BT quoted pensioner in Wales £152,000 to connect to broadband

BT has apparently quoted a pensioner living in rural Wales £152,000 to be connected to broadband.

Beverley McCartney, who lives in Salem near Llandeilo in South West Wales, was told previously by BT that they couldn’t offer her a connection. But they’ve relented and finally wrote to her last week and told her that they could help after all, but that wasn’t quite the end of the story.

Mrs McCartney, who admits she has wanted a broadband connection for years, was told by BT they could finally overcome her not-spot dilemma if she could contribute an eye watering £129,613.54 plus VAT to the costs of installing a new broadband line. If Mrs McCartney would be happy to pay that, BT generously agreed to contribute £8,000 towards the project.

Mrs McCartney said

“I just laughed; I thought it was ludicrous in view of their profits”.

Mrs McCartney got straight onto BT believing the letter was a misprint.

“I said – Surely this is a typing error?” and the girl said “No, there’s been no mistake; other people have had bills for much more than this.”

Chris Orum of BT said

“There can be very rare cases where additional charges need to be applied because of an exceptional amount of work required to the network in order to provide service. These charges reflect the additional line plant and equipment needed to provide broadband to a particular location”.

Tariam is contacted by people every day who are faced with the same not-spot nightmare.

New Business Development Manager Neil Waugh said

“Although this letter was clearly a shock for poor Mrs McCartney, we had another customer recently who had a similar situation but BT had quoted them a staggering £250,000. Unbelievably, this customer was less than 10 miles from the centre of Milton Keynes”.

“With our dedicated satellite internet home user product Tooway we could have Mrs McCartney online for less than £500, and we could offer her a full 3.6 Mbps for that, probably more than BT would have committed to. We’ll obviously give her a ring”.

Tariam’s satellite broadband solutions mean that they can provide ultra-fast broadband for home or business users, anywhere on the surface of the planet.

If you want to know more, email us us with details of your location, the number of users you want to support and how quickly you want to be connected – we’ll take care of the rest.

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