Devon UK Community Burns Openreach Van Effigy to Raise Broadband Plight

The annual Templeton Bonfire and Fireworks Night in Devon had somewhat of a different theme this year after the rural community, which has long struggled with slow sub-1Mbps broadband speeds, decided to burn an effigy of Openreach’s (BT) van.

Personally speaking, I’m not sure how I feel about the sight of any broadband / telecom company’s engineering van going up in smoke (even if it’s just an effigy, a sinister undertone might still be perceived). The engineers who drive those vans are just ordinary workers and not responsible for setting company policy, thus they perhaps do not deserve to be turned into an object of hate.

On the other hand the objective of this community was clearly to do something that gets their plight into the news and, judging by the media coverage, they have succeeded. The frustration of those who live in such digitally disadvantaged communities is fully understandable and sadly there are many more like it across the United Kingdom, although the numbers are shrinking.

Indeed the fact that there are so many small communities, including a few urban areas, can sometimes make it even more difficult to get your situation noticed. Sometimes the louder you can shout, the more likely the problem is to get resolved.

Adam Short, Templeton Resident, said (Devon Live):

“I have only been in the village since June 2016, but I have been involved with the issue of broadband in the village since before our arrival. We’ve investigated everything – from private enterprise options, through petitioning BT, to co-funding options. So far, nothing has materialised.

A few houses in the village are able to make use of 4G broadband through mobile providers. 4G is still riddled with problems though sadly – some providers really throttle the speeds, whilst others are still ‘tuned’ for a mobile phone connection so will terminate long-lasting data connections after a period of time. Those majority of households who still use BT/Openreach based broadband achieve (in general) less than 1Mbps download speeds.”

At this point it’s worth remembering that the Government’s £1.6bn+ Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) project is still on-going and hopes to bring “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) capable networks to 98% of premises by around 2020 (currently at about 94%), while the final 2% will have to make do with a minimum speed pledge of 10Mbps+ via the proposal for a new Universal Service Obligation (USO).

On top of that Openreach are no longer the only game in town for remote rural areas. The regional Connecting Devon and Somerset project has recently signed some big broadband expansion contracts (Phase 2) with wireless ISP Airband (here) and “full fibre” (FTTP/H) provider Gigaclear (here), although for now Templeton is still an Openreach-only location.

A spokesperson for Openreach said, “Templeton is an extremely rural community which makes rolling out fibre broadband much more challenging. Templeton was not included in Openreach’s commercial roll-out of fibre broadband or the first phase of the Connecting Devon and Somerset partnership but we’re working hard to find alternative ways of bringing faster broadband to residents.” Apparently improvements to 4G and co-funded fibre deployments are being considered.