A NUMBER of Dockenfield residents are at their wits end as they continue their battle for access to high-speed fibre broadband.

Francis Hobday has become increasingly disgruntled about the quality of broadband in his immediate area and is fighting to get this changed.

According to Mr Hobday, Openreach have excluded a large number of households (by postcode including Batts Corner/Boundary Road and Old Lane) from getting fibre in the next rollout

He said that Openreach installed new poles and cables in 2011, however these were later removed. Residents have since requested TalkTalk to replace the old network with fibre optic connection however it has advised that Openreach will not do this:

“This area has had very bad internet speed going back 20 years and over this period, I and many others have tried to get the old cables replaced, which are causing much of the problem.

“Four years ago they put in new poles across to Old Lane and then took them out again because the wires were going over ancient woodland.

“The woodland is only a few hundred feet, they did try see if there was another route, which there is but they haven’t replaced them.

“This would have given about 25 houses the ability to be connected to fibre. They guaranteed us a 1.9 connection one year ago, now we are on 0.6.”

An Openreach spokesman said that some residents in Dockenfield already have access to high-speed broadband. However, BT have a Community Fibre Partnership scheme, where it works with local communities not currently included in fibre broadband plans.

More than 250 communities across the country have already signed up to Openreach’s co-funded Community Fibre Partnerships scheme, with more than 100 communities already enjoying the benefits of high-speed broadband.

The spokesman continued: “BT have already helped more than 55,000 homes and businesses gain access to high-speed broadband in the borough of Waverley. Coverage is more than 91 per cent high-speed broadband in the borough.

“BT has already made fibre broadband available to more than 350,000 Surrey homes and businesses as part of our commercial deployment.

“The Superfast Surrey Programme, combined with the commercial rollouts, has enabled approximately 96 per cent of all Surrey residents to access fibre download speeds of 15mbps or above.”

According to Openreach this is anticipated to increase to 97 per cent by 2018 due to additional commercial deployment plans.

However, Mr Hobday believes that the self financing schemes will “probably” not work in his area, as there are not enough people and it would cost “far too much” per person.

Mr Hobday was later informed by Surrey County Council’s, environment and infrastructure team, that as a result of the feedback received from network service providers during the 2015/2016 Open Market Review (OMR) and State aid Public Consultation, approximately 15,300 premises in 2,937 postcodes in Surrey including his own were identified as “NGA Target White”.

This indicated that there were some premises in these postcodes that were unable to access download speeds of 15mbps or more and that were not included in any commercial rollout plans.

The full list of postcodes identified as eligible for State aid (including Mr Hobday’s), were sent to BT by Surrey County Council requesting that BT model a solution based on the lowest cost per premise, for as many as of the 15,300 NGA Target White premises as possible located across Surrey within the programme’s available funding.

This solution, known as the Gainshare deployment, was announced at the end of February and includes nearly 6,000 NGA Target White homes and businesses that are anticipated to benefit from further fibre infrastructure with download speeds of 24mbps or more.