BROADBAND AND COMPLAINTS

Swalcliffe Demand better Broadband service and telephone lines
Take Me Direct to the Complaints form
Take Me to the Sugar Net interest form

Would like a faster and more reliable broadband service?

An important message from Swalcliffe Parish Council and Swalcliffe Digital Connectivity Group, October 2016

Many of us experience both slow and unreliable broadband. For example 53% in the village survey last year described the service as poor or very poor. Hardly a day goes by without an ‘Openreach’ Van working on a remedial repair somewhere in the village!

We face two problems.

Firstly the local cabling from the village telephone cabinet to our homes is of a very poor quality – a mix of copper and aluminium – which means we have poor reliability, especially in wet weather. This problem will not be solved by simply connecting high-speed fibre to the village cabinet. Broadband speeds will probably only increase a little and the service will still be unreliable for many of us. ‘Openreach’ appear to keep doing remedial repairs rather than upgrading the whole local network (from the village cabinet to households).

Secondly being a small community we haven’t been a priority for ‘Openreach’ to connect high-speed fibre to the village, despite the new cabling being laid under the main road running through the village!

 

The emerging opportunities

After years of uncertainty and delay, the situation is now becoming clearer and we now have at least two possible options that could improve things for us.
bt-openreach-logo1
BT/Openreach – At the September meeting of the Parish Council a representative from BT/Openreach explained that we are now scheduled to have high speed fibre laid to a new village cabinet by the end of 2017. This is potentially good news but it will be subject to a survey that they need to undertake. If high-speed fibre is installed we will experience much higher speeds to the village cabinet/distribution point but (and it’s an important but) because of the poor local network we will not necessarily get much improved speeds or reliability in our homes. This means it could be very questionable whether it would be worth paying an additional monthly fee to have the high-speed connection.

Virgin Media – We are sad to report that this is no longer a viable option but we hope to have news shortly relating to a existing service that will become available to the villagers of Swalcliffe.

What we recommend

Arising from the Village planning process in 2014/5 we set up a Digital Connectivity Group to assist the PC with our broadband and mobile phone reception issues (David McLindon, Colin Hill, and Peter Beddowes), and we think the best way forward is:

  • Firstly we should keep the pressure on BT/Openreach regarding both the poor quality of our local network and their plan to install high-speed fibre. With this in mind the BT representative has promised to report back on the complaints we made at the meeting and also to come to another meeting in six months to update us.
  • Secondly we want to to progress the discussions with Virgin Media in the hope that this could be a realistic and very attractive alternative option.
  • Thirdly we are exploring other possible options and we will inform the village if any of these become realistic possibilities.

But we need your active participation please, to get things moving

1. Sugar Net – if you are the slightest bit interested in finding out more about this opportunity we need to have your email address to pass onto them in order to demonstrate our level of interest.

Please fill out the form below:

SUGAR NET Sign up

Your information will not be passed on to any third party companies and will only bee used by SUGAR NET. This is not a commitment to buy any service it is just you registering your interest. It will also be used to keep you informed of any progress we have with the project but you will be able to opt out at any time.

 

2. Pressuring Openreach/BT to improve our local network –

we have been advised that it will help our case of getting the local network enhanced if, as a community, we log all our complaints and poor experiences with them

So when you are complaining to your broadband service provider about the service (most of us use BT) please try to get a complaint reference

If you are a BT customer and you can get that from the online fault tracking page here:
https://www.bt.com/consumerFaultTracking/public/faults/tracking.do?pageId=2&s_cid=con_FURL_faults

Please fill out the form below:

Existing and Past Phone & Broadband Service Complaints

So don't suffer in silence, if you are unhappy with your current service, even if your landline is just crackling, we encourage you to make a complaint to your service provider and make a note of the reference number, which is automatically generated, if they don’t provide you with one please ask for it.

The complaints can be about any of your phone and/or broadband service, no matter who the provider is, BT, Vodafone, Sky, Talk Talk, Plusnet etc. Just let us know.

You can then log complaints alongside others from the village either with a complaint reference number if you have one or simply just log informal complaints or any poor service you are experiencing   (without a reference number).

If we all follow these simple actions we will be in a much stronger position to make real progress with our Broadband reception.

Please help us to make things better! Thanks