BT openreach

Florence S made this Freedom of Information request to Office of Communications

The request was partially successful.

From: Florence S

5 February 2009

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am interested in knowing what work BT is supposed to do to keep
the BT telephone line in a good usable condition, what OFCOM are
doing to help consumers.

Has OFCOM discussed this with BT covering the unfair charges for
new line plus returning line of £125?
If this is a fair charge then shouldn't BT have to completely
replace the line for both including wires to internal new NTe5
master socket.

Has OFCOM had a meeting with BT to work out a way to have all
telephone line faults covered if it goes faulty on voice side or
ADSL?

The present method can leave consumers stuck in a loop if you
mention ADSL when reporting noise on your line. Wouldn't Openreach
being responsible for both voice and ADSL the only route then any
fault reported for either would be looked at. If no fault is found
but customer still is failing to meet the speeds on ADSL they had
to begin with, shouldn't BT be responsible to return the line back
to this by renewing cable instead of reducing the speed for what
the line is expected to support.

Yours faithfully,

Florence S

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From: OCCtelecoms
Office of Communications

12 February 2009

Ofcom reference: 1-89533408

12 February 2009

Dear Florence

Thank you for your email of 5 February 2009 which has been forwarded to
the Telecoms Team to reply.

Ofcom regulations require Communications Providers to take all reasonable
steps to maintain the proper and effective functioning of their network at
all times. We do not posses information on what is done on a day to day
basis to carry this out. Under the terms of its contracts with customers
BT says it aims to provide a continuous, high-quality service but it
cannot guarantee service will never be faulty. If something does go wrong,
BT says it will work on any problem that is reported to them in line with
the level of repair service the customer has chosen.

We record all complaints we receive under relevant categories and against
the particular service provider. This helps us to identify trends in
issues of general consumer concern. If we notice a particular increase in
similar complaints against the same provider then we will raise this with
them.

Ofcom does not set BT's retail charges. We are aware of consumer concern
in relation to BT's connection charge of £124.99 and the circumstances
under which this is being applied. We are currently monitoring the
situation closely and making a full record of every complaint we receive.

Openreach delivers installation and maintenance on behalf of the UK's
telephone and internet providers. Openreach must treat all providers in an
even-handed way. Openreach does not have a contractual relationship with a
customer for either a telephone line or a broadband service. A customer
obtains a land line and/or broadband through a provider and that is who
they will have a contract with. So any problems would need to be pursued
through the provider who then has responsibility to take these up with
Openreach.

Ofcom is concerned Openreach offer a high quality of service to other
providers. Ofcom rules require Openreach to compensate all providers where
it fails to supply and repair service according to agreed targets. The
package of measures follows concerns raised by providers that Openreach
was not sufficiently focused on meeting the needs of all of its wholesale
customers. In particular, other providers were concerned about the time
and complexity involved in claiming compensation resulting from a service
failure.

Yours sincerely

Steven Parker
Telecoms Team, Ofcom Consumer Services

::Steven Parker
Central Operations
Telecoms Team

::Ofcom
Riverside House
2a Southwark Bridge Road
London SE1 9HA
020 7981 3000
[1]www.ofcom.org.uk

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From: Florence S

12 February 2009

Dear OCCtelecoms,

One main issue is with the mix of voice and broadband if you have a
voice fault but haven’t noticed this yet you do notice your
broadband isn’t as good. The broadband supplier cannot get this
fixed as the results come back as fault not found or fault on voice
ask customer to contact their supplier.
Customer contacts supplier if they mention broadband is slow due to
fault on voice side they are told that the broadband faults have to
be handled by their broadband supplier.

Common sense or just a decision to try and fix the issue regardless
is not there, people put up with inferior broadband speeds due to
issues on the line as they cannot afford the BT charge to have this
fixed. Charges for a BT engineer visit £188 has been paid for no
resolution as the engineer sent out didn’t spot the problem so
placed a no fault found. So customer is out of pocket still on
lower speeds than when they first were activated. With this type of
issue BT then reduce the expected seed that number can support
instead of finding and fixing the problem.
Typical example is the post code will show say 2meg speed this is
what customer had when first signing up to broadband; neighbours
will still be on that speed. A test on your telephone number could
be reduced as low as 512k while a check on your postcode will still
show over 2meg.

There is a manipulation of expected speeds at present what will be
done to stop this since it is slowing down the countries broadband?

Why is BT not made to return the telephone line back to the
original when the line shows signs of degrading speeds from test
socket or intermittent fault?

Why if there is going to be no return to original condition, plus
charges for faults not found is BT allowed to keep charging line
rental after charging customers for the line to be fitted?

BT charge a connection fee for each call you do plus the charge for
the call, the gas and electricity companies have stopped charging
monthly fees for service you just pay for what you use.

If your property does not have an NTe5 master socket which BT
should fit to all homes why should you have to pay for this after
paying £125 to move line back from such as TalkTalk LLU?

There is a lot of rebuilding of trust needed between customers and
BT, since BT have moved more into charge them if not work done or
after master NTe5. The fact lines are above ground going through
trees and are copper wire, means copper can break giving
intermittent connections that voice can still work while ADSL will
lose speed or drop the connection all the time.

Yours sincerely,

Florence S

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From: OCCtelecoms
Office of Communications

10 March 2009

Ofcom reference: 1-89533408

10 March 2009

Dear Florence

Thank you for your email of 12 February 2009. I apologise for not having
replied before now.

Unfortunately, there is little I can add to my email of 12 February 2009
which gave Ofcom's position about the obligations on broadband providers,
BT Retail and Openreach when faults occur. This applies to voice,
broadband or a mixture of both. If any broadband provider believes
Openreach are consistently not dealing with faults they are free to report
the matter to Ofcom.

Ofcom is concerned that consumers could be misled or misinformed when
choosing their broadband services by providers advertising headline speeds
that are higher than users can receive in practice. To address this
problem, Ofcom has introduced a Code of Practice that will encourage
providers to be much clearer when they present information on speeds to
their new customers. Providers, who sign up to the Code, will be expected
to implement the following measures:

* provide customers at the point of sale with an accurate estimate of
the maximum speed that the line can support, whether the sale is in a
shop, over the internet or on the phone;
* resolve technical issues to improve speed and offering customers the
choice to move onto a lower speed package when estimates given are
inaccurate;
* ensure all sales and promotion staff have a proper understanding of
the products they are selling so they can explain to their customers
the meaning of the estimates provided at the point of sale; and
* supply consumers with information on usage limits and alerting
customers when they have breached them.

A copy of the Code is on our website at:
[1]http://www.ofcom.org.uk/telecoms/ioi/cop...

There is currently no universal service obligation (USO) that requires the
provision of broadband. The USO is defined by the EC Universal Services
Directive. Telephone lines must be capable of supplying basic telephone
services with a narrowband connection capable of functional internet
access (FIA). The existing guidelines on FIA include a benchmark speed of
28.8 kbps.

To deliver broadband further, for the services of today and tomorrow is
primarily an issue for Government in so far as this delivers social or
economic welfare. The Government has a Digital Britain project which is
looking at, amongst other things, a range of issues affecting internet
users. This includes the definition of USO and whether it should be
enhanced to include broadband.

It might be helpful to explain that Ofcom does not investigate individual
complaints consumers have. Our role is to register consumer concerns and
give advice as to how a complaint can be taken forward. Consumers can
refer certain unresolved complaints against BT Retail or a broadband
provider to an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) scheme. ADR's are free
and independent services. An ADR can award costs of up to £5,000 to a
consumer. Providers must abide by an ADR's decision. You are not bound by
this decision and if dissatisfied with the outcome, you are free to
consider legal action.

The two ADR schemes are the Office of Telecommunications Ombudsman (Otelo)
[2]www.otelo.org.uk and the Communications & Internet Services
Adjudication Scheme (CISAS) [3]www.cisas.org.uk. Their websites give
information about when complaints can be referred to them.

As explained in my email of 12 February 2009, Ofcom does not set BT's
retail charges. The call connection fee is in place to recover the cost of
the initial connection of a call and its subsequent disconnection from the
telephone network. These costs are incurred regardless of the length of
the call.

Yours sincerely

Steven Parker
Telecoms Team, Ofcom Consumer Services

::Steven Parker
Central Operations
Telecoms Team

::Ofcom
Riverside House
2a Southwark Bridge Road
London SE1 9HA
020 7981 3000
[4]www.ofcom.org.uk

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