BT’s Openreach broadband delivery division is failing on
quality of service, says the Office of the Telecommunications
Adjudicator.
Openreach was set up by BT to improve the service to rival
suppliers wanting access to BT’s exchanges to deliver their own
“unbundled” broadband lines to customers.
Unbundled services, which still rely on parts of BT’s underlying
infrastructure, potentially allow rival suppliers to offer tailored
broadband features to their customers, instead of relying on the
vanilla services available through BT’s wholesale division.
But the Office of the Telecommunications Adjudicator, set up by
communications regulator Ofcom to supervise the performance of
Openreach, says the division is failing to come up to scratch.
The adjudicator says the number of lines unbundled through
Openreach has now exceeded 850,000, but that “end to end right
first time results were lower than acceptable”.
The adjudicator says, “A number of quality of service measures
are causing severe concern. The right first time delivery of
‘business as usual’ (BAU) unbundled lines continues to deviate from
planned quality levels – currently 78% against a target of
98%.”
Fault repair quality is also showing “a significant and ongoing
deterioration in performance”, said the adjudicator.
BT had promised that these matters would be addressed by
September, but it had failed to deliver, the adjudicator said.
BT says it is in the process of improving matters this month.
If it fails to do so, it could face legal action by Ofcom, which
originally decided to shelve legal action in response to the way BT
behaved towards its competitors in the market, after the telco
agreed to set up Openreach.