Protests by local residents slows the rollout of super-fast broadband by BT

The latest project by BT to rollout high-speed fibre-based broadband in London has been hit by an unexpected delay as protests by residents of a Muswell Hill conservation area that are unhappy with the size of the street cabinets that are being used.

To enable it to provide the area with broadband speeds of up to 40Mbps the network operator has begun the install of fibre-optic cabling to the street cabinets.

The reason for the protests is because the street cabinets, which are 1.8 meters high, are obstructing the pavement according to the residents who have complained to the local council for the London Borough of Haringey.

In a recent statement John Crompton, the treasurer of the Muswell Hill and Fortis Green Association said “These cabinets are unsightly and are taller than most garden walls.”

There are currently talks underway between the local authorities and BT’s Openreach local network division, which is running the deployment, in order to resolve the current issues, although it has denied that there has been a stop to the rollout of the new network.

A spokesman for BT said “The pilot has not halted as claimed in some articles. The majority of cabinets have been successfully installed in Muswell Hill and customers are already enjoying superfast broadband. There is an issue with a small number of cabinets in a conservation area and Openreach is in dialogue with the council on a solution.”

There are currently two locations that will get the new BT fibre broadband service. The first site, which went live last month, is the Muswell Hill area and the other is Whitchurch in Cardiff, although by summer of next year there is expected to be a further 69 site going live.

Source – Computing