Frustrated Northampton resident feels abandoned with superslow internet speeds despite connection being yards away

A frustrated Northampton resident has accused the authorities of abandoning his family and two neighbours with superslow internet speeds.

The three houses in St Crispin suffer with download speeds of 8MB per second - compared to 300MB/s at the new-build homes surrounding them.

Antony Elderton believes the issue, made unbearable with him and his two children working from home during the coronavirus lockdown, could be easily resolved but has had no luck convincing anyone to help.

"Whenever I tell them my postcode thier system says I can't get superfast broadband but my dad was the engineer who installed it and the cabinet is yards from my house," he said.

"Not only that but I sold part of my garden to the developers who built the new houses and even they get fibre optic wifi - but I can't.

"I'm just going round in circles trying to get them to understand it's there - I've exhausted every lead I can possibly think of but it's as if we don't exist."

The homes on Berrywood Road, which date back to 1892 and were built on the grounds of the former St Crispin psychiatric hospital, get their internet from the Duston telephone exchange.

The fibre connection to the other homes in the area goes via the green roadside cabinet but not to Mr Elderton's and his two neighbours.

He said they are not so bothered by the slow speeds but he needs the internet for his work as a self-employed builder.

While his son has been working from home for Barclaycard and his daughter, a sixth form student at Duston School, has been doing her school work at home.

On top of the usual streaming uses to be expected by a family-of-four, they have to put up with constant buffering and hold-ups online, forcing them to rely on their mobile phone data.

Mr Elderton complained to Openreach multiple times but kept being told there is no plan to connect his home, despite his protestations about the ease of doing so.

He has also gone to his provider, Sky, as well as Northamptonshire County Council, which has been rolling out superfast broadband around the county with Gigaclear and Cityfibre, who all also cannot help.

The resident event offered to pay towards it and has become more and more annoyed as the authorities brag about bringing superfast broadband to the remotest areas of the county but not to him.

"It's unbelievable that they can't acknowledge that there is fibre outside my house," he said.

"All it needs is for an engineer to spend an hour and a half talking the cable back from the telegraph pole outside my house to the cabinet but no one will do it."

Another issue is the houses are considered to be in Duston but their parish is Upton, their borough council ward is West Hunsbury and they are in South Northamptonshire MP Andrea Leadsom's constituency.

So Mr Elderton has always had issues with being found and getting support as they are on so many administrative and governance borders.

A spokesperson for Openreach said it has done a 'huge' amount of work in Northamptonshire to make faster broadband available, including making Northampton 'an area to benefit from our full fibre build'.

"More than 98 per cent of homes and businesses in Northampton can access superfast speeds," they continued.

“There are still some properties, such as this one, which are still outside Openreach’s current build plans, and probably those of other local broadband network providers."

"Fortunately, at Openreach, we have some options that we’d be happy to explore such as the government’s rural gigabit connectivity voucher scheme which can be combined with our community fibre partnership, where we split the cost."