News

Thank you for visiting. This page will be updated with news of the campaign as it progresses. As this is a fairly new campaign, please be patient.

Please note that all items and emails included in this page are exact copies of any correspondence. Where appropriate, details have been redacted (removed or hidden) for privacy of individuals.

17/08/11 - BT in-fill project is live

We have just heard from BT that overnight, they updated the status of the InFill cabinets being currently deployed around basingstoke to ACTIVE. This means that if you live in an area of Basingstoke within the coverage of the new 16 cabinets, you can start looking to order the new broadband.

The best way to find out if you are covered by the in-fill project is to check with the BT speed checker web site. Most homes in Hatch Warren and some in Chineham should now find that from tomorrow, you can obtain speeds upto 30+mb. The web site for checking is as follows:

BT line checker

For those that are not yet covered, you may have heard on the news that the department for Rural Affairs has reallocated £360million to the rural broadband project, with £8.4million allocated to Hampshire. Whilst this is a drop in the ocean for upgrading all of Hampshire, it is good to see extra funds being allocated.

We now have to wait to see how Hampshire County Council allocates the money to the different towns and villages, and how this will effect the remaining parts of Chineham, Popley and Beggarwood in the next few years.

For those living in Beggarwood, the pilot radio broadband project is going to be rolled out to more houses later in the year to provide a stop-gap connection of 8 or 16mb to those that need it.

24/02/11 - BT in-fill project is announced

After many months of drawn out negotation and discussion, the news is out. 20 more cabinets this summer. All of Hatch Warren will be covered, as will most of Chineham. Beggarwood cabinets are not on the list, though. Do be aware that even if a cabinet is upgraded, BT may still not provide service if your line fails to meet speed criteria. The official joint press release from BT and the campaign can be found here.

01/10/10 - Virgin Media in Rooksdown, and BT agrees to InFill Basingstoke

We are pleased to note that Virgin Media have started rolling out fibre in Rooksdown (near the Hospital). They won't give us a completion date yet (none of their cabinets are in place) but this is still good news and something for this area to look forward to.

Now, onto the issue of the BT deployment of fibre optic broadband (or their Infinity product).

I'm pleased to be able to share the following statement with you.  The points made by the basingstoke broadband group  and evidence provided (thank you if you answered our door to door questions) have helped to ensure that several cabinets we highlighted are to be included in the 'infill' scheme outlined by Openreach.  Be assured the council is continuing to explore what can be done for the remainder of those still not covered.

"Activity and engagement between Openreach, and Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council has both continued and deepened across the Summer period. Both sides taking account of the input of the community have been keen to work on how the broadband experience can be improved for the widest number of users in the town.  In doing this we have learned that Openreach has achieved some important milestones in its next generation access programme, for instance, recently announcing that it had passed over 2 million homes.  As the scale of the programme has grown and significant progress has been made Openreach has been able to develop further operational and technical efficiencies to allow roll out beyond its original plan.

This week Openreach announced further exchange areas to be added to its rollout. .It also said that as a part of this next Phase a certain amount of "infill" to Exchange areas already announced will also take place. We are pleased to say that the Basingstoke area will be one of the beneficiaries of this "infill" activity. At this point Openreach is not able to say exactly how many further Cabinets or postcodes will be covered in our town in 2011 but we are confident that it will be a significant number. We expect further details later in the Autumn as planning is completed. However, we expect that smaller areas of the town will remain uncovered. As the revised picture becomes clear, the Council intends to discuss further with residents any case for, and potential effectiveness of, possible intervention funding for those remaining most difficult to achieve areas".

11/06/10 - Council Statement on BT meetings

Since our original meeting in February, BT would only engage in further detailed discussions with B&DBC under what seems to be a fairly restrictive Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). The NDA forced on the council by BT has been something of a double edged sword for us, as the council (who continue to be helpful supportive and active) now find themselves being unable to comment . Not an easy situation for them or us.

The council have now issued a statement following a meeting BT on 1 st June 2010. The statement can be found here. The campaign is now working on a response and next steps.

24/03/10 - Campaign Meeting with Virgin Media

Following last months meeting with BT regarding the Basingstoke FTTC (Fibre to the cabinet) failures in Basingstoke, we have started ‘backup plan’ discussions with other providers. The first one of these is Virgin Media, who provide the super-super-fast 100mb broadband service.

Now whilst we are under no illusions that VM would roll out the new 100mb super-super-fast broadband to areas of Basingstoke not currently covered, the meeting did go well, with Virgin taking a keen interest in the facts that we have gathered about Basingstoke such as areas not covered by FTTC, number of properties etc. We have provided them the details of the postcodes not covered by FTTC by BT, and Virgin have promised to run the numbers through their system, and look to see if maybe areas such as Hatch Warren, Chineham, popley and Beggarwood would be suitable for deployment of their media offering including the 10+mb broadband service. VM have promised to come back to us by the end of April, which coincidentally is also when BT have promised to come up with some form of plan for Basingstoke.

In the mean time, we are continuing to discuss options with other providers for alternative technology solutions.

27/02/10 - Campaign Meeting with BT

We are happy to announce that on Saturday, 27th Feb 2010, members of the Basingstoke Broadband Campaign, together with council members and Maria Miller (MP), met and presented the campaign case to senior members of BT. Details of the meeting and the next actions can be found here.

25/02/10 - Basingstoke Fibre Broadband Delayed

We have just heard that Basingstoke has slipped in initial delivery of fibre optic broadband (FTTC). If you have been struggling to get the 20Mb even though the Hampshire postcode checker says you can, the reason is now clear. Coming from one of the ISP’s who feed us information....

“Basingstoke has now been moved into phase 3. Phase 3 exchanges are due to commence from April 2010. As you'll be aware OR (Bt OpenReach) have decided against sending out future cabinet availability. Rather they'll only send confirmation of cabs when completed. This change of comms is to avoid creating false expectations against what is proving to be a very agile exchange and cabinet build.”

We actually believe that this really means is that the 1st fibre connections in Basingstoke will not actually start until the early summer. As always, we will keep you posted.

13/02/10 - Facebook and Hatch Warren Survey

We have been busy with a door to door survey and awareness campaign in Basingstoke. This weekend, we have covered as much of hatch warren as possible to find information for our battle with BT. We will be covering Chineham and Beggawood in the next couple of weeks. We have also created a new facebook group, to allow discussion and news updates.

29/01/10 - Major Events this week

Its been a very busy week in the broadband campaign. with positive steps including Basingstoke and Dean council joining the campaign, our MP Maria Miller providing assistance, and positive steps in the right direction. But on a major negative note, the deployment of the new FTTC lines to some areas of Basingstoke may be reducing broadband speeds to non-FTTC areas. More information here.

05/01/10 - Upgraded and Ignored Cabinet List

The full list of phone cabinets in the Basingstoke area, has been updated with those that are being upgraded to support FTTC, and those that BT are ignoring. The current status list can be found here.

20/12/09 - BT confirm Hatch Warren will not be included

BT Openreach has confirmed that 6 out of 10 Hatch Warren phone cabinets (BT state there are 9 in Hatch Warren, but their geography is not correct) will be updated with the fibre optic FTTC connections - leaving 4 cabinets and a large chunk of hatch warren on the slow broadband connection. The cabinets are included on the Basingstoke cabinet map, but the cabinets confirmed to be upgrade are:

05/12/09 - eHampshire provide line checker

eHampshire (part of Hampshire County Council) has set up a very useful line checker which uses your postcode to tell you if you will be able to obtain the new fibre optic connections. Use the line checker and if it reveals that you are not included in the deployment, complete the form to let them know.

01/12/09 - Residents group together to form Deployment map

The residents of Basingstoke are coming together to form a map of the deployment plans. As the upgrade will be using the existing (or new) cabinets for FTTC deployment, a google maps database is being pulled together of where FTTC may or may not be deployed. this map can be found HERE.

14/7/09 - BT might include Chineham in its FTTC rollout

Following pressure from various parties, BT has re-evaluated its plans for the FTTC cable deployment for Basingstoke. Despite initially stating that Chineham would not be included, they have backtracked (in a kind of unclear way). The latest update from BT openreach is as follows:

I have rechecked the information on Chineham and the news is good. It does seems that much of the area will be covered by the Fibre to the Cabinet roll-out. However, there may be a small area of the village that is not. To be completely honest until we do the detailed planning later this year we will not know for sure.

More details of the FTTC can be found here.

9/7/09 - BT includes Basingstoke in its FTTC rollout

BT has included (with lots of provisions), Basingstoke for its FTTC fiber deployment plans for 96 towns across the UK. Whilst this looks on the surface, like very good news for Basingstoke internet users, there is a lot of fog in what will be delivered and when, with two many conditions in the project to make this anything more than a hopeful possibility at this time.

Also, its not good news for all of Basingstoke. As the head of the project for BT Openreach told the Basingstoke Broadband Campaign....

As you may be aware we announced an additional 69 exchange area roll-out yesterday and I can confirm that Basingstoke is included in this list and will be completed by summer 2010. In terms of the specific areas you identified in your note to Ian, Hatch Warren is on the roll-out for Basingstoke, however, Chineham is a separate small exchange in the Basingstoke area and will not be covered in this phase of roll-out.

More details of the FTTC rolloutout, the conditions, and what this means to basingstoke can be found here.

2/7/09 - More from BT

A more detailed response has been received from the BT Openreach, the BT division who are ultimately responsible for the infrastructure. Its encouraging, but until Basingstoke is included, and it is agreed the changes will address the issues, there is still a long way to go....

Ian has asked me to get back to you on the issue your raised with him around Broadband in the Basingstoke area. As you may be aware BT have announced a significant investment (£1.5bn) in Super-fast Broadband in the UK and as part of this investment programme we are currently reviewing the potential areas for the next phase of infrastructure deployment, due for completion in Spring 2010. At this stage I can confirm to you that Basingstoke is one of the areas under consideration and within the next few weeks we will have finalise our analysis and be announcing the deployment plan. As soon as we have a decision on the plan I will contact you again and if Basingstoke is to be included I will also provided you with further details on the specific areas you identified within your note to Ian.

1/7/09 - Web site launched

Whilst we wait for a response from BT (which may or may not be coming), this web site is launched.

29/6/09 - Response from BT

The following email was received from BT. short, but to the point...

I will ask someone to update you on the situation with Basingstoke although I can’t speak for other providers and their investment plans to build further network.

28/6/09 - Email to BT

The campaign is started, with an email to Ian Livingstone, CEO of BT Group about the BT exchange problem.

Hello,

Firstly, may I apologise in contacting you directly, but as I have tried various other routes without success, and at the stage of pulling my hair out, I write with a final plea on behalf of most of the town of Basingstoke.

Basingstoke has a problem which is this; BT only has one exchange in Basingstoke (THBZ), which is located right in the town centre. Yet, it has several clusters dotted around the town which are so far from the exchange, that broadband internet access is near impossible. Such locations are the sub-districts of Chineham and Hatch Warren, both have tens of thousands of residents, all of whom have a pitiful broadband experience because of the distance from the exchange (I am sure you are all too aware of the issue of attenuation on the lines).

I for one am trying to run a home business, yet during the day, when I do get an internet connection, the speed is around 20Kbs. The fact that so many thousands of people have problems is well documented within Basingstoke.

In 2003, the Basingstoke council commissioned a report which stated the above facts, and that BT was named as letting the town down. In 2005, the same survey was carried out again and the same conclusions were drawn. In 2008 and 2009, our MP (Maria Miller) met with BT representatives, and action was promised, yet action has failed to be taken.

Please, can I beg (I am at that stage) for BT to re-evaluate the situation in Basingstoke. Basingstoke is going through a large amount of housing developments, and with each new house constructed, the load on the exchange increases and the broadband speed decreases for all residents.

Whilst others have so far been the voice of this issue in the Basingstoke press, this issue is having such a bad influence on my home business, that I am pushing myself forward to be the person to fight for a responsible service from BT for the whole town.

So I ask you once again, please help us all.

Can I refer you to....

http://www.basingstoke.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/2D111A2D-CDBA-45EB-AA39-DEBCC050F8A5/0/broadband_strategy2003.pdf

and

http://www.basingstokegazette.co.uk/news/4419002.Broadband_speed_not_so_hot_

for_town___s_residents/

These are typical of the items and press being generated around this subject.

Regards

Jaffa Brown

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