'It's barely broadband' Stansted locals angry at potential loss of Wi-Fi

KentOnline / KMTV

Their service provider Trooli have warned that they could go from 80 Mbps to 5 by December 2025, which residents say just isn't enough.  Finn Macdiarmid reports.

Transcript

00:00It would make my life unbearable, to be frank.

00:03Last month, residents of Stansted got an email from their broadband provider, Truly, that

00:07because of Openreach stopping their wholesale line rental product, they would stop their

00:11service to the area by December 2025.

00:14Stansted is a village deep in the Kent countryside, so for locals, connection to the rest of the

00:18county and the country is vital.

00:21And without a good Wi-Fi network set up, it could affect people's work, how often they

00:25check in on family and friends, or even their businesses.

00:28Steve Bassey was so worried for the potential lack of broadband that he wrote to his local

00:32MP, Tom Tugenhart, who ended up speaking to Truly.

00:36To be frank, I don't know what I expected, I'm just a desperate person trying to cling

00:41on to my broadband.

00:43We live in the country, we're very remote, our telephone signals are palling, and the

00:48loss of broadband, especially after losing the pub, would probably be the final straw.

00:55Now if you're like me, you might just think of Wi-Fi as being something intangible, but

00:58it's actually a utility like water or energy that requires cables to be laid and maintained.

01:03Now most of the houses here in Stansted use Truly, which means that they have an internet

01:07speed of 80 megabytes per second.

01:10But if it gets to December and no changes are made, then instead they'll have to rely

01:14on ASDL, which will only give them an internet speed of 5 megabytes per second.

01:19Being without broadband wouldn't just impact the present, but Stansted's past as well.

01:23Well, I'm the chair of the local History Society, and we've just spent four, maybe five years

01:30turning the paper archive into a digital one, and it's all stored online on Google Drive.

01:36So we access the Historical Society archive via Wi-Fi.

01:42And the previous service, via BT Openreach, was 1 megabit per second on a good day, which

01:49is barely broadband.

01:51So one of the ways it would affect us is not being able to do our Historical Society work

01:58at all, unless we go somewhere else.

02:00Truly say, we have been in touch with a small number of customers whose broadband service

02:04is at threat from Openreach's wholesale line rental switch-off.

02:07Whilst we have had no part in Openreach's decision to switch off wholesale line rental,

02:12if it goes ahead as planned, it will no longer be possible for us to provide these properties

02:15with a broadband connection.

02:17While Truly doesn't serve all the houses and buildings in the area, there are enough

02:20that locals are severely worried not just for the impact on their lives, but for the

02:24entire village as a whole.

02:26Finn McDermid for CAME-TV in Stansted.

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