Andrew Dismore

 

There is a lack of broadband accessibility in large parts of Barnet and Camden. I raised this during the London Assembly plenary with the London Enterprise Partnership.

I raised a number of cases with the Chair of the LEP.

In Parliament Emily Thornberry MP gave an  example of it taking nine hours to upload a two and a half minute film in relation to businesses in EC1 and EC2.

The Barnet Society report that 3,000 properties in and around High Barnet have been  condemned by BT to remain on some of the slowest speeds in the country.

They quote an IT professional from Hungary, working in Barnet High Street, opposite Barnet and Southgate College. They have  fast broadband, but he has only a 4 megabit download.

He says:

‘If Barnet College has a high speed service why can’t I have one too? Even in  rural Hungary we can get speeds of 20 to 30 megabits’

David, a  constituent from  High Barnet wrote to me:

‘Before moving to Willow Drive, Chipping Barnet from North Finchley , I used the BT FTTC fibre availability checker to see if I would have access to modern broadband speeds.

The checker said that my cabinet, Barnet Exchange cabinet 38, would be fibre-upgraded by Sept 2014. It even cited the fibre connection speed. So I moved. It wasn’t. The availability checker was wrong.

Now Openreach tells me that Barnet Exchange cabinet 38 is not going to be upgraded as “part of the Openreach commercial fibre rollout.” There is no prospect of a fibre connection at all. So, now I’m stuck with a very slow connection speed that I used to have 10 years ago.

It is very disappointing that BT’s online system for checking fibre availability simply can’t be trusted and that in 2014 a street in a London Borough cannot have access to modern digital technology enjoyed by all of the streets around them.”

Simon, another constituent, wrote :

‘As a resident of Granville Road, Barnet  I wish to express my frustration regarding the incredibly slow internet speed we have been experiencing for a long time.   

It is too slow to do anything let alone watch the BBC iplayer and means that I am never able to work from home and see my young children (my offices are in Fulham, South West London which is a very long commute).  

It is not acceptable that living in a London suburb the speed of our connection is slower than the remotest parts of this country.  To add insult to injury the houses parallel to us in Wood Street have Infinity supplied from the box outside Ravenscroft Park.’

 

 

We have had a catalogue of excuses from BT, but in the end comes down to their assessment of ‘economic viability’. Completely contrary  to  the interests of consumers, when Birmingham  Council had a  scheme to plug the gaps in their  broadband coverage both Virgin and BT challenged it because they said it would adversely affect their business models and distort competition, even though State Aid approval had been granted by the European Commission. In  their own commercial interests, dog in the manger  BT and other providers  are holding back London’s economic development.’

The so called Super Connected Cities Plan has been  a sticking plaster solution which hasn’t worked. In London  as of December last year only £6.5m in grant funding had been approved and 2,232 vouchers issued, less than a quarter of the  target of 10,000.

London cannot compete with other global tech clusters when it can take nine hours to upload a two and a half minute film. People  ought to be able  to work from home, which  reduces travelling time and costs, but the further out they are , the less chance they have, which  cannot  be right.

It is good news that the Commons Public Accounts Committee has just announced yet another inquiry into the problems of the rollout of superfast broadband, especially in cities. It is ludicrous that rural areas now get faster speeds and better accessibility than we can achieve in London.