News from the village of Ardentinny, Argyll, Scotland.
BT crews were today installing the first of several new telephone poles along the Ardentinny shoreline. On Friday a BT engineer surveyed the area where the main shore cable was cut during the storms on January 3 and concluded that several of the Loch-side telephone poles should be condemned and replaced. @BTCare confirmed today that they hope to have the homes and businesses affected by the outage reconnected by Monday evening.
Scottish Hydro has issued information related to compensation during the recent power cuts. Is an ex-gratia payment of £75 sufficient to cover the losses you incurred during the blackout? You can read the full text here.
In exceptional events such as these, industry regulator Ofgem specifies the level of compensation which is available to customers. However, we have decided to make a payment well in excess of what these regulations specify and will provide customers who were without power for more than 48 hours with an ex-gratia payment of £75. Customers can claim this by writing to The Claims Department, Scottish Hydro Electric Power Distribution, Inveralmond House, 200 Dunkeld Road, Perth, PH1 3AQ or by emailing feedback@sse.com.
Some 30+ Ardentinny households and businesses remain without telephone or internet access tonight. Despite assurances from BT to customers over the past days that the company is doing everything possible to rectify the situation, only a couple of properties on the shore were reconnected on Wednesday and no BT engineers were seen in the village today.
Argyll & Bute MSP Michael Russell has taken up the case of the villagers and has expressed to BT his dissatisfaction at the level of service his constituents are receiving. He will be in contact with BT again on Friday.
BT engineers have today connected five temporary lines to customers near Ardentinny shore. As soon as we have information on when all residents will be connected, we will post here and to @ardentinny on Twitter.
41 Ardentinny households and businesses are today facing a second week without phone lines and internet access. The main telephone cable along the shore was severed by falling branches from an overhanging tree at the Ardentinny Outdoor Centre during the height of the storm which ravaged much of Scotland last Tuesday morning (3 January).
BT initially advised that the line would be reconnected on Monday (9 January) and yesterday they further advised a reconnection date of Thursday 12th January. (see update below)
All homes and businesses on the north side of the village are affected including the Outdoor Centre, Dundaraich Stables, Glenfinart Hotel and caravan site. Several small businesses including artists and crafts people derive some of their income from internet sales. The additional problem of very poor mobile communications coverage in Argyll, makes the situation even worse for the community.
A spokesperson for a company based in Ardentinny said ‘Our online business derives some 60% of its sales from overseas. Both the UK and Scottish governments are actively encouraging rural communities, such as ours, to embrace e-commerce. However, this can only be possible with a robust telecoms infrastructure in place. Fortunately, our servers are based elsewhere in the world and our system is very much automated, however it is vital that we can provide support for our customers and this has been very difficult over the past week. Mobile 3G services which we could have utilised as a back-up are patchy at best in Ardentinny. For the past 7 days our only means of relatively fast internet access has been locating a 3G signal ‘on the road’.
Michael Russell, MSP for Argyll and Bute, said “For any business or community interruption to power supplies and community ovations is a major matter. Last week’s storms were exceptional but it is I think unacceptable for BT to expect any consumer to wait 9 days for reconnection and I have made that point to the company. They have performed better elsewhere but they need to sort the Ardentinny situation now.
The mobile phone companies have been particularly poor in their response. Local customers already receive a second class service, with virtually no access anywhere in Argyll & Bute to 3G, although charges are the same as those applied elsewhere. It adds insult to injury to discover that the vast majority of O2 and Vodafone masts were out of service for most of last week, even in places where power had been restored quickly. Indeed in Tiree the mast was still inoperable from the last storm on 8th December. Mobile companies are failing the area and need to buck their ideas and services up.”
Update 15:30 Jan 10:
BT has advised us that they will endeavour to reconnect Ardentinny lines on Wednesday 11 January. We requested a comment from the BT Press Office, however as at time of publication, no communication has been received.