Angry villagers have torched a huge mock-up of a BT van on a bonfire in protest at slow rural internet speeds.
The annual bonfire night in the small hamlet of Templeton, Devon, is celebrated each year with a different theme.
This year fed-up locals made an effigy of a BT Openreach transit van – with the word ‘open’ replaced by ‘won’t’ – during a Bonfire Night protest.
A model of a BT Openreach van was among the effigies burnt by residents in Templeton upset with their broadband and mobile phone service
Residents from the rural hamlet pose in front of the mock-up BT van – they had scrubbed out ‘Openreach’ and replaced it with ‘won’t reach’
The two-dimensional model, which was 1.5 times the size of a real Openreach van, went up in smoke at the Templeton Bonfire and Fireworks Night.
The rural hamlet was not part of the commercial roll-out of fibre broadband by BT, or the first phase of the Connecting Devon and Somerset partnership.
This means many villagers are struggling with speeds of less than 1 megabit.
Villager Adam Short, who moved to Templeton last year, said he helped create the van effigy on the floor of his barn.
He said: ‘We knew it was terrible before we moved, but we hoped there would be a solution.
‘Trying to run my business from home is nigh on impossible at times, and I’m one of the lucky ones because I have a 4G signal on the roof with some specialist kit.
‘It also has an impact on the children in the village as it’s restricting their homework.’
The small hamlet, four miles away from Tiverton, have had problems with broadband due to their rural location
At the annual village firework display, a two dimensional effigy of a BT Openreach transit van one-and-a-half times bigger than the real thing was burnt as the centre piece to their bonfire
He added: ‘Upload speeds are almost zero. There really are very few places in our village where a 2G phone signal can be reliably found, let alone 4G.’
Roger Linden said villagers were told the problem would be looked at three years ago, but nothing has happened.
He said: ‘They managed to get a cable to the nearby hamlet of Nomansland, but just eight kilometres further and there’s nothing.
‘It’s incompetence of the first order…but we all had a great evening watching the bonfire.’
He said he cannot stream anything online and is only able to look at emails and occasionally browse the internet.
The mock-up BT Openreach van effigy set alight by frustrated villagers in rural Devon
A spokesman from BT said: ‘Templeton is an extremely rural community which makes rolling out fibre broadband much more challenging.
‘Templeton was not included in Openreach’s commercial roll-out of fibre broadband or the first phase of the Connecting Devon and Somerset partnership but we’re working hard to find alternative ways of bringing faster broadband to residents.
‘A number of residents in Templeton have signed up to Openreach’s Community Fibre Partnership (CFP) programme and engineers have already completed initial surveys of the area to see if we can build faster broadband to the village.
‘We are also looking at a mobile broadband solution with EE and local partners, which could see local people able to access much faster broadband speeds in their home using 4G technology.’
Furious residents targeted BT as many are struggling with speeds of less than 1 megabit