BT Broadband Provision: Local Businesses

Mike Weir Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Helen Goodman]

It certainly does. The issue affects the hon. Lady’s constituents and the whole country. Our productivity is not rising as it is in the other G7 countries, and it has not been for eight years. Proper investment in infrastructure is one of the ways that we can get our productivity up, from which we will all benefit. When it works, it is really great.

There is a quarry in my constituency that has a very good website and, because of its website, it is able to sell stone to Spain because the Spanish people who are building the cathedral in Barcelona—the Sagrada Família—saw that the stone was the right colour. That is fantastic. When it works, it is brilliant, but it is not working often enough. The OECD and the International Monetary Fund say it; everybody says it. I really feel that the issue should take priority over some things, such as HS2, into which public money is about to be poured. If we could get the IT right, we might not need all the investment in transport, which is proving to be so controversial across the country.

[Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

I understand what the hon. Lady is saying but I am a bit reluctant to pour yet more public money into BT, which is not up to the job of doing this, frankly. The Government, the Scottish Government and many others have poured money into these schemes. It is high time that a multinational company such as BT, which operates a private monopoly, steps up to the plate and invests some funds in this.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman is right. BT is extremely profitable. The industry is, of course, regulated by Ofcom but there must be a question mark about whether it is using its resources as effectively as possible. It is clear that the rural areas are particularly disadvantaged.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

I am pleased to appear under your chairmanship this afternoon, Ms Ryan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on securing this important debate.

As others have said, broadband is now an essential tool for business. I represent a mainly rural constituency, and there are two essential aspects to doing business in such an area in the modern world: broadband that allows businesses to reach a much wider market through the use of the internet, and a reliable universal delivery and uplift service. I have spoken in this place on many occasions about my concerns on the latter, given the privatisation of Royal Mail. I will not go into those concerns again, but will concentrate on the provision of broadband and the frankly huge problems that many local businesses have in acquiring and keeping a reliable service.

I should say that this is not an attack on the Government. I fully recognise that the UK Government, the Scottish Government, local authorities and Highlands and Islands Enterprise have put a substantial sum of money into projects to extend broadband coverage to all areas of the UK, but real problems remain, many of which lie at the door of BT, which effectively has a private monopoly on broadband provision in many areas.

I said that my constituency is rural, but it is not remote. The main Dundee to Aberdeen road runs through the heart of Angus. Fibre broadband is being installed in our towns and is making a real difference, but the problem is the urban-rural divide. People do not have to go far out of town to find that they are not getting any sort of reliable broadband, or indeed any service at all. Among the reasons for that are the antiquated nature of the infrastructure, the inability of small exchanges to cope with the demand for lines, the old copper lines that are still in use and the distance of customers from the exchanges. Broadband now needs to be seen as a universal obligation and, as the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) called it, the fourth utility. BT has a private monopoly. It is a huge multinational company that is in the process of taking over one of the major mobile companies—there is another story there about the “not spots” in many of our constituencies—but it must step up to the plate and ensure that it provides broadband service to our constituents.

The UK Government have brought in the universal service obligation, but that only commits to raising the internet speed to 10 megabits per second by the end of this Parliament, and that is not sufficient. There is also a concern in many areas of Scotland that the commitment promises only 95% coverage by population. Much of the remaining 5% will inevitably be in rural areas and, in particular, such areas as the highlands and islands of Scotland. Those are inevitably the most difficult areas to reach with broadband services.

As other Members have, I would like to illustrate the problems faced by local businesses with an example. My constituent Stephen Appleton has a business, Angus Horticulture Ltd, which is based in Guthrie. That is a rural part of my constituency, but it is not remote; it is situated between the main towns of Arbroath and Forfar. I was first contacted by Mr Appleton at the end of July last year. At that point he had been in the unsustainable position of trying to run his business without the ability to take and process incoming calls since 1 June, following the completion by BT Openreach of the contracted works at his premises.

Before contacting my office, Mr Appleton had tried to deal with the matter himself by taking it to the highest level in BT. He had been told that there were

“multiple sections of underground cable which are faulty and Traffic Management will be required to re attend to the fault further”.

It turned out, however, that despite the fact that there were multiple failures, the traffic management had been booked for only one day. It will come as no surprise to Members that that did not deal with the multiple faults that BT knew existed. He was then told that the site had to be re-surveyed by Lux, the company that hires out temporary traffic lights, because traffic management was required in different locations. I do not know about you, Ms Ryan, but I would have assumed that if BT knew there were multiple faults, it could have joined the dots and worked out that it would need to work at multiple locations, but apparently that was beyond BT.

Even before consulting my office, Mr Appleton had been dealing with the chairman and CEO of business at BT, who had previously prompted the well-named dig and auxiliary team. Mr Appleton believed that the complaint had been escalated to the highest level, but it appeared to have little effect. I took up the case with BT, but still the matter ground on. By 7 August, Mr Appleton reported that he was “haemorrhaging business”. Openreach had by this time acknowledged an entitlement to compensation, but Mr Appleton was in the surreal positon of being told that nothing could be done until service had been restored. One could have forgiven him for thinking he had strayed into a Kafka novel or a “Monty Python” sketch.

The delay in effecting repairs, despite the involvement of cohorts of BT and Openreach staff and engineers, was apparently down to the fact that the problem required traffic management. By early August, that had taken 10 weeks to organise, during the course of which BT had apparently lost the form, which caused huge delays. It appeared to be beyond the wit of BT Openreach to get engineers and traffic management in place simultaneously. A divert set up as a temporary measure also failed.

Finally, on 17 August, BT Openreach managed to get everyone together and fix the lines. Hallelujah! Three weeks later, the system was down again. That happened again in January, which apparently was a fault “further into the network”. That incident required another escalation to the director’s office before a repair was effected. On 1 March, Mr Appleton again contacted my office to say that the service had gone off. It came back on the next day, but was incredibly slow to non-existent.

As Members can tell from that timeline, the problem has been ongoing for nine months. That is a complete and utter scandal in an age when broadband is a vital component of the business environment, especially in rural areas.

As other Members have said, broadband should be a true universal obligation. BT Openreach is effectively a private monopoly; the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) called it a virtual monopoly. There might be competition in major urban areas, but there is none in rural areas. There is nowhere else for people to go to get the service, so BT can treat customers as it likes. As Members on both sides of the Chamber have described, BT cares little for the effects on business of its complete incompetence in dealing speedily with repairs, and we have heard—this is true for my constituents, too—how BT blames the local authority and everybody else without taking on any blame itself.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland and others spoke about more money being put in, but the taxpayer has already paid BT Openreach a fortune for the broadband network. We should not be looking to punt in yet more taxpayers’ money; we should be telling BT that it has to earn the right to run the roll-out. It has an effective monopoly, so it must put in some of its own money. BT must step up to the plate and do what is necessary to ensure a reliable system for all consumers in the United Kingdom.