AKA: Where is our superfast broadband? An open letter to Fastershire, Openreach, Gigaclear, Gloucestershire CC, Moreton-in-Marsh Town Council and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP
For 4 years now the our development (comprising >300 new build homes in Moreton-in-Marsh) has been promised broadband as part of the ‘Fastershire’ roll out plan. As far back as 2013 the Fastershire status for homes in the development has read ‘exploring solutions’ and then finally ‘Network Build’ in early 2014. Imagine the relief at knowing we could ditch our unreliable copper connections. However, for some reason (possibly confusion over the existence of these new build properties), all 450 properties missed out on the Openreach fibre Broadband that rolled out to almost all the other properties in Moreton-in-Marsh towards the end of 2016. Our status then went back to ‘exploring solutions’. 🙄
Then, in the summer of 2017, the Fastershire website declared that we are to be part of a roll out plan with Gigaclear. This seems odd when we (450 homes) are situated only a mile from a fibre-enabled Openreach exchange, but hey, if we are to get faster broadband I certainly won’t argue. Strangely, when we (the residents of the Moreton Park development) enter our addresses in to the Gigaclear website, the Gigaclear website seems to think we live in a place called ‘Brittons Lodge’. I’m not sure where Brittons Lodge is and Google maps, as far I can make out, shows it to be a three-hour drive from Moreton Park. A screen grab is available at the bottom of this post.
In late September Openreach (not Gigaclear) started to lay fibre to our BT / Openreach man-hole covers. This is confusing as Gigaclear and BT are building separate fibre networks – can it be cost effective to compete with each other and lay fibre networks on top of each other? We won’t get the answer to that. Judging by the number of vans still occupying the local streets it is a big task and work is still ongoing. There is still no indication as to when an order may be able to be placed.
Finally(!), as of November 2017, the Fastershire website declared that I can now order ultrafast broadband with speeds of up to 1000mbps. ‘No way’ I thought to myself:
Yeah, ‘No Way’ was correct… not a single provider will allow me to place an order.
Please can you (those addressed above) look in to this matter to understand why we are being overlooked/lost in the system/provided false information? There are many households here who would love to take advantage of fibre broadband.
Gigaclear website location error:
Update 24-04-2018: So after two complaints to OpenReach via an online form and >3 months of waiting OpenReach finally wrote back to me to say that I can now place an order! There aren’t many providers of FTTH broadband right now, so I either pay double, or I go with BT. I chose BT. I’m already regretting choosing BT. 3 hours on the blower so far and the install is yet to even happen…
Leave a Reply