The Oldham Council in Greater Manchester has ordered broadband operator IX Wireless (supported by UK ISP 6Gi / Opus Broadband) to “temporarily … stop work across the borough” due to “safety concerns“. The operator had been deploying large metal masts for their fibre-fed fixed wireless broadband network, which has recently attracted protests.
The company, which holds an aspiration to cover 250,000 UK premises with their new network (here), is currently building their hybrid fibre and wireless broadband network across several towns in the North West of England, such as Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Nelson, Accrington, Thornton-Cleveleys, Fleetwood and Blackpool. Last year also saw them expand into the Tameside and Oldham area (here).
However, the “up to” 15-metre-high metal poles (masts) that they build don’t always go down well with residents in the areas where they build (many people find them ugly and obtrusive), which has recently caused several “disturbances” within Oldham that involved “concerned residents, workers and the police” (here).
Infrastructure like this is typically built using Permitted Development (PD) rights, which means they don’t have to go through the usual planning process and can pop up quite quickly, often without residents getting much of a say (only minimal prior notice is required). Due to this, Oldham Council’s options are limited, but the installations do still require highways permits and complaints have recently been raised over issues of safety.
A council spokesperson said (Manchester Evening News):
“We have told IX Wireless to stop work across the borough following safety concerns. We are temporarily suspending issuing new highways permits to the firm until officers are satisfied safe working practices have been in place. Other councils have already taken this step.
The temporary suspension was put in place because over the last few weeks our highways team has received a number of complaints about work being carried out by IX Wireless.
Concerns were raised about the safety of pedestrians, motorists and the company’s own staff while work was being carried out on, or close, to our roads. Inspections have backed this up. This is not acceptable and we’d be failing in our duties if we allowed unsafe practices to carry on.”
A spokesperson for IX Wireless said:
“The safety of our staff and local residents is paramount and we are working to address any issues that have been highlighted. In this case, concerns were raised by the local authority following discrepancies between the traffic and pedestrian management information provided for the permit and live sites.
Upon investigation it became evident that one of our third-party traffic management companies had, on occasion, incorrectly chosen to downgrade the level of traffic management required during the dynamic risk assessment. This issue has been addressed and rectified going forward.”
However, this is only a temporary suspension until investigators are satisfied with the planned remedies, which means that IXW will soon be allowed to resume work and that could restart this month with a two-week trial. We should point out that the metal poles built by IXW are a fair bit bigger (taller and fatter) than the normal wooden ones (those are a common sight across much of the UK), but on the flip side, being a wireless solution means they don’t need to deploy as many of them in order to cover a wide area.
In the meantime, both the past and present UK Governments have pressured network operators to “end the deployment of unnecessary telegraph poles” (here) when rolling out new gigabit-capable broadband networks. The government has also encouraged operators to “share existing infrastructure when installing broadband cables as the default approach”, but this is largely irrelevant to the wireless tech being deployed by IXW.
The government are currently in the process of responding to related complaints by proposing to revise (inc. here) the Cabinet and Pole Siting Code of Practice, which seems likely to result in greater pre-build consultation with communities. The Minister for Telecoms, Sir Chris Bryant, has even warned that he would “not shy away from changing the law, should companies fail to listen to communities” (i.e. a reference to the possibility of hardening or removing PD rights on poles).
Network operators typically like poles because they’re quick and cost-effective to build, can be deployed in areas where there may be no space or access to safely put new underground cables (irrelevant to a wireless network like IXW), are less disruptive (avoiding the noise, access restrictions and damage to pavements of street works) and can be built under the aforementioned PD rights.
Naturally, we’d all prefer it if broadband, power and mobile infrastructure was totally invisible, but that’s not always economically feasible. The government have allowed the current level of flexibility in order to support their plans for achieving nationwide (c.99%) coverage of gigabit broadband by the end of 2030. The difficulty is in balancing that flexibility with localised objections to the new infrastructure and the need to meet those coverage targets. Network operators are already facing significant financial strain and so a fine balancing act is required.