they can only get Seethelight’s 300Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) service.

The development connects to the local Filton telephone exchange and BTOpenreach are currently in the process of deploying their new hybrid fibre broadband (FTTC) services in the area, although it’s unclear how much of Charlton Hayes will eventually fall within BT’s upgrade plan or indeed which services they intend to make available. Some nearby street cabinets (e.g. cabinet 8) report to have FTTC available, while others have none and the latter frequently offer only fairly slow ADSL2+ speeds.

The situation in nearby Bradley Stoke is similar due to the high number of Exchange Only Lines (EOL) in the town and the fact that it’s split between the two telephone exchanges in Almondsbury and Filton. But earlier this month BT confirmed that Bradley Stoke’s EOL infrastructure was finally in the process of getting FTTC, so clearly progress is being made for some (here).

But, back in Charlton Hayes, the first locals have been complaining to developer Bovis Homes because they apparently have “no option” other than to take Seethelight’s service, although South West Business confusingly attempts to clarify by saying “residents have no option to go to another provider unless they pay for a phone line and broadband connection” (this doesn’t sound like no option, unless they really mean BT would have to build new infrastructure).

In any case Seethelight, which is able to offer superfast broadband packages of between 50Mbps and 300Mbps by using true fibre optic infrastructure via the Independent Fibre Networks Limited (IFNL) platform, appears to be the developments default utility provider for broadband and phone services (Sky’s TV service is also available over the network, like it is with GTC’s builds).

However, despite the good speeds and reasonably affordable service offered by Seethelight (details from our Dec 2013 article), at least some locals aren’t happy.

Jenna Gaff, New Charlton Hayes Resident, said:

My neighbours include a couple of doctors, people working in the same area as me and some IT consultants. We all need broadband for our work, but what I didn’t realise is that one company has a monopoly in Charlton Hayes.

These days everyone expects to have broadband along with the utilities when you move into a house. We have also got used to shopping around with all the providers offering different deals. It appears that this company has been chosen by the providers and people living in Charlton Hayes have no choice but to go with them.”

Apparently Ms Gaff, whom is also unhappy that the service ties her in to a 12 month contract (note: most of the big ISPs also use 12-18 months), has even setup a local campaign to help residents fight the issue.

But so far Bovis Homes doesn’t appear to care and said they had, “received extremely positive customer feedback in relation to the broadband provider at our Charlton Hayes development. We chose a broadband provider that we could be confident would offer our customers excellent connection speed and levels of service support, and given the level of overall customer satisfaction with their service at Charlton Hayes, there are no plans to change this arrangement.”

Bovis’s development is by no means alone in teaming up with an alternative FTTH provider, although we have often pondered over the pros and cons of delivering such a fast technology, albeit without giving consumers a choice over the more mainstream and recognisable providers.

Somebody who is accustomed to having that choice might well be displeased to lose it, even if the new service is likely to be a lot faster. On the other hand developers tell us that BT can’t always offer a competitive FTTP/H solution where they’re building.

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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