To be really fucked off at being held to hostage by Openreach?

[GimletsGrannie]

We live north of a village which has broadband. Our little collection of houses has never been connected to fibre broadband, because Openreach quietly scrapped the plan in 2019 without telling anyone.

When I contacted their team for information on what had happened, I was ignored, told to fill in a contact form, and basically i think they hoped we'd go away. Unfortunately, lockdown working has made internet access a daily nightmare in our household - 4g signal as a backup isn't great around here so a neighbour has had to go into his workplace during lockdown because he's literally unable to work. We're only just teetering on the edge of sanity / to the point where only 1 of us can be doing a work video call at a time, which is just about acceptable 90% of the time, but by god it's painful.

I contacted their Executive complaint team to try and figure out how we could get fibre installed in the next few years (i'm not expecting it tomorrow, but i NEED to know it's not going to be like this forever). They've pushed me to start knocking on neighbour's doors to try and sell a private contract to the unconnected houses, which i've done (hard during lockdown and working fulltime and dragging DC out at night before bedtime!) without success (most of the folk around here are retired and don't need it for work - one retired woman said she just uses her phone for everything, which is fine for her). Openreach have told me i need to sign up 22 (yes, 22...) neighbours before they can install broadband. i don't even know 22 of my neighbours, we're all dotted around little lanes and collections of rows of cottage houses, etc.. not in a city with (say) a block of flats.

I've just had an update from their "executive complaint" handler basically telling me there's nothing i can do now.

Presumably if i have a spare £167000 they'd happily take my cash and install fibre.. but obviously, i don't. so essentially i can just fuck off.

AIBU to expect a longer term fix for lack of fibre broadband to be available? politicians keep drumming on about how working from home is the "new normal" (....) and how they're trying to get more houses connected.. but I can't be the only one who can't just throw thousands of pounds at the internet crapness that Openreach expect us to put up with permanently...?

AIBU to expect more from the government, from Openreach's monopoly, in 2021?

(I have no idea how nieghbours who are homeschooling are coping on our old telephone (non fibre) broadband line!)

I hate Openreach.

I do see something in the "but you chose to move to a small village without services" argument, tbh whether they were saying they planned to install fibre or nor- because plans can always change.

But I hate Openreach so much I'm going YANBU on this one just because it's them.

I think if you’ve moved to a tiny village (or by the sounds of it not even in the village but surrounding it), you have to accept you won’t have great connective services because you’ve chosen to live remotely.

bollocks to that. We've lived in our village (disclaimer: not UK) for yonks well before smartphones and internet were A Huge Part of Everyday Life.

We barely have any cellphone coverage which is shit especially now. We also had shit internet. Our government decided that small villages which have shit services for literally everything (no buses, miles from anywhere but a farming community) would get priority on the fibre broadband rollout. For each area there had to be at least a 40% of households signing up, and there were 3 companies offering it (dropped down to 2 when it became clear one had overextended)

And lo and behold eventually we got it. And it's fab. Cellphone coverage is still shit, we still don't have buses and we've lost our last remaining village shop (it was a bakery). But at least we can WFH and Home-School without too many problems.

The government in the UK really don't want cities to get any bigger, they should be offering incentives to move out of cities - and fibre broadband should be one of those things. Also: try selling your house these days when there is no chance of getting connected. It's shit.

Sorry OP. You need to keep on and on at MPs.

They're a joke.

I'm sure you've looked at alternatives but have you considered satellite broadband?

Might be an option for you and close neighbours to get a system in place and share costs.

167k is probably a figure made up on the spot to make you go away.

Been there, Openreach are completely useless. They have also trousered a vast amount of government cash to roll out rural broadband whilst having no interest whatsoever in doing it. For all those city folks saying don't live in the countryside, some of us have been here for years. Try selling a house with poor internet. If only life was that simple.

Satellite broadband is about £60 per month and is also not reliable as in many rural locations is so overloaded that they throttle the speed back to make it almost unusable. Streaming through it will bankrupt you. Still got the dish on my roof...

Try and contact your MP and Ofcom. It would not surprise me if Openreach are avoiding a legal obligation to provide your village the service.

Otherwise, look into whether any wireless ISPs can offer service. They work by putting up a base station somewhere with good fibre, that connects to a box on your house within a few miles or so.

Or wait for Starlink.

Contact your local MP and councillors. You won’t be the only people who are struggling with this. Your local political representatives need to get involved and apply some pressure.

Have you looked for other suppliers, specialising in rural locations.

We have one called Beeline Broadband in this area and I know a number of rural friends using their service with great success.

We gave up waiting for Openreach and their endless "yes we're rolling out broadband in your area" and got together with othe neighbours to get Wessex Internet to instal fibre here - I think they specialise in rural communities.

However, that might not be an option for you if other neighbours are not keen :-(

Totally understand how you feel though - I used to shout at the radio every time they referred to people not being able to get broadband as "isolated communities" - FFS we are only about 50 miles from London, we just happen to live in the countryside!

I live in a small town. Broadband is absolutely awful and there is very little mobile signal. But all the villages and hamlets around us have superfast fibre and free wifi running from churches and old telephone boxes. They benefitted from some magical government scheme. If one person is watching netflix, or on a teams lesson etc. the whole thing collapses anyone else does anything. If two DC need to be on a live lesson at once, we park near the hospital or McDonalds and use their patient/customer wifi for one child and leave the other at home. The whole thing is a total mess. No virgin here and so no competition to sort anything out.

Yanbu at all. There's a reason openreach and BT used to be public utilities and much like the water companies they should be again. Not that that helps you much.

On a more practical level have you explored options like bonded lines? You can get multiple lines to increase speed or use a combination of 4g and your phone line. A quick Google will provide more information. If you want to pursue it I'd suggest talking to www.aa.net.uk/ They we're our suppliers for a number of years and I absolutely can't fault them. We now live rurally but with cheaper options available

OP, are you saying you don't have broadband at all, or you don't have fibre?

Apparently my address has fibre available, that is until I try and get it then they check and oh sorry, no it isn't available at your address. I only have BT as a provider here, literally no choice at all, I get broadband but it's so crap, I can either watch something online at the lowest quality or I can have a browser open for anything else. And I'm dead centre of a town! I have family in a village 3 miles out of town, super fast fibre which costs less than I pay. Sister and family live in the opposite direction, 2 miles away in a brand new estate and pay less for fibre and tv package than I do! It's really weird how its all done, it's only part of the length of my street that can't get anything but standard BT. Town centre, on a road with multiple businesses and houses and flats, before pandemic times I used to go 50 feet to sit in a supermarket cafe to download stuff using their much better wifi.

It sounds like a bloody nightmare.

Do you have broadband? Just not the really fast fibre optic broadband? Or not broadband at all?

Openreach do what they can get away with. Government should change that.

I totally get why you're frustrated.

But Openreach are a business and it's not in their interests to invest in something that won't give then any return. Unfortunately, living rurally often means compromise when it comes to internet, phone services, public transport and general accessibility.

I live somewhere where we have to rely on Openreach - we can either get BT or SKY - there's no other choice. It's frustrating but we chose to live rurally and that's part and parcel of it in this country, unfortunately.

I live in the middle of a city and don't have fibre...

You're better off just forgetting about OpenReach and waiting for Starlink instead. They've already started beta testing in the UK and are planning a massive amount of launches this year. I wouldn't be surprised if it's opened to the public within a year.

Openreach is one of the worst organisations I have ever encountered. Useless and lazy staff, arrogant overcharging, and more or less impossible to complain to.

However you did choose to live in a remote area, so have to accept services will not be up to city standards. It is also entirely pointless to place any reliance on plans or promises from Openreach or BT or any Internet provider.

So you'll have to move to improve your situation.

But Openreach are a business and it's not in their interests to invest in something that won't give then any return. Unfortunately, living rurally often means compromise when it comes to internet, phone services, public transport and general accessibility.

That's all neocon bullshit, actually. What fibre broadband is (as are buses, access to medical care and mobile phone networks these days) is, is a public good. People in rural communities pay taxes, council taxes and are often engaged in things like farming that is quite desperately needed. Added to the fact that a lot of rural communities are full of people who were born there. Should whole families up sticks to live in cities? I think not.

All of you blithely saying: you'll have to move. You try to sell a house with that kind of infrastructure and see how far you get buying a replacement house with an area that is well supported.

The OP hasn't answered my question about whether they already have a broadband line. As I mentioned, mine isn't Fibre but it's fast and effective - via Openreach and Plusnet.

Who is your existing provider? You might find switching provider makes a difference. My mum was with Talktalk, they always said she was too far from the "box" and she'd never have a decent service. She swapped to Plusnet, new router and a cable was replaced and hey presto, a very usable service. Not fibre.

@Sometimes123

Open reach are the people responsible for connectivity and then other providers can offer services on that line. The op is speaking to the correct people

Try contacting your local council, I know mine has a specific team that deals with rural connectivity and the roll out of fibre broadband across the county (south West). There’s a voucher scheme available here.