We have now received a response from Grahame's office but unfortunately it offers little by way of commitment from BT Openreach to upgrade Cabinet 9 at Wellfield. We are particularly concerned about their comments relating to "early design stages" when we have been told previously that the cabinet simply required upgrading and was awaiting a position in BT's annual programme scheduled to begin next month.
Clearly BT Openreach do not share our urgency in finding a solution to the abysmal broadband service provided in parts of our ward so we will seek further assistance from the Digital Durham team in pressing for an alternative approach.
We have published BT's response to Grahame's office below:
Thank you for your email of 6 February to Stephen Little about the upgrade of cabinet 9 connected to Wellfield exchange.
As Stephen advised you in his
e-mail, cabinet 9 is part of our commercial programme, but it is very
much in the early design stages so we are unable to provide an expected
completion date. However, our experience is if there are no issues
with finding a suitable location for the fibre cabinet or with the civil
engineering work, we would typically be looking at 12 months before the area is
ready to take fibre broadband orders.
In your e-mail you have asked
about BT’s commercial plans. I’m not sure what specific information you
want. If there’s a particular area you are concerned about then
please share this information with Stephen and we’ll be happy to investigate
further for you.
In case you are not aware, we
have an Openreach website which is updated with our latest plans.
Individuals need to put in their postcode or telephone number to find out the
latest situation about the availability of fibre broadband in their area.
I’m happy if you to share the website below with any of Grahame’s constituents
who get in touch with your office.
I hope my comments help.
Kind regards
Katherine Elders
Customer Resolutions HLC
Openreach
Web: www.openreach.co.uk