Posted by Graham Little Our area was classed the same as WA , 'unviable' , we had the same trigger level as WA released on the 17th Nov aswell as 2298 other exchanges. During July/August we had around 150 regs (I cant remember exactly).I saw a poster in the local shop calling for people to 'vote for broadband' , I took the details , and called upon the man (Steve) myself to talk over things , as to see what we could do. A few weeks later we printed some of our own posters , and plastered then in every shop that would take them , yes there were a couple that would not! A few extra regs floated in , but not many , we got free leaflets off BT and Eclipse Internet , and distributed them to every house , in Willington/Oakenshaw and Sunnybrow (3000+) by ourselves and with the help of my wife. Even with these we got a very poor return off them for the effort we put in. Around this time a saw an article in the Northern Echo, about the WA broadband campaign Sam Easton was running , so i contacted her to see if we could help each other.Through Sam we got a meet with some high up BT person , to try and get some information. Then we received the bad news that we were unviable.We felt gutted and peeved off with BT , because we were doing the donkey work for them , only to be stabbed in the back by them in return. Then we got the magic 500 trigger , well not exactly magic , Crook only had a trigger of 300 to get , and they are 2 or 3 times the size of us! Our exchange has 2900 active lines , so we had to get 1 in 5-6 people to register. Not an easy task. Nearly everyone of my mates just threw their hands up and said we have no chance of getting that.So i sent a damming email to everyone i knew in the campaign area , asking for help to go door to door , and the response was the same they said we couldnt do it, I got 1 reply from someone who to this date has only helped 1 night and that was the first night we went out.Apart from Steve and I , thats it just the 2 of us , to campaign for the whole area. We first went out on the 24th Nov , for 1 1/2 hours and got about 40 regs (20% of what we had had in the last 2 years!!!!!) , that was it , ive never seen the lad again.So Steve and I have been out Mon/Tue/Weds for 3 weeks @ 1-2 hours max a night.At this moment we have 429 regs , and hopefully by Weds 17th Dec we will have tripped the trigger.So in 4 weeks we have done the impossible ,WE WILL GET BROADBAND. So West Auckland , if you want to get broadband , I suggest you get off your backsides and help Mrs Sam Easton (Who by the way , is a very nice person) , Willington did it with just 2 people. So If you want broadband bad enough , well what's stopping you? Or do people around here have an 'i cant be bothered attitude' ,'let somebody else do it' , will those people who want it that bad , stand up and actually do anything about it? STAND UP AND BE COUNTED PEOPLE! If anyone finds this a bit abrasive , tough , you get nothing in this world , if you dont put some effort in. So contact Sam, and help out. regards www.willington4broadband.co.uk for stats go here: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/regleague.php?status=3®ion=3&direction=DESC&order=percentage
on 12/13/2003, 2:51 pm
195.92.168.172
If you have read my earlier thread , you will know that I don't live in West Auckland now, but I still do care about the place.
I am willing to meet up and give some pointers out, if people are interested,Sam knows where to contact me.
Graham Little
Broadband co-campaigner for Willington
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