Local Residents on the Brodsworth Estate have campaigned tirelessly for over three years to obtain a broadband service from former State Telecoms Monopoly, British Telecom plc.

On newer housing estates, such as Brodsworth Way, British Telecom provide telephone services over a fibre network as its cheaper to do this than to lay copper cables. This is known as TPON (Telephony over passive Optical Networks).

As mentioned earlier broadband needs metal to conduct it's signal and the fibre-optic cables are made of glass so this causes the problem. In an effort to overcome this BT have introduced copper overlay, which is as it sounds. The fibre cabling is overlaid with another copper line which the broadband signal can travel through.

BT did start work on this however only did so for a very short time, the actual 'copper date' was meant to be 31st August 2004. When BT were contacted as to the status of the work they gave another date of February 2005 which again came and passed without success. BT have stated that now the responsibility for this work has been passed to a new sub company of BT, namely BT Open Reach.

BT Open Reach has been contacted regarding an update and their official stance was that they are reviewing the situation as any copper overlaying may result in telephone number changes.

In a response to a customer complaint BT high level complaints wrote to a resident on November 13, 2006

"Unfortunately the roll out will not be extended. Regrettably, due to complex logistics, the programme has been suspended. We are aware that this will not be met with enthusiasm but can assure you that all parts of the equation were carefully considered. The decision was not taken lightly.

There are no intentions to move on this before the 21CN programme rolls out in this area which is currently 2009."

In a statement to a local resident in August 2006, the Chairmans Office stated:

“It was not a viable option to provide copper from the Doncaster Exchange….. as the length of line would have prevented successful broadband services being obtained. It was therefore agreed that the extra copper would be provided from the local exchanges for these customers to have broadband. This was implemented from Balby initially, but it has proved problematic for customers to change their serving telephone exchange in order to benefit from the extra copper provided. Residents in Rossington would have faced a similar problem. We have now taken a commercial decision to suspend our plan to provide a copper overlay programme at Rossington and others where similar work was ongoing………”