Families who pay a fortune for super SLOW broadband
Some have such poor service they’ve installed internet masts on their homes — yet telecoms giants insist on charging full price
YOU’D be hard-pressed to find a more idyllic countryside scene than Richard Bunning’s 15th-century thatched farmhouse in Devon.
At one end of his farm, rare-breed cattle graze in a lush paddock. At the other, a dilapidated mill dating back to the 11th century looms large. It’s quiet, serene and totally without mobile phone signal: perfect for a weekend retreat from the hustle and bustle of modern life.
But for Richard and his wife Alison, who live here all-year round running their farming and architecture businesses, that’s far from ideal.
They love the countryside, but the immense difficulties with their broadband connection have come to threaten their livelihoods.
On a good day, they can send a few emails. But loading a simple webpage — such as Google or Amazon — takes up to half-an-hour. Downloading music or streaming Netflix is completely out of the question.
So the Bunnings started an ‘email run’ — writing emails, then driving to Wetherspoons in the nearest town with their laptop to use its wi-fi hotspot and send them all in one go.
BT engineers have visited the farm more than 30 times in 18 months to try to improve their broadband, but without success.
you might expect the Bunnings to be paying just a few pounds for this terrible service. But their connection — 100 times slower than the level deemed necessary for modern internet use — costs £70 a month, more than double the price of superfast fibre broadband elsewhere in the country, which can cost less than £30.
more than a million ‘forgotten homes’ still get broadband speeds of less than 10 megabits per second (mbps), according to the telecommunications watchdog Ofcom.
This is the speed experts say is required for modern life. But even 10 mbps can become sluggish if several people use iPads or laptops at the same time.
Richard’s broadband is so slow that when he tried to check his speed on the BT website, it wouldn’t load. he tried the regulator’s version and it showed he received 0.1 mbps. One of his, and many other sufferers’, biggest grumbles is about the frequent drops in connection. At one stage, a storm left Richard without the internet for three months.
Under a new compensation scheme that, unfortunately for Richard, does not come into effect until February 2019, he would have received £8-a-day compensation for the loss of service — or about £700.
Richard says: ‘I feel like I’ve been defrauded for ten years because BT has charged me for a service that it knows I’m not able to use.
‘It continues to charge at the same rate and say it’s going to fix it when it knows full well that it can’t improve it at all.’
Around 300,000 people in rural areas get less than 2 mbps, making basic Google searches or online shopping difficult. And many on slow speeds feel exploited because the price they pay does not reflect the service they get.
Typically, broadband providers’ cheapest packages are so-called standard deals. These cost around £20 a month for speeds of ‘up to’ 17 mbps. There’s rarely a discount if you get less. But for people in rural areas, there is little to no competition, so prices are higher.
Sky and TalkTalk don’t provide a service in the most isolated parts of the country. Dominic Baliszewski, of Broadbandchoices.
co.uk, says: ‘It’s doubly unfair on some rural customers who pay more for a much worse service just because there is no competition.’
Richard’s main problem is that he lives almost eight miles away from the nearest telephone exchange in Oakford. And BT is the area’s only service provider.
Even if other companies offer alternatives, they often rely on BT Openreach for the quality of the connection. Openreach is the arm of BT that owns and maintains the telephone wires, ducts, cabinets and exchanges that connect nearly all homes and businesses in the UK to the national broadband network.
Some of this network is made up of old, unreliable telephone copper wires that have been in place for more than 50 years, with little sign of being upgraded.
Rivals to BT typically rent this equipment to supply broadband.
But it’s driving some homeowners to take extreme measures.
GUyCAShmORE and his partner Liz Parks moved to Bridestowe, also in Devon, in 2015 to raise their 18month-old son Joseph and let out a holiday home. They soon discovered loading a website took up to a minute and their broadband, which cost £40 a month, often cut out.
The couple began to get complaints — and comments in online reviews — from guests paying to stay in their cottage next door.
Guy was repeatedly told by BT that he was too far from the telephone exchange for a better connection: copper wires struggle to maintain high speeds over long distances.
By the time the broadband reached his house, it had slowed to 1 mbps.
So, as holiday bookings dwindled, Guy decided to bypass BT’s ageing network altogether. he cancelled his account and installed a 4G mast on top of his cottage.
The white, plastic box on his roof is the size of a regular broadband modem and is an advanced radio system to send and receive data.
The mobile internet delivers speeds comparable to normal home broadband packages — but it’s pricey. his EE package costs £70 for 100 mbps of data.
If Guy goes over his monthly allocation, he has to buy more data at a higher price. For instance, using his 4G connection as much as the average broadband user would cost £220 a month.
‘ The poor connection was seriously damaging our business,’ says Guy. ‘ Our reviews were all focused on the terrible internet access — it was putting off prospective guests.
‘most people don’t come to rural Devon to spend the whole trip looking at a laptop. But the internet is such an integral part of life now. People need a decent connection to do online banking or send work emails and, if it’s raining, guests often want to curl up and watch Netflix — but video streaming was a total no-go here.’ he says that while 4G has saved his business, the costs are a bind: ‘Some guests cost us more in top-up data payments than they’re spending to stay here. In our own home, we can’t afford to use BBC iPlayer for more than an hour or two a month.’ Internet masts are catching on in hard-toreach areas, despite the expense, because it’s often the only way to improve broadband speed. The Bunnings have put up their own mast now, too. Almost 300 miles from the two couples in Devon, miriam Gard, 69, and her husband Robert, 75, have similar problems. The couple moved to Kent 17 years ago, which then had broadband speeds of just 0.61 mbps. Despite huge advances in technology, their service has barely improved — miriam’s speed checks show she often gets just 0.67 mbps.
One thing that has been on the up, though, is their BT bill, which now stands at £37.99 a month. ‘People who get superfast broadd band pay the same or less than us. It’s terribly unfair,’ says Miriam. It knows our service is dire, but refuses to give a discount and persists in putting its prices up.’ miriam’s underlying problem is with the Openreach network — she’s also been told the exchange is too far away — so another supplier will make no difference. Miriam finds this strange because she lives just six miles from Ashford, a sizeable market town. her village, Shadoxhurst, is quiet — but sprawling housing estates are being planned and built around it. Like the Bunnings, Miriam and Robert drive to their nearest wi-fi hotpot — the Tesco cafe three miles away — to use the internet. We normally find at least five other people doing the same thing,’ says Miriam. Until December, she worked part-time for an online estate agent, showing homes to prospective buyers. Much of her time was spent setting up appointments, arranging for keys to be collected and keeping in touch with clients. But her BT internet service was so slow that it just became too much. ‘I lost years of my life trying to keep on top of things,’ she says. ‘It’s stressful being cut off from the world and trying to do work that depends on an internet connection.
‘I loved my job, but I couldn’t do it because of our service.’
The Government has promised broadband speeds of at least 10 Mbps for everyone by 2020. But experts say it is unlikely that this will be achieved.
As it stands, Britain is the world’s sixth-biggest economy — but only 31st in terms of broadband speed.
even urban areas are not immune to blackspots.
Barbara Guest, for example, received speeds of 1.2 Mbps when she moved into a new-build townhouse on an estate in Salford two years ago. Despite being just four miles outside central Manchester, the 60-year- old says she still only gets 4 Mbps and can only use the internet in one room.
BT engineers blame the wiring in her house, but she says neighbours are also struggling.
Barbara has yet to get answers as to why a property built in 2012 near the country’s third-largest city can’t get decent broadband.
‘It’s baffling,’ she says. ‘I could understand why someone in the middle of nowhere might have a slow connection, but I assumed I would be safe somewhere so builtup and populated.’ Barbara, who runs a therapy business from home, says she is worried about how she’ll cope as more services move online.
‘I can’t help thinking BT hasn’t invested in the system enough, and that’s where the real problems lie.’
Grant Shapps, chair of the British Infrastructure Group of MPs (BIG), says: ‘Nowadays, people rely on the internet in the same way families need electricity and running water.
‘It cannot be right for people to still suffer snail’s-pace speeds. It’s high time that everyone in the UK actually received the Universal Service Obligation of 10 Mbps, but we shouldn’t stop there.
‘BIG is calling for the higher standard of 24 Mbps to be made official. Only then will the UK be fit to stand on its own two feet in the post-Brexit world we’re entering.’ An Openreach spokesman says: ‘Our fibre broadband network is available to 27.4 million homes and businesses, so we encourage anyone experiencing slow speeds to seek an upgrade if it’s available — only 9.2 million have chosen to so far.
‘ The average UK broadband line can stream seven simultaneous hD videos and, last week, the Government said 95 per cent of the country can now access superfast speeds of 24 Mbps and above, but it’s still 5 per cent short of good enough.
‘We’re determined to deliver decent broadband to everyone, so we’re working hard to address the remaining not- spots across the country.’
A BT spokesman says: ‘We aim to give customers the best possible speeds their line can achieve. There are many factors at play here — some of which are outside the supplier’s control.
‘We base broadband prices on various factors, including usage limits, security features and speed, not just speed alone.’