Broadband: Ceredigion village fears isolation over phone plans

Views from Cwmystwyth

Cwmystwyth offers beautiful views, but is about 30 minutes' drive away from the nearest town

By Dafydd Morgan
BBC News

Residents of a remote village fear they will be effectively cut off if plans go ahead to switch off copper phone lines.

BT is proposing to switch off the Victorian era network across the UK, including in Cwmystwyth, Ceredigion, and move people on to fibre.

But villagers said they were worried that a poor mobile signal would leave them with no means of communication in the event of frequent power cuts.

BT said it would work with residents to resolve any issues.

The feelings in Cwmystwyth are echoed by other communities in Wales and across the UK.

Cwmystwyth is in one of Wales' most remote valleys, about 16 miles (25km) from Aberystwyth, and at an altitude of 300m (985ft) above sea level, poor weather conditions and power cuts are common.

The villagers said they were shocked when they found out BT was transferring customers to its Digital Voice service, which needs an electricity supply to work, by 2025.

Keith Hicks said the lack of copper lines could cause problems in emergencies

Resident Keith Hicks received an email notifying him of the change, which he said "didn't make any reference to any of the disadvantages except to say that in an event of a power cut you'll have to use a mobile".

He added: "That's assuming of course that you've got a mobile and a mobile signal, which around here you don't."

'A lot of wind, rain and snow'

He said overhead cables for wind and the internet were often affected by strong winds, but currently, the copper lines keep the village connected even when the power is down.

Mr Hicks said this was very important in an emergency, which he crucially found out himself recently.

"Just over a year ago I had a heart attack, completely unexpected. Luckily I had a phone line at the time and was able to call the emergency services. But it did make me wonder what would've happened had that not been the case."

Sandy Neville says villagers can be cut off for days by storms

Another resident, Sandy Neville, said: "If something happened, and it doesn't need to be the most desperate emergency, if somebody broke an ankle, did something like that, if you can't phone you can't get help.

"We're very high, so we get a lot of wind, rain and snow often," she added. "We can be cut off for days.

"The emergency services have enough of a job getting through to us at the best of times. If you can't even get hold of the emergency services it could be absolutely disastrous for people."

But Ofcom's head of regulatory affairs in Wales, Elinor Williams, said the network needed to be upgraded.

She said: "The copper network has reached the end of its journey. It's old, and it's very expensive to maintain. The change from analogue to digital will see consumers benefiting."

She said customers would have better sound quality, and there would be fewer nuisance and scam calls.

Cwmystwyth's copper telephone lines have been in place since Victorian times

Elin Jones, MS for Ceredigion, said Cwmystwyth was not the only village which would be affected by the plans.

'Advice and assurances'

She said: "There will be occurrences especially in the middle of winter, with the windy storms we're getting at the moment, where electricity supplies will be down and people have depended on the copper wire connection for their phone to continue in those circumstances.

"Currently we don't know enough about any back-up solutions, and we need to have BT and Ofcom out in these communities providing advice and assurances to everybody that it can be done by 2025.

"If they can't do that and provide that confidence, then they'll need to delay that 2025 date, because they can't leave communities [and] people without the access to communications that everybody knows everybody is reliable on these days."

BT said it was "incredibly sorry" to customers in Cwmystwyth who had been disconnected in recent storms.

It added: "We recognise the move to Digital Voice is a concern for a small amount of people, who believe they are in a coverage not-spot or a high-risk power cut area. Where this is the case, we will pause their upgrade and will work with them to resolve the issue."

Meanwhile, Openreach, which is owned by BT, has announced it will create about 250 jobs in Wales in 2022 as part of its investment in the broadband network.

Openreach says the new recruits will include more than 200 apprenticeships.

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