Tonight I"ll be in the #Devon village of #Templeton where residents burnt an effigy of a BT Openreach van in protest at slow broadband! pic.twitter.com/qRjfXig8Uo
— Nick Smith (@NickSmithITV) November 6, 2017
The civilized residents of rural village Templeton, located in Devon, England, have decided to set fire to an effigy of a van of their local internet provider Openreach.
Regrettably, this burning is not a celebration or a part of the terms and conditions of a new internet provider"s contract. They burned the van effigy during Guy Fawkes or Bonfire Night: an annual national event in the United Kingdom where people let off lots of fireworks and usually have a bonfire in acknowledgment of the failed plot to try and blow parliament up some 400 years ago. During this bonfire, it is common to have an effigy of the plotter himself, Guy Fawkes, but sometimes people have burned effigies of other things they aren"t that keen on, for instance, another town burnt a 36-foot image of disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein in their bonfire this year.
The situation is pretty dire in Templeton; they were promised a high-speed fiber connection by BT Openreach (which was recently made into subsidiary company Openreach) three years ago, but nothing has come of it. Since then, some of its residents have taken measures into their own hands and installed 4G signal boosters in their homes in order to try and improve their mobile internet connection. As currently, the internet they receive through Openreach in the beleaguered village often sits at less than 1 Mb/s.
To add insult to injury, Openreach did install a faster connection to Templeton"s neighboring hamlet, and they came so close stopping a measly eight kilometers short of them. The name of the neighboring hamlet? Nomansland (that is its actual name).
Openreach has said they are dealing with difficult physical circumstances in trying to connect the village, but they are also committed to providing speeds of over 10 Mb/s by 2020. Its highly unlikely that the residents of Templeton will enjoy news of another three-year promise. But for those of us reading this online, we should reflect and consider that there are literally kids in severley under-developed areas of the world streaming Catwoman the movie in HD, while the people of Templeton can barely scrape together an email.
Source: BBC News |Image from Thomas Haywood via Alphr removed due to copyright claim