Residents in a rural village whose broadband speeds are just 2% of the national average claim they were told it would cost £100,000 to upgrade their WiFi.
Households in Wingland, Lincolnshire say they are forced to use their mobile phone’s 4G to send emails and struggle to stream movies and TV shows or search the internet due to WiFi issues.
Current download speeds in the region are just 1Mb/s, but far above the 10Mb/s of ‘decent and affordable connectivity’ that everyone in the UK is entitled to claim as part of the government’s Universal Service Obligation (USO). It’s below.
It is also less than 2% of the national average broadband speed in 2023 (69.4Mbps).
But Kevin and Linda Mortimer, a retired couple who have rented a small cottage in a remote area for more than 30 years, were told by BT that installing a complex fiber optic network would cost £101,874.60.
Mr Mortimer, a 62-year-old retired factory worker, told the Telegraph: I need to replace my car this year, but I don’t even know where I’ll find the money for it. Aside from the bloody £100,000.
“I told them, obviously we’re not going to go ahead with it, we can’t afford it. Then I got a call from the customer service department and basically said, ‘Here’s the price, either you like it or we’ll put it together. Please purchase it.”
BT said the amount “represents the cost of building fiber optic connections to 10 eligible USO properties” in Mr Mortimer’s neighbourhood.
The estimate also reflects the cost of planning in rural areas where other companies won’t provide service, digging kilometers of trenches and resulting road closures, the company said.
The company added that after BT Group’s contribution, the price would be approximately £8,500 per property if everyone agreed to contribute.
“Absolutely outrageous.”
Mr Mortimer said his broadband at home is so slow that when he tries to watch movies or TV shows online, the quality drops and the image becomes blurry as it loads.
He and his wife are also forced to use mobile data to send emails from their phones and iPads from home.
“If you try to go to 4K, you can only see about two seconds of anything,” he said.
“I also sometimes have trouble sending and downloading emails. Our phones and iPads use 4G all the time through our mobile phone contracts. But why do we have to pay for two different systems? Is it?”
