Success in broadband campaign

Claire Young and Terry Barnaby with the petition
for better broadband in Codrington

Back in February we reported on the campaign for better broadband in Codrington and surrounding areas. We are pleased to report that South Glos Council has now announced an extra £1.49m investment in broadband, which is likely to benefit a number of villages including Codrington. However, it's important the money is spent wisely. BT Open Reach's standard approach of simply upgrading to fibre the lines going into the green cabinets doesn't work for many in our rural areas.

If you are connected to the cabinet by traditional copper wires, the further you are from the cabinet, the worse your service will be. Speed and reliability drop off dramatically with distance. In densely populated urban areas it's likely that the copper wire between you and the cabinet isn't that long, so running fibre into the cabinet can make a big improvement to the service, but it's a different story in the rural areas, where you might be several miles from a cabinet. Business owners there tell us that not only are the speeds too low, particularly for uploading, but also the reliability is poor. Some have suffered without internet for weeks after a heavy rainstorm has damaged the copper wires.

At a recent council meeting Lib Dem Focus Team councillors Claire Young and Sue Hope challenged the Tories running South Glos council to get the technology right and suggested they talk to councils that have already delivered future-proof pure-fibre solutions in conjunction with BT Open Reach. If the Superfast Cornwall project can deploy a pure-fibre solution to over 85,000 premises, why can’t that happen in our rural areas?

Claire also demanded greater transparency about how the money is being used. Local campaigners  want to know that tax payers’ money is being spent on technology that will deliver speed, reliability and value-for-money in the long term, not just stop gap measures. It's vital that decisions on spending the money are made in an open and transparent way.