Agenda item

That Miss Alwen Williams, the BT Regional Director for Wales be thanked for her attendance and the detailed presentation which she delivered to the Committee.      

The Chairman introduced Miss Alwen Williams, the Regional Director of BT to the Committee. 

                        Miss Williams provided a detailed presentation which covered the following areas:

• Wales Progress
• Flintshire Progress
• Local Authority Coverage
• And what about those not covered by Superfast Cymru
• New Residential Developments

The Chairman referred to businesses on the Hawarden Business Park and raised concern about problems that were being experienced because of lower speed of broadband than other locations also on the Hawarden Exchange.  He said that this appeared to be because two services could not operate the same service in the same place and he spoke of a housing development on the other side of the road that had fibre to the cabinet enabled.  In referring in particular to Cabinet 26 on the Hawarden Exchange, he asked when the Cabinet would go live.  Miss Williams confirmed that public money could not be used to overbuild where other publicly funded networks were already available and advised that she would discuss the concerns raised with the Superfast Broadband Development Team.   

The Chairman also commented that he was aware of some areas where developers had put in a broadband service as part of a development which locked in the householders to the developer’s choice of broadband provider.  He went on to raise the issue of nuisance telephone calls which could be alleviated by the use of a device which identified the caller and prevented such calls reaching the recipient.  However he explained that a problem with this was that any calls from Flintshire County Council would show as ‘number withheld’ and therefore these could not be identified.  Miss Williams said that nuisance calls were an increasing issue and recent changes had been put in place such as the development of devices to remove such calls but added that she would need to discuss the issue of calls from organisations such as the Council with the appropriate BT team.  She also provided details of a service which could assist in the removal of nuisance calls by asking the caller to record their name to let the receiver of the call know who was calling; any calls that could not give a name would not be connected to the receiver. 

Councillor Arnold Woolley sought clarification on whether any guidance was available from Welsh Government (WG) for Local Authority Planning Committees on the inclusion by developers of the provision of a broadband service within major housing developments.  Miss Williams advised that developers could now work with Openreach to include fibre connectivity as part of their housing development. If the developer did this, the householder then had the choice to pick their own service provider to provide their fibre broadband service. .  In response to a further comment from Councillor Woolley, Miss Williams spoke of regular meetings that WG held about broadband exploitation and of a five year programme by BT that was in place to ensure that enough guidance and information was available for businesses to make the correct choice about the connectivity solutions that were available. 

Councillor Andy Dunbobbin welcomed the presentation and asked for further information on the resilience of the materials used in the installation of fibre broadband connectivity.  In response, Miss Williams advised that the benefit of fibre was that it was waterproof and she spoke of copper and aluminium, both of which could degrade over time.  She added that the final connection to a property would be copper so a consistent programme of upgrades to avoid degradation of the material was in place.  Fault reports were also monitored as part of a proactive fault reduction programme to identify whether there were any patterns in the reasons for the faults; this was an ongoing programme.  Miss Williams spoke of the BT research facility in Adastral Park Ipswich and of a g.fast programme that was being trialled in Swansea which was effectively providing between 300 to 500 mbps and it was anticipated that this would be available for 10 million properties by 2020.  She advised that BT now owned the mobile provider EE and the extended use of mobile technology such as 5G was progressing.  She added that BT were keen to explore how fibre networks could be used to extend the provision of 4G and broadband to properties that coverage previously did not reach. 

In response to a question from Councillor Haydn Bateman about Openreach, Miss Williams said that BT owned Openreach and spoke of the benefits of this.  She explained that she worked closely with Openreach on service delivery but understood from customer complaints that the standard of service needed improving.  A new Chief Executive for Openreach was in place and capital spend to improve the core network had been committed.  Miss Williams spoke of 1,000 jobs that had been repatriated from India to provide front end customer service and added that 750 people were employed by EE in Merthyr Tydfil who were now part of BT in Wales.

The Chairman allowed Councillor Marion Bateman, who was an observer at the meeting, to ask a question.  She referred to an issue where BT had given an end date for a service but this had not been kept because Openreach had not completed the work that was required.  Councillor Bateman asked whether this issue could be raised with Openreach by BT.  In response, Miss Williams confirmed that as BT was a customer of Openreach, if a delivery date was not achieved by Openreach which would mean the terms of the contract had not been met, then BT could speak to Openreach to discuss possible options.  She spoke of superfast broadband contracts and commented on problems that had occurred such as with civil engineering works but added that BT worked closely with Openreach to provide feedback to them to ensure that they were aware of any issues that arose.

Councillor Aaron Shotton indicated that he had suggested that Miss Williams be invited to attend a meeting to allow the Committee to raise any issues or areas of concern with her.  He welcomed the close working between BT and the Council.

The Chairman thanked Miss Williams for her presentation and her technical knowledge.            

            RESOLVED:

That Miss Alwen Williams, the BT Regional Director for Wales be thanked for her attendance and the detailed presentation which she delivered to the Committee.