Yesterday I joined colleagues across the House to debate BT’s service standards in Westminster Hall. Poor broadband connectivity across a number of areas across Rochester and Strood has been a prevalent issue for some time now. This is coupled with incidents around landline services that should come so easily to our largely urbanised area.
The particular broadband areas affected have been around the Hoo Peninsula, but more surprisingly in central Rochester and the business units at the Chatham Historic Dockyard. In addition, some businesses have complained about the increased charges for access on Medway Industrial Estate. Some 74% of businesses in Rochester and Strood employ fewer than four people, so we are very much a small business economy. We, therefore, have to consider how our businesses are growing in the services that are provided. We are told that we are getting high speeds, but I find that at some of those properties we are not getting the speeds that BT says we should be getting.
The fact that large swaths of our local town centres cannot get access to fibre broadband because BT tells us that it is commercially unviable to upgrade the cabinets is something I cannot understand. That Rochester town centre or the historical dockyard, where we have had new development and host many microbusinesses and other growing businesses, struggle to access the cabinets is unacceptable. According to the Minister’s response, my concern that BT consistently drag their heals in resolving issues echoes throughout his Department.
We have a growing proportion of digital economy businesses in our local area, and such businesses need good service and good access. I want to keep those businesses, because I want to grow such commerce within the community. Bearing in mind that we are 26 miles from London and that we are an urbanised area we should certainly be getting a better deal from BT.
In addition to broadband problems, I am also aware of a number of issues had when getting telephone communications installed or maintained. For instance, in my own recent experience, I have struggled to have a phone line set up in my constituency office, despite it previously having a connected line. I currently have a number but not the mechanics, but I am hopeful that within the next day or so I will be up and live with a telephone line. I know other local residents have similar experiences.
As in previous debates on this issue, I was pleased to join a collected and well-presented call for action. The Minister present, Ed Vaizey MP, recognised that levels of satisfaction are ‘woefully low for BT’. While I understand that BT’s status as a national provider means it will inevitably receive more complaints, it still has a universal service obligation. It might have put in £10 billion of investment, hired 3,000 engineers and brought its call centres back to the UK, but Openreach must still do better. The Minister was right to say that all providers, whether it is Virgin, BT, Sky or whatever, should get rid of landline rental and just charge people for what they are buying: broadband, TV and a telephone service. I hope that the Advertising Standards Authority will crack down on how providers advertise their speeds.
Ofcom will start publishing its quality of service reports in early 2017, and I want to ensure that we begin to receive much clearer information from providers. Given this issue is one that recurs all too often in Rochester and Strood, I will continue to engage with BT and ministerial colleagues to resolve our localised issues that hinder our progress.