A pause in telegraph pole installations?

A pause in telegraph pole installations? Thoughts of the Editor:

THE POLITICS of the pole-planting companies – the AltNets (Alternative Network builders) – seem to have changed. Now, suddenly, everyone is talking about the need to share infrastructure (underground ducts, cabinets and other existing infrastructure).

Kcom wants to share. Connexin bosses say they will pause their build in Beverley while discussing sharing infrastructure with them. Even MS3 Networks too are suddenly keen to share! Chief Executive Guy Miller has volunteered to lead trade body INCA’s infrastructure sharing group bringing in his experience of ignoring communities and planting around 1,200 poles in Hedon and Cottingham to bear.

The Government meanwhile have consistently failed to offer any real guidance to local authorities on dealing with AltNets. Any ‘advice’ notes offered are ambiguous and serve to confuse and perplex rather than clarify. Meanwhile, local councils across the UK have just let the AltNets get on with their permitted development activities. Scandalously, those activities have taken place without monitoring. The number of health and safety breaches that have occurred, and even the number of poles planted are generally an unknown quantity. The only information about AltNet activities seems to come from AltNets themselves. Those local authorities, prompted by resident concerns, have asked Ofcom the industry regulator for advice but found that it is not forthcoming.

But the AltNets do know that change is coming. Hence the sudden change of heart. The sheriff is coming to town to clean up the Wild West lawlessness of the broadband gold rush. Permitted Development and its consequences – the overbuilding of infrastructure, the proliferation of poles and excessive street furniture, the legions of creosote-leeching poles, the cowboy street works conducted by AltNets, and the distress faced by communities – are proving bigger issues in some areas than perceived. This potentially threatens to affect how some people will vote in the next election and some safe constituency seats, perhaps vulnerable to disaffection from voters angry about telegraph poles. As MPs’ attitudes have changed, and changes in legislation hinted, then AltNets have responded accordingly.

Whilst the new telegraph pole networks are generally not reliable for customers, subject as they are to threats from the weather, accidents and vandalism – they are also vulnerable to changing politics. And it is to politics that campaigners need to turn their attention. Those seeking the removal of poles planted against community wishes, now need to ensure that candidates standing in local and national elections pledge to seek their removal.

In these days when unfettered competition in the broadband market is rife, then perhaps those organisations offering inexpensive underground gigabit broadband services do deserve to benefit from a community campaign to sign residents up. Imagine the scenario; local communities campaigning to sign people up for superfast underground broadband! Of course, that support would be conditional on the new provider arranging to remove the excessive and unused telegraph poles blighting neighbourhoods.

Politics is not just the art of the possible, it’s the craft of imagining how things could be. Whilst the ten-year boycott is a powerful reaction to an invasion from outside our community, a positive community campaign to provide something better would be even more powerful!

Ray Duffill