‘We’re just not up to speed,’ say villagers
Slow conn e ction hampers work and schooling
Residents of a Perthshire village have hit out at the broadband connection, claiming it is adversely affecting their ability to work from home and home school their children.
Families in Carsie near Blairgowrie say that poor connection times have been a problem for several years in the area but the current restrictions imposed as part of efforts to tackle the global coronavirus pandemic have highlighted and exacerbated the situation.
Around 100 people live in Carsie, many of whom are affected by the issue, and they are calling on Openreach to install a new cabinet in the area.
The cabinet which currently serves the area is located on the corner of Perth Road and Essendy Road, nearly a mileand-a-half away.
As well as parents trying to home school their children and people working from home, some residents are also selfemployed and trying to run their own businesses.
And the poor connection times also have an impact on people’s social life, affecting video calls with friends and family as well as the ability to stream or download entertainment.
Carsie resident Phil Murrie said: “There have been at least three Openreach vans out here every week for the last five weeks looking at the issue but they are saying that there are no plans to get a cabinet here.
“At the moment our broadband runs on a copper cable from a box a mile and a half away and we are only getting two mbps when we are supposed to be getting eight.
“People are trying to work from home, they are home schooling, they are selfemployed, it’s not good enough.”
Fellow local resident Jack Sime, a university student, is currently sheilding at home.
He said: “We have been asking Openreach and BT to improve it for a number of years now and lockdown really just proved the point we have been making all this time as now everyone is experiencing it and it has greatly reduced people’s ability to work and do school work from home.
“All we want is to get speeds close to what we have to pay for - we pay the same as someone would in Blair but they get much faster connections.”
An Openreach spokesperson said: “We’re sorry to hear of residents’ frustration with slow broadband speeds. We understand the difficulties this can cause.
“Superfast broadband is provided through a network of street cabinets. While the cabinet which serves this community has been upgraded for fibrebased broadband, it’s located more than 1.5km from Carsie, which impacts on the broadband speeds available. Openreach doesn’t currently have commercial plans to build a new cabinet, but we are constantly reviewing what can be done to improve broadband and we’ll look at this again.
“Where we can’t make a commercial case for an upgrade, and a community hasn’t yet been included in any other deployment plan, we also offer a Community Fibre Partnership scheme. We’ll work with any community on an upgrade where costs are shared.”