BT dictates pace of broadband delivery

Sir,

I am writing to add to the comments made by Richard Warwick on the state of rural broadband (Letters, The Oban Times, March 1).

My husband and I have recently resorted to getting satellite broadband, so fed up were we with what the telephone line provides. While it works, it is expensive (despite the grant available for installation), and we see it as a temporary measure until the Scottish Government delivers on its promise of 100 per cent coverage of fast broadband by 2021.

I don’t see this as an impressive promise. Rather it is very late delivery of what we should already have.

In the UK, we are woefully behind other countries.

For too long our politicians have allowed BT to dictate the pace of delivering broadband. Are we surprised that a commercial company is not interested in rural areas which provide very little return for investment in infrastructure?

But it is even more shocking if a relatively small sum, the price of a new car, is all it takes to make small changes to the infrastructure we already have and upgrade the local exchanges so that they can deliver ‘normal’ broadband.

Why has BT been allowed to get away with not doing this?

In the absence of BT doing anything useful, Gigaplus Argyll was a recent attempt to put in place an alternative. A lot of time and money went into it before it sadly failed due to the demise of AB internet.

It is just another insult to the community that government officials have shown complete inflexibility on applying their rules on funding and won’t allow the existing equipment to be used by a future venture that would continue the work started. They would prefer it sat there to decay rather then be used.

And so the wait continues. Marie Fox,

Tigh Na Con, Tiroran, Isle of Mull