BT Openreach Under Fire for Being Slow to Connect New Build UK Homes

It’s a familiar story, you buy a newly built house only to find that it could take months before BTOpenreach get around to connecting you to even a basic broadband or phone service and then when it does go live the service could be slow. Meanwhile the property developer blames BT and vice versa.

Sadly ISPreview.co.uk has had to cover a fair few stories like this over the years (e.g. here, here and here) and so in that sense the latest reports from Cable.co.uk (here and here) and the BBC do not come as much of a surprise. However the underlying problem may be on the right track towards a resolution.

The report notes that several large new-build estates (e.g. the Sandmartins development in Darlington, the Coopers Edge development in Brockworth and the Portland Wynd development in Northumberland) are struggling to either get connection or to receive a good broadband speed once the service has finally arrived.

The situation is particularly galling because by far and away the cheapest and quickest approach to deploying new telecoms services is to put infrastructure in the ground BEFORE any of the houses and streets are even built, but this requires both the telecoms operator and property developer to be cooperating. Easier said than done.

Chi Onwurah MP, UK Labour Party, said:

“The incremental cost of laying fibre when you’re putting gas or electricity ducts in the ground is insignificant in comparison to digging up streets, so it’s a huge opportunity … The obstacles that new homeowners or people moving into new homes are having I just find incomprehensible really.”

One problem is that some property developers do not see the situation as being their responsibility to solve, which is exactly what Barratt Homes told residents at one of their developments in Plymouth. “We do not have an obligation to provide any Broadband services and I must confirm that Barratt Homes will not consider any further investigations to upgrade the existing Broadband provision,” said the developer.

In fairness existing developments are not yet strictly required to include the provision of good broadband in their builds. On the flip side Ofcom’s current Universal Service Obligation (USO) only mandates that BT and KC (Hull) deliver, following the “reasonable request of any End-user“, a telephone service that includes the ability to offer “data rates that are sufficient to permit functional internet access“; technically that can include ancient dialup.

A Spokesperson for Openreach added:

“The rapid growth in the number of new homes being built around the country has resulted in some owners of new build properties having to wait longer than usual for their phone and broadband service.

Openreach would like to apologise to any affected customers and is working hard to fix this issue. We have also stated our ambition to provide infrastructure to all homes in new build developments before customers move in.”

The good news is that this problem isn’t universal and a number of developers, such as the Berkeley Group, have already made commitments to ensure that their builds will be prepared for “fibre optic broadband” infrastructure by 2016 (here). The Government are also encouraging local authorities to consider the need for superfast broadband when judging planning applications (here).

Likewise Europe has called for “All new buildings – and those undergoing major renovation – for which applications for building permission have been submitted after 31 December 2016 must be high-speed ready” (here). Not that home builders were happy about that, with some warning that it could “seriously damage” future construction (here).

On top of that the Government are also about to start consulting on their proposal to introduce a new legally-binding USO, which would require BT and possibly other telecoms operators to ensure that everybody can access a minimum broadband speed of 10Mbps (Megabits per second). But this won’t be introduced until 2020 and by then 10Mbps may not look as attractive.

One problem with the above improvements is that they don’t affect existing developments and indeed it can sometimes take years for a new build to go from the planning to construction phase, which means that many new builds will continue to be constructed without provision for good broadband and it could thus take a while for the measures to have a real impact.