Survey claims UK SME’s are confused about BT’s fibre rollout

The survey, which was of 427 small business owners, claims 70% of UK SME’s either don’t know if Openreach’s Ultrafast FTTP broadband has reached their area or believe that it is not yet available.

23% were operating on copper ADSL lines for their business, and 24% believed they were on hybrid copper FTTC lines, ‘with nearly a fifth simply not knowing’. 54% were ‘completely unaware’ that ADSL lines would become redundant under BT’s Big Switch Off and believing it only impacts voice-calls, the report adds.

Meanwhile 72% of those surveyed either want to be on FTTP (50%), are currently trying (7%) or have already upgraded (15%).

“Both the implementation and communications around BT’s FTTP roll-out and copper line removal have been appalling,” said Anthony Karibian, CEO and founder of bOnline. “Small business owners simply don’t accurately know what is going on. Effectively 85% of micro-businesses have no access to the FTTP network with many having to regularly contend with outdated ADSL or hybrid copper FTTC lines that deliver debilitating speeds of just 1-50Mbps.

“And for the lucky few that are fortunate enough to be in areas where FTTP has been introduced, many (33%) are left frustrated when attempting to be provisioned onto it with 6-8 week delays being common. In the interim, small businesses are having to pay through their noses – and historically face twice yearly price hikes – to have their calls and data routed over substandard kit. The long-term cost to UK plc is significant with the country’s next generation of businesses being left to stall in the digital slow-lane.”

David Soffer, Founder and Editor-In-Chief of TechRound, added: “Britain has the entrepreneurial drive to move the country forward. Both TechRound and bOnline are focused on providing the UK’s small business heroes the tools and knowledge to get them into the digital fast-lane. The UK has the talent and potential, it just needs the right environment and reductions in red tape to prosper.”

TechRound is an online publication and bOnline is a telecoms provider focussed on small businesses, so any barbs deployed in BT’s direction from the later might not be without some vested interest hanging off them, but then that’s true of any survey press release put out into the world by a corporate – and as with each of them, such bias doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t some truth in there.

It’s hard to say whether the claimed ‘picture of frustration and utter confusion’ is laying it on a bit thick though in terms how clued up the average small business owner is on the state of fibre in their area, certainly without a wider sample size.