You have to be in the category of ancient to remember Flanders and Swan, two Englishmen who wrote and performed mildly comic songs. The dinner-suited duo had a big hit with The Gas Man Cometh, a story of domestic woe. It started with an engineer calling to release a jammed valve. The exercise ended up requiring the services of gasman, carpenter, electrician, glazier and painter to return the poor householder’s premises to their original condition. Except the painter painted over the gas valve, so the whole process had to start again. Every homeowner knows the feeling.
The Gas man came to mind when two telecommunications companies came to my Glasgow tenement. Their work was part of the nationwide installation of high-speed fibre broadband services. We owners were asked by our factor to give consent to one of the companies for the installation of equipment. Assured it was a minor job involving a hole being dug then filled in, we gave assent by our silence. What we got was a couple of metres of big bright metal industrial trunking attached to the doorframe of the front entrance to the property. The ugliness of the installation brought shivers, as each owner calculated the downward effect on property values of the great chunks of aluminium now greeting the world.
Horror upon horror. This was not what we had agreed to. Yes, it is, said the Telco contractor. “It’s what it says in the plan you were sent.” We had not received any plans, so in fact no consent to do the work existed.
In the end, following letters, phone calls and a site meeting, the offending trunking was removed. It means that unless the telco company can find a way to bring its wiring onto the property that is acceptable to the owners, it won’t be able to do business with me or my neighbours. Thus, both sides lose. There must be a better way to bring the wiring onto the property. Is it cost or lack of management imagination that saw the trunking removed and no effort made to find an alternative route?
The second telco company managed to sin by placing a foot square box at knee height immediately outside my flat and running black wires carelessly up, down, left and right. It looked like the forward communications post of a demented spaghetti army.
Girded loins
Once again, no plan had been provided. I took to my keyboard. To be fair to this organisation, the response was quick. The equipment was removed and replaced by a much smaller box in a far less obtrusive place. The black wiring remains. They have no other colour. We are still in dispute about remedial work. The telco seems to think it’s ok that I should use my time making a claim through their legal people when they admit they caused the work to be needed. It is a type of corporate arrogance that alienates the public.
Too often these days we gird our loins to deal with the people we pay to deliver a service, whether it be broadband suppliers, banks, parcel deliverers, insurance companies or so-called low-cost airlines. We are dehumanised by the massed forces of MBAs, information technology, corporate greed and regulatory bodies that seem to put producer ahead of consumer. They tell us artificial intelligence will be a boon. If it genuinely serves the consumer I’ll jump for joy. I’m sceptical as to how often my jumping shoes will be employed.
There is far more to my ranting than self-interest. Digging up our pavements to make way for new cables has left unsightly scars everywhere. Half-hearted efforts were made to match new tarmac with old, but the scars are obvious and diminish the quality of life in the neighbourhood. Then there’s the grey steel cabinets that have suddenly appeared on our streets. Locating these metal boxes is subject to less stringent planning regulations, so nobody asks the locals. For a few extra seconds of faster broadband, our civic realm, our homes and our surroundings are treated as secondary concerns by local and national governments, and, of course, by the companies that stand to profit from use of our assets.
Embracing change
And don’t expect it to stop with broadband infrastructure. New communications technologies are evolving at high speed. We are at the beginning of a revolution in energy generation and supply. New technologies will bring their own need for digging up our streets and coming into our homes.
Such is progress and it must be embraced if we are to build a successful and resilient economy, tackle climate change and hand our children a better world than we found it. My plea to governments and councils is to ensure that in planning change, the interests of communities and residents have at least equal status to big business. We, after all, are the people who vote and the people who pay.
This article was originally published in The Herald.
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