IN a moment of casual irony the leader of Swindon Council now seeks to demonstrate a clear difference between the role of UK Broadband and the failed Digital City Wi-Fi Project.

The irony, of course, is that many people who made this very point in 2011 were told by Coun Perkins that UK Broadband, the new investor, was going to step in and provide £1m of capital, thus the company of which he was director would be able to continue the project which was to roll out borough wide wi-fi.

In fact he is on record as saying: “The objective of these negotiations is to turn Digital City into a profitable company.”

In addition Coun Perkins stated the ‘new investor’ which was subsequently named as UK Broadband was going to repay not only the £400,000 but also the interest due on the loan.

I suggested the truth of the matter was that UK Broadband would do nothing of the sort; today, almost two years after Coun Perkins claimed that over 65,000 homes in Swindon had access to UK Broadband’s high speed, ultra fast network, there has been no repayment of the £400k to council coffers.

In fact UK Broadband came to Swindon as the beneficiary of a £1.5m five-year contract to provide data services to the council with a written promise to make savings of £480k in the next five years (that isn’t going to happen).

Perhaps the most amazing comment to date is that made by Coun Renard who claims that there was never an assurance provided by either SBC officers or UKB that the 4G LTE network providing Wi-Fi access would be expanded to cover rural areas.

This is a seeming contradiction of a statement made by UKB and Capita in April 2012 in which they said “Swindon will be the first local authority in the UK to have a borough-wide 4G LTE network”.

It also flies in the face of a clear statement from former leader Coun Bluh who wrote “ UK Broadband will be installing a 4G LTE network across the Borough. Once a 4G network is operational, it will be easier and cheaper to enable wi-fi access in a local area”.

I have highlighted the words across the borough simply to illustrate the fact that Coun Bluh was being consistent with his interpretation of across the borough – defined in his own words as covering “from Inglesham to Barbury”. It’s easy to understand why politicians attempt to re-define matters when they are found to be misunderstanding their own hype but they should credit the populace with having a little more intelligence than they might presume.

I feel sure many people will be amazed that UK Broadband allegedly spent £1m developing a network and then failed to promote or sell it.

Des Morgan, Caraway Drive, Swindon