IX Wireless Fined for Unauthorised Broadband Build in Bury
Blackburn-based network operator IX Wireless, which is building a new fixed wireless broadband network for UK ISP 6G Internet (not related to 6G mobile technology), has been hit with a small fine in the Greater Manchester market town of Bury (specifically the suburb of Brandlesholme) after they built unauthorised digital infrastructure.
IX Wireless has previously spoken of their aspiration to cover 250,000 UK premises with their new broadband network (we don’t know how far they’ve got with this), rising to 4 million by 2025 (here). But until now most of their work has tended to focus on several large towns (Blackburn, Preston etc.) around the Greater Manchester and Lancashire areas.
In this case, the operator had recently been granted a street works permit for a trial dig to determine the location of services in Rollesby Close, Bury (i.e. they were only approved to dig investigatory trial holes). But instead of doing that, the operator installed underground chambers, which had not been authorised by the local authority.
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According to the Bury Times, the council discovered this and issued a Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) that ordered IX Wireless to pay £120 for breaching the permit conditions, which is unlikely to worry them too much.
A Council spokesperson said:
“The permit was closed as completed on September 9 after which it came to our attention that they had instead installed underground equipment.
As this was not the reason given by them in their application, a fixed penalty notice of £120 was issued for breach of permit conditions.
IX Wireless accepted the fixed penalty notice on October 25.”
The operator did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment. Customers of 6GI tend to pay from just £18.99 per month for a 45Mbps service on a 24-month term, which rises to £26.99 for their top 100Mbps (20Mbps upload) package – this includes a free installation and WiFi 6 router. Credits to one of our readers (Aaron) for spotting this news.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Oof
This is a good example of the irrational behavior of local authorities which push up costs and delay roll out. The trial hole was undoubtedly to establish whether/where the chamber could go. Sensibly, having found out that it was feasible to put the chamber there they went ahead and did it, job done, end of disruption. The council instead wants the dig restored and then IX Wireless would have to come back and dig it up again doubling costs and disruption. Where is the logic in that?
Whilst what you say, on the face of it, makes sense: if everyone did as they pleases it would be total chaos.
£120 is a pin prick response that just says ‘follow the rules boys’
@Barry Forde: The article does not say anything about restoring the dig, which would indeed be stupid, only that a fine has been imposed for not having a permit for the installation of the chambers.
The point I’m trying to make is that there is blame all round but how it was handled was heavy handed and not in the spirit of getting fibre to everyone by 20xx.
Firstly IX wireless were silly not to apply for the permit on the basis of installing a chamber. If on digging a hole they found out that it wasnt possible to site a chamber there then no harm done, reinstate the pavement/road and look elsewhere. If, as it turned out, it was possible then go ahead and complete the job. From a council point of view they knew IX wireless were going to dig there on an exploratory basis and sensibly they completed the job when it turned out to be practical. So the council should have just amended their records to show the chamber was in situ and moved on.
The adversorial to and fro twixt council and altnet was unnecessary and a jobs worth way of doing things. When a safety failing occurs then its right to prosecute the culprit but when its just a minor paperwork issue it isnt.
Minor or not, if you ask permission to do one thing and then do another, you’re breaking the rules. In this country, we have the rule of law. If your neighbour sought planning permission for one thing and then built something different, I am quite sure you wouldn’t be so blase about it.
The spirit of the legislation that removed the need for planning permission for “fast” broadband infratructure was that remote areas of the UK should not be hindered by red tape.
Instead, a number of telecom companies have abused the legislation by building their infrastructure in places of high population density and urban areas where there is already a good variety of broadband providers and respectable speeds.
They are effectively launching a land grab which will enable them to wholesale their infrastructure to other providers in the future.
Residential streets in my area that have never had overhead cables are now being confronted with IX Wireless sticking poles up anywhere they want.
And by the way…….this has all been funded by us, the tax payer, as part of Project Gigabit.
Ix wireless is owned by the same person who owned “GRANVILLE COMPUTERS LIMITED” “TIME COMPUTERS (EUROPE) LIMITED” and “THE INTERNEXUS GROUP LIMITED” (aka supanet) and a string of other failed companies, the latest being “LIMEFIELD GROUP LIMITED” setup in 2019 the trail to the “eventual owner” goes “6G INTERNET LIMITED → IX WIRELESS LIMITED → Cohiba Communications Limited → Limefield Group Limited (which is also listed as having the same address as time computers used to have before they went bankrupt). I found an interesting article from when Granville Technology Group went “bust” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2005/dec/02/news.business which is Worth a read. Now my question is since the (yes if you dig hard enough you can find the eventual owner no matter how many companies you set up to hide behind) owner has a large string of failed/closed businesses, what will happen if “6G internet limited” was to go bankrupt would we be left with eyesore telegraph poles all over the streets?
IX wireless has recently been shown as giving its office as an unoccupied building on Sky new. It also donates to Conservative MPs, who list the unoccupied address.
£120 are you actually joking! That’s not much worse than some parking fines. I thought about going with these cowboys at first but it all smelt odd and seemed too good to be true. The reviews backed that up. Plus the shoddy mast they stick on the top of your roof is the most clunky thing I’ve ever seen. It all has imminent bankruptcy written all over it.