TELECOMMUNICATIONS chiefs are to be quizzed by a community about ʻpoorʼ broadband services.
BT and Openreach bosses will answer questions from members of South Derbyshire District Council after giving a presentation on the current situation and plans for Internet connection speeds in the area.
During their appearance on Wednesday before the authority’s overview and scrutiny committee, Paul Bimson, BT’s regional partnership director for the East Midlands, and Carl Gange, from Openreach, are scheduled to tackle an initial round of questions posed in advance by councillors and members of the public.
These include:
● What progress has been made since BT/Openreach last presented to the council in February, 2008?
● Why is broadband still so poor in some areas, especially rural?
● What plans are in place to improve the telecoms infrastructure?
● How are businesses supposed to operate effectively with poor broadband provision?
● How is BT/Openreach going to meet the Government’s pledge of every home having at least two megabits (Mb) connection by 2012, especially in South Derbyshire?
● What is BT/Openreach doing to maintain the twisted copper loop up to the standard that was inherited and how is it being kept up to the universal services obligation?
● Would BT/Openreach consider doing something with the council around providing advice on how individuals can improve their broadband?
One of the more detailed questions concerns the village of Hilton, which was last month said by Tory district councillor, Amy Plenderleith, to have lost businesses because its Internet connection speeds are so slow.
She blamed the link with the Etwall exchange and called on BT to upgrade the hub and link it Hilton with a fibre optic cable.
Councillor Plenderleith said: “People in Hilton are struggling to get anywhere near 2Mb. More than three-quarters of people in Hilton cannot get anywhere near it.”
Slow speeds affected more than 2,000 of the village’s 2,500 to 2,800 homes and was particularly bad on Monday mornings and weekday evenings, she said.
BT said that, while the cable was good, the further away a customer was from their exchange, the lower the speed they were likely to achieve.
A spokesman said no organisation had done more to make ‘Broadband Britain’ a reality, and the company’s multi-million pound investment meant more than 99 per cent of UK homes and businesses could access broadband through their telephone exchange.
The firm was continually looking at ways of improving services with plans to start the roll out of superfast broadband, and was committed to bringing the benefits of the new technology to as many communities as possible.