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More Openreach Overbuild Fun for B4RN’s 1Gbps FTTH Broadband in Cumbria

Saturday, Sep 2nd, 2017 (12:01 am) - Score 3,430

Openreach has been criticised for a “criminal waste of taxpayers’ money” after their state aid supported roll-out of ‘up to’ 80Mbps capable FTTC broadband technology threatened to overbuild yet another one of B4RN’s community built 1Gbps FTTH/P networks, this time in Cumbria.

The B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North) team, which encourages community volunteers to help build their own local fibre optic broadband networks (usually in exchange for shares), are no strangers to seeing public money being spent to help Openreach’s slower FTTC and FTTP networks overbuild their deployments (examples here, here and here).

Unfortunately B4RN has always struggled to get county councils’ to recognise their deployment plans through the usual Open Market Review (OMR) process. In recent years the perceived intransigence by local authorities towards their otherwise successful community-built network has instead encouraged the ISP to shun such processes and simply continue their roll-out as required, irrespective of what the councils choose to do.

The approach being taken by B4RN is only possible because the direct community engagement fostered by their model always results in strong uptake. Not to mention that £30 per month for a symmetric 1Gbps home broadband connection is pretty darn cheap (plus a £150 one-off connection fee) and their business options are similarly affordable.

Barry Ford, CEO of B4RN, told ISPreview.co.uk (July 2017):

“Where BT do an overbuild we never lose a customer, where we overbuild them we achieve at least a 50% takeup.”

So far most of the overbuilding cases have occurred in Lancashire, although the latest example stems from Cumbria where B4RN is currently in the process of extending their FTTH network into the Preston Patrick, Old Hutton, Homescales and New Hutton area via the B4SW (Broadband for South Westmorland) project.

However some local residents have spotted Openreach engineers digging up the road to install fibre optic cable from Beehive Bridge to a new street cabinet, which sits just short of Middleshaw and is within the B4SW area.

Jean Robinson, Local Resident, said:

“This is a criminal waste of taxpayers’ money … do they not know that nearly 95 per cent of Old Hutton has signed up for B4RN’s 1Gbps broadband, which we will get before the end of autumn? And that means the whole of the village, not just the houses along the main road. BT will not reach the outlying hamlets and farms.

This is public money given to BT to provide decent broadband. But they’re too late. And why is their cabinet 280 yards short of the first house?”

A quick check of the Connecting Cumbria project site appears to confirm that the Broadband Delivery UK supported deployment of FTTC connectivity is indeed in the process of deploying into part of B4RN’s patch, with a mix of 24Mbps+ “superfast” and sub-24Mbps “fibre broadband” (FTTC) performance being anticipated.

Naturally this is good news for locals because it means that many residents and businesses should benefit from a choice of faster broadband networks. On the other hand more than a few people often complain that it makes little sense to be spending public money in an area where the community have very publicly begun to build their own 1Gbps broadband network.

We asked Openreach to comment on or clarify the situation a few days ago but sadly they’ve not provided a response, so instead here’s what they said last year in reply to an almost identical situation.

An Openreach Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk (Feb 2016):

“We operate in an open and competitive market, and all providers have the opportunity to outline their plans to the council before any decisions on state aid are made.

We will only cover homes as outlined in the ‘intervention’ area provided to us by the council, and we welcome any investment that brings homes and businesses a greater choice of providers.”

In fairness the problem above isn’t so much Openreach’s fault as it is a result of inflexible local authorities, which so often fail to engage fairly with alternative network operators like B4RN. Nobody can deny the excellent work that B4RN has done over the past few years and nearly all of it has been achieved through private / community investment.

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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