Coun Paul Bellenger: Our need for speed comes at a cost

Many of us are waking up to find extra telegraph poles installed on our streets. Photo: AdobeStockMany of us are waking up to find extra telegraph poles installed on our streets. Photo: AdobeStock
Many of us are waking up to find extra telegraph poles installed on our streets. Photo: AdobeStock
​​Humans have always wanted things to be bigger, better, stronger, faster, and yet when achieved it is still not good enough, so we push further until something must give.

By Greetland & Stainland Ward Councillor, Paul Bellenger, Liberal Democrat Group Leader

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Our need for faster and more reliable communications is just one example. We now have 5G mobile phone masts on many street corners and are seeing an increase in telegraph poles as various companies respond to the need of many of us to increase our broadband speed.

The last Conservative government was fully behind communication improvements and launched Project Gigabit in 2021. Project Gigabit is the UK government’s programme to enable hard-to-reach communities to access lightning-fast gigabit-capable broadband. The fast, reliable connections delivered by Project Gigabit will benefit the most rural and remote communities across the UK.​ The expectation was that the private sector would deliver gigabit connectivity to the 80 per cent of the country where this was commercially viable, and the government would provide £5billion to support provision to the remaining 20 per cent.

It appears that the government identified infrastructure issues and saw the impacts on our rural areas, in that many of us are waking up to find extra telegraph poles installed on our streets.

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Government proposals, then, are intended to facilitate and stimulate the provision of very high-capacity networks and promote the joint use of physical infrastructure. This infrastructure would be deployed more efficiently so that such networks can be rolled out faster and at lower cost.

Unfortunately to me this is like closing the door once the horse has bolted, as many of our streets are already looking overwhelmed by the amount of infrastructure that many competing companies have installed.

It seems that our need for improved communications and broadband speed has caught up with us at the cost of blighting our streets and skies with more cables and telegraph poles as companies compete for our custom in an ever increasing and competitive market.

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The frustrating thing about this is the apparent unwillingness of these companies to work together and piggyback off each other’s infrastructure. Local residents have contacted me regarding their concerns that three broadband companies are battling for cable space directly outside their homes. Seemingly unable to work collaboratively, each company has installed or plans to install its own telegraph poles.

BT, BRSK and Quickline poles are within a ten metre distance of each other, spoiling the view from these residents’ windows. They look and wonder how many more companies with their own infrastructure will come along before government say it is too much and they give no choice but to use one set of infrastructure and remove the extra telegraph poles that have recently been installed. Taking it underground was supposed to be the new way forward in hiding the many thousands of miles of fibre optic cable.

So, I put this to you: when do we decide it’s enough and settle for what we have got?

Or do we tell these companies that we will only use them if they work with the infrastructure that’s already installed?

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