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Oakley Green, Fifield and District Community Association Ltd |
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Communications |
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Update report 19 - 24.06.2012 |
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| Email thread - Openreach and OGAFCA Communications | ||
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From: OGAFCA coms
To: Tim O'Sullivan (BT), Graeme Hughes (Openreach) Cc: Theresa May Subject: Re: **4483271**GH** FW: CASE 00039195 OGAFCA broadband service plans enquiry Sent: 1 October 2013 15:22 Dear Mr Hughes and Mr O'Sullivan, We are very grateful for your help in the past and that of Theresa May's office and I really am sorry to have to trouble you again with this matter . We are still receiving from many residents a very determined stream of requests for action of some kind. We have passed on your replies but unfortunately on closer inspection there are till questions which we are unable to answer.. I have attached a BT diagram showing expected speeds from the fibre enabled cabinet at the junction of the A308 with Fifield Road. The area in question is obviously the fully lit area of the map. We all understand that performance will deteriorate as the distance from the cabinet increases and this is clearly demonstrated as the speeds shown drop gradually as the service progresses south through the village. Nevertheless, by the time it reaches SL4 4QF west of Braywood Cricket Club there is still a reasonably healthy 16.5 Mb/s available. Then in the space of only a couple of hundred meters heading east some sort of catastrophe drops the speed to a miserable 0.1 Mb/s ! And this remains true for the rest of SL4 4QF until the service changes to the Windsor Exchange at the eastern extremity of the map, where the service from the Dedworth Road is providing in the region of 20 Mb/s or more. It would seem pretty obvious that there is some sort of serious cable or connectivity problem in the region of Braywood Cricket Club and the effected residents along this stretch of Oakley Green Road are requesting an explanation please as this is clearly an infrastructure situation and not related to their particular Service Provider. Thank you in advance for your time and we look forward to an explanation as soon as possible. Best wishes Rod Lord ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OGAFCA - Communications Work Group coms@ogafcap.co.uk - www.ogafcap.co.uk Oakley Green, Fifield and District Community Association Ltd ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||
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From: OGAFCA coms
To: Tim O'Sullivan (BT), Graeme Hughes (Openreach) Cc: Theresa May Subject: OGAFCA broadband service plans enquiry Sent: 09 October 2013 15:19 Dear Mr O'Sullivan I was very much hoping that we would not need to trouble Theresa May's office yet again simply to get a reply to a straightforward enquiry. We are very grateful for the replies we have managed to extract but it has been a continuing puzzle over the last few years as to why it is so difficult. As we have received not even an acknowledgement of receipt of this email below sent nearly 10 days ago I am making one further attempt before accepting defeat and once more resorting to begging Theresa May for assistance. We would be very grateful if you could spare a few minutes to read the content of the mail below and would very much appreciate some sort of explanation. If there is someone more appropriate whose job it is to deal with communicating with bodies like ours and answer questions like these then please let me have contact details so that we can stop bothering you. Thank you. Rod ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OGAFCA - Communications Work Group coms@ogafcap.co.uk - www.ogafcap.co.uk Oakley Green, Fifield and District Community Association Ltd ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||
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From: Tim O'Sullivan
To: OGAFCA coms Cc: Theresa May, hlcopenreach Subject: RE: OGAFCA broadband service plans enquiry Date: 9 October 2013 15:24 I’ll look into this and make sure you receive a response. | ||
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From: OGAFCA coms
To: Tim O'Sullivan (BT) Cc: Theresa May, Graeme Hughes (Openreach) Subject: OGAFCA broadband service plans enquiry Sent: 09 October 2013 15:39 Many thanks ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OGAFCA - Communications Work Group coms@ogafcap.co.uk - www.ogafcap.co.uk Oakley Green, Fifield and District Community Association Ltd ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||
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From: hlcopenreach
To: OGAFCA coms Subject: RE: **4483271**GH** FW: CASE 00039195 OGAFCA broadband service plans enquiry Date: 17 October 2013 09:07 Dear Mr Lord I am very sorry for the long delay in responding to your email of 1st October regarding available fibre broadband speeds, specifically in the highlighted area of the map. A further review into the area has been conducted and I can confirm that the speed differences are due to the layout of the network, rather than any inherent defects with the cables in the area. The area in question is served via the cabinet at the junction of the A308 with Fifield Road. Those properties to the west of Braywood Cricket Club that can obtain the faster speeds are served via a distribution point (DP), reference DP4560. However, the properties to the east of the cricket club are served via a different DP (DP366) which is approximately 1.1km further away from the exchange. This increase in distance is enough to cause the large drop in capable fibre speeds identified in your map below. I hope this helps to explain the reasons for the large drop in available speeds showing on Oakley Green Road. I regret to confirm that we would not look to rearrange our network to serve all customers from the same Distribution Point, as this would result in major capacity issues and also it is likely that speeds would still be too slow to receive broadband due to the extra distance from the cabinet. If any residents would like further information on the speeds available specifically to them, they will need to contact their Service Provider who can advise. Kind regards Graeme Graeme Hughes BVC424 Openreach High Level Complaints Customer Issues | Openreach | ||
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From: OGAFCA coms
To: hlcopenreach Cc: Theresa May Subject: RE: **4483271**GH** FW: CASE 00039195 OGAFCA broadband service plans enquiry Date: 18 October 2013 19:00 Dear Graeme Many thanks for taking the time to look into this for us, and once again we will pass your reply along to the 30 or so households affected by this black hole. There have already been questions asked about the possibility of switching the service along this stretch to be supplied from the Windsor Exchange instead. These questions have been prompted by the fact that households just slightly further east are served extremely well from Dedworth Road and are achieving in the region of 20 Mbps or more. Is this a viable proposition ? I'm afraid we do feel that the service along the stretch of Oakley Green Road east of the Cricket Club is pretty pitiful whatever the cause and agree with those local residents who are of the opinion that it should not be impossible to find a solution. Can you please give us some idea of where the various distribution points are that you mention so that we can try to research and evaluate what the possibilities might be to raise private and community funding to improve the quality of connection in some way. Thank you once again for your patience and courtesy. Rod ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OGAFCA - Communications Work Group coms@ogafcap.co.uk - www.ogafcap.co.uk Oakley Green, Fifield and District Community Association Ltd ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||
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From: hlcopenreach
To: OGAFCA coms Subject: RE: **4483271**GH** FW: CASE 00039195 OGAFCA broadband service plans enquiry Date: 30 October 2013 10:08 Dear Mr Lord Thank you for your further email. I appreciate the frustration felt by those residents who are unable to receive superfast broadband Exchange boundaries were established historically well before broadband was developed. It would require significant work and investment to provide new infrastructure and cabling back to a different serving exchange. Although a line to this exchange may be shorter, we cannot be sure what broadband speeds can be delivered on a particular line until a full line test is done following the provision of new cabling. There’s therefore no guarantee that a faster broadband service could be made to work once this considerable expenditure is undertaken. Any other customers in the area would also need to agree to the change of telephone number which would be needed if their services are to be delivered from a different exchange. Therefore, it is our policy not to provide service from a different exchange. Also the costs to make such infrastructural changes would be commercially unviable. Moreover, such infrastructure changes require Ofcom approval. The 2 distribution points (DP) in question are located in the region of Green Acres and Braywood Lodge on Oakley Green Road. As previously mentioned we would not look to move lines from one DP to another, as it would likely not improve the speeds significantly to bring them within range of fibre broadband. Also it would have major implications on the capacity of DP’s. I am sorry to send what I appreciate is a disappointing response and I cannot help any further. We’ve been clear in our communications that consumers whose premises are much further away from the fibre enabled cabinet will not get the product. For them we continue to explore the viability of alternative solutions such as fibre to the premises (FTTP), but this will very likely need public funding. It is essential that any residents contact their Service Providers if they have any concerns over their broadband or telephony service. Their provider can also clarify what speeds they can obtain via fibre broadband. Kind regards Graeme Graeme Hughes BVC424 Openreach High Level Complaints Customer Issues | Openreach | ||
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From: OGAFCA coms
To: hlcopenreach Cc: Theresa May, Tim O'Sullivan (BT), Cllr Coppinger Subject: RE: **4483271**GH** FW: CASE 00039195 OGAFCA broadband service plans enquiry Date: 5 November 2013 16:18 Dear Graeme Thank you very much indeed for your detailed response and my apologies for the delay in my reply. First of all I must emphasise that these residents in question are not unhappy because they are unable to "receive superfast broadband" … they are suffering because to all intents and purposes they receive no broadband at all … or at least at 0.01 Mbps nothing worthy of that description. THE DP near Braywood Lodge is almost at the end of the Maidenhead exchange service along the Oakley Green Road and it will be extremely frustrating for those residents caught in this trap to have to accept that for want of investment in viable infrastructure to this point they are condemned to what amounts to no service at all. This is a pitiful situation in the 21st Century, especially when considering that these households are only 25 miles from London, in the M4 corridor, Silicon Valley UK !, only about 3 miles as the crow flies from one of the largest Industrial and Trading estates in Europe, and within easy walking distance of both Windsor and Maidenhead. In 2011, then Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, announced that 90% of premises in every local authority area of the UK should have access to internet speeds above 24 megabits per second by May 2015, with a minimum of 2Mbps for the remainder. I understand that BT-Openreach ended up with what amounts to a complete monopoly throughout the UK to put this into effect. If these blighted households in our area at the heart of the UK economy are receiving only 0.01 Mbps at the end of 2013 it is difficult to see how you will meet your contractual obligations to provide them with a minimum of 2Mbps by May 2015 - you have only 17 months to do it ! You will notice that I have copied interested parties as I am stepping down as spokesperson for our Communications Work Group. William Collier is taking up the burden, James Brayshaw represents the residents involved in this black hole, Mr O'Sullivan has fielded Theresa May's questions in the recent past, Cllr Coppinger is our local Councillor at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, and Grenville Annetts is Chairman of the Community Association. Our local press have been very aware of public concern with this whole issue and have followed it with interest and the occasional article. I have purposely not included them in the list of those copied on this occasion to avoid being responsible for distributing email addresses. I will however be forwarding this thread separately to our contacts at the Maidenhead Advertiser and BBC Radio Berkshire who asked to be kept informed after including us in a piece when they spoke to Theresa May on the subject - audio For the benefit of local residents this email thread will also be made available on our web site, with names and email addresses removed of course. Best wishes, and thank you for your attention, Rod Lord ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OGAFCA - Communications Work Group coms@ogafcap.co.uk - www.ogafcap.co.uk Oakley Green, Fifield and District Community Association Ltd ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||