We are currently busy delivering our latest Focus leaflet in Headingley. You may have received yours already. If not, it should reach you soon.
Note: we aim to deliver a Focus leaflet to every household in Headingley, but of course some addresses are inaccessible (e.g. flats with entry codes), and sometimes we just run out! That’s why we put our stories online as well. You can browse through them by following our ‘focus stories’ category.
Broadband providers offer super-fast speeds when you sign your contract, but residents in Headingley and Hyde Park have told local campaigner Penny Goodman that they are not getting what they were promised.
People feel let down by their providers. Many residents and students are having problems completing even simple tasks like downloading music or completing assignments.
Penny Goodman doesn’t think people should be paying for a service they aren’t receiving, so she ran a petition in the Headingley and Hyde Park areas to show the scale of the problem. In some streets, almost every household signed up to call for a better service.
Penny has now written to the major broadband providers, calling on them to investigate the problem, and to put in better infrastructure so that everyone gets the service they were promised. The good news is that Virgin Media have now responded, and have agreed that there are congestion problems in the LS6 1** postcode area in particular.
Virgin Media will now be working to improve the infrastructure in this area, and are also urging all customers affected to call their technical support line on 150 (free from a Virgin Media land line) or 0345 454 1111. This will provide a clearer picture of the problems across the area as a whole, as well as allowing them to help customers on an individual basis.
Yesterday evening we spoke to residents in the Hessles area about their broadband services. Just like hundreds of people across Headingley and Hyde Park, they told us that they are paying big bills for high-speed broadband, but that their connections regularly slow to a crawl, or even cut out altogether.
We don’t think people should be paying for something they aren’t getting, so we are running a petition calling on the broadband providers to speed it up!
If you live in Headingley and Hyde Park and are affected by a poor broadband service, sign our petition here.
When we are out on the doorsteps in Headingley and Hyde Park, we often hear complaints from local residents about poor broadband connections. The providers offer super-fast speeds when people sign their contracts, but for hundreds of customers in Headingley and Hyde Park the reality is broadband that’s painfully slow, or even drops out altogether.
We don’t think people should be paying for something they aren’t getting, so we have launched a petition calling on the broadband providers to speed it up! It’s their responsibility to deliver what they promised – and if their infrastructure isn’t good enough to support the number of customers they have, they need to upgrade it.
We want to prove to the broadband providers just how many of their customers are feeling let down by this, so we have been out collecting signatures over the last few weeks – on the door-steps, in Leeds University Union and by phone. Everywhere, people have confirmed what we already thought – that this is a problem for almost everyone in our area; not just a few isolated households.
But to really make the broadband providers sit up and take notice, we still need more signatures. So if you live in the Headingley and Hyde Park area and have a slow broadband connection, please sign our petition today! Then share the link with your friends so that they can have their say too.
Here are some pictures from our campaign so far:
Collecting signatures on the door-steps.
Our Leeds University Union stall.
Speaking to people on the phones.