P-04-633 To Raise Awareness of the Broadband in Our Area – Correspondence received from interested parties
1. Hi Jane
Our Broadband is very slow down to .3mb at times. Very rarely up to 2mbs usually 1.8mbs.
We use the internet for online orders.
Sending customers images and other information can take a long time.
We could get a better service in some 3rd world counties!
Kind regards
David
2.
I live
and work on a working farm in Glanrafon, without
broadband there are many issues with the day to day running of
a farm. There are many roles that broadband is the only option
to do some of the work:
1. Registering calves and cattle movements, this can only be done
online and has to be registered within 7 days of birth or 3 days of
movements. Also if there is any queries then e-mail communication
is the most popular method
2. I do my quarterly VAT online
3. We recently applied for a grant with the WAG that
could only be applied through e-mail.
4. As part of our business we sell working sheepdogs all over the
country, we advertise our dogs on various websites and social
media, broadband is vital to our business to communicate with
prospect buyers. One of our most popular way of advertising is
youtube, but its not possible for us to look at any videos from our
form because of the slow broadband. It also takes hours to upload
the video to youtube.
5. When breeding registered sheepdogs, a blood test is required for
registering the puppies, the only way of doing this is online form
to America before sending the blood test away, without broadband
this would not be possible.
6. agricultural business now want to send their invoices through
e-mail, we must have e-mail access.
7. Online banking is getting more popular along with paying
invoices through BACS.
These are just some of the day to day activities to do when running
a farm, there are many more times where we use the broadband
throughout the day, having faster and reliable broadband would make
the business run smoother.
Buddug Jones
3. Dear Sirs,
Sat here once again….waiting…and waiting…and waiting. OK, broadband is on a go slow again, it’s only Wednesday and I’ve rebooted the hub 5 times since Monday morning. In fact Monday, we gave up and went home to continue sending emails and we weren’t getting anywhere and we had a backlog of emails due out that weren’t sent out on Friday due to poor broadband speeds.
So once again I’ve done the speed test….it’s 3pm and we’re going superfast at the moment!!! I have an amazing download speed of 1.7mb but we’ve got 30mins till the kids school bus pulls up, they all get home and log on to their tablets….then for us, the day is over. If we’re lucky, we may get a few emails out but god help my customers who want any images sending over of costumes….they’ll need to wait till I get home.
So, I’ll give you a bit of background. We’re a costume and prop hire company based in North Wales and we moved to the 460 exchange back in December 2014. We’re 5 miles from our original address in Corwen which was on a different exchange. Broadband speeds there were great! But we outgrew the premises so had to move. Then we had to change the phone number….not a problem we thought….we’ll divert the old number to the new for 12 months and we’re good to go. So we spoke to BT who said about the VIOP system….ideal, broadband phone that sounds like a plan!!! Oh dear, this is where EVERYTHING went wrong. It took Openreach 5 weeks to get the phone and broadband working correctly. Every day started with a call to BT. We had no access to emails, Christmas was fast approaching and we couldn’t update our website with our new address or contact details and the VOIP system wouldn’t work as the broadband was so intermittent. We lost customers….lots of them. From the outside I could see that customers thought we’d closed shop and done a bunk to warmer climes. Our old premises was closed, our old phone number didn’t work, our new phone number didn’t work, no emails were getting through and our website showed our old address. Great….just great.
It’s now a few months down the line and we’re all so used to the broadband that we’ve re scheduled the working day. I sit at home till 10am answering emails that are sent overnight. I work all day answering the phone and dealing with customers then leg it home again at 5pm to continue with emails from there. I’ve even had to purchase a laptop to load our data onto so I can work from home. This includes all our catalogues of images…over 1000 high res photographs, the whole accounting and VAT system and our complete website.
The VOIP system lasted till about March. At this point we were still taking 1 or 2 calls daily from the old number but the line was so bad we were answering the phone to capture their contact number then ringing them back from one of our mobiles….so professional. We’re in contract with the VOIP system till November. The phone itself cost over £100 and is now gathering dusk in the attic.
I have spoken to BT on several occasions about the lack of speed and all they keep saying is our exchange is capable of 4mb. But we’re not getting to half this speed. Streaming movies is a no go. Skype…forget it.
Our customers want instant answers to emails and on many occasions we’ll have calls where we talk through images online….but we can’t do any of that. The phone line itself is very poor quality and generally we keep the phone on divert to a mobile to get a clear line….this costs us money for every call we answer.
It’s the 21st century, technology is not going to stop and as a micro business dealing with customers worldwide we’ve got to try and keep up. I’m not expecting the 76Mb of superfast fibre nor the 38Mb of fibre or even the 17Mb that is the usual for Broadband….but 4Mb, 6Mb or even 8Mb I think isn’t unreasonable. We’re paying for a service the same as everyone else and it’s not fit for purpose.
Please tell me where we go to from here? With BT I’m hitting a brick wall and think it’s unfair to vent my anger out at the guys and girls in the call centres. How do we get BT to roll out an effective broadband system to our area? I’m not excepting the same speeds as inner London but isn’t it fair to expect a mere 10% of the service that is available in other areas? We are not based in the middle of nowhere and in this village Im surrounded by 16 homes who are all experiencing the same issues. The 460 exchange serves hundreds of homes and we are all being short changed. There are many small businesses who are affected by this and with each week that passes we are all losing more and more customers.
Please help.
Regards,
Jill Lightfoot