Why aren’t new cables going underground?

IN November 1995, the Derby Evening Telegraph ran a front-page story, “Cable Calamity”, which reported: “Cable company Nynex has been officially branded the worst company for carrying out street repairs in Derbyshire.”

Nynex contractors had been digging up Derby’s footpaths and roads as part of a £74million project to bring the cable TV revolution to the city. But they failed to come up to scratch in 46 per cent of street repair inspections in Derbyshire done by county council highways officers during the previous year.

Locally, in Dean Close, some of the displaced paving slabs were relaid, but with an unsatisfactory foundation, and subsequently there were in excess of 200 damaged slabs in “the Nynex track”.

It left multiple pedestrian trip hazards due to uneven/broken slabs, and was ultimately fixed in 2012 when the street lighting was changed and the paving slabs replaced by tarmac. Thus it took 17 years to rectify a safety hazard arising from the Nynex cable-laying programme.

More recently – a few days ago – several commercial vehicles arrived in Dean Close, with one carrying several new telephone poles. A neighbour later drew my attention to a BT notice affixed to a nearby lamppost which cited the imminent appearance of “6x New Poles”. Additionally, a workman had informed the neighbour that it was part of a wider scheme to upgrade broadband services.

Notably, the Minister for Digital Infrastructure, Matt Warman, said last year: “It makes both economic and common sense for firms rolling out gigabit broadband to make use of the infrastructure that already exists across the country. This will help them avoid the high costs and disruption of having to dig or build their own and ultimately benefit consumers.”

So some readers may wonder after the disruption suffered by Derby residents over 20 years’ ago, why isn’t the Nynex underground ducting being used as an alternative to the installation of new BT poles and overhead cables ?

David Purdy, Littleover