UPD Anger Flares at Openreach Over Holiday Homes USO Exclusion in Scotland

Residents of the Grand Eagles holiday park in Perthshire (Scotland) have claimed that Openreach holds a virtual “monopoly” after they accused the operator of trying to “extort” £3,500 per property from home owners, who aren’t covered by the current Universal Service Obligation.

The existing USO is delivered exclusively via fixed lines and only requires KCOM (Hull only) or Openreach (BT) to deliver, following the “reasonable request of any End-user” (i.e. demand-led), an “affordable” telephone service that includes the ability to offer “data rates that are sufficient to permit functional internet access” (here); even slow dial-up (28.8Kbps) lines can hit it.

Under this approach Openreach is expected to foot the bill for deploying a basic copper phone line, although they’ll only absorb the first £3,400 of construction charges (plus users would still have to pay a small connection fee) and the home owner would then foot the bill for anything above that. This is necessary in order to stop costs getting out of control, but in practice hardly anybody ever has to pay an excess.

In this case a number of residents at the Grand Eagles park have been trying to get a phone line and broadband installed, except Openreach want to charge them £3,500 each. “It is a disgrace that Openreach can get away with this and that they are not accountable to anyone other than their customers … it’s about time the Government removed this monopoly on the communications industry,” said resident Lynn Cairns (here).

However Openreach denied the accusations and said that Holiday Homes are exempt from the USO.

A Spokesperson for Openreach said:

“This means that any work undertaken to provide a line into a holiday home is chargeable to the owner.

If a request is made, Openreach planners will calculate the cost of providing the service and the holiday home owner will be advised accordingly, as is the case here. The actual cost would be dependent on the work required in each, individual situation.

The only exception is when a holiday home is a full-time residence and the resident pays Council Tax there.”

We’ve long understood that holiday homes aren’t likely to be covered by the USO unless the owner can prove that they’re a full-time resident who pays council tax, although Ofcom’s USO documentation doesn’t appear to specifically reference holiday homes (the guidance for “reasonable request” is generalised – page 85-86). Many such sites are usually covered by a shared WiFi network rather than fixed lines, albeit seemingly not in this case.

We have asked Ofcom to give an opinion on this specific situation and are awaiting their response. Take note that this article is separate from the on-going consultation over a 10Mbps broadband USO, although now is a good time to raise such cases as it may help to inform that debate. Ultimately a line does have to be drawn somewhere, otherwise all kinds of temporary shelters would be included (tents in fields, cardboard boxes on streets etc.).

UPDATE 10th Aug 2017

Ofcom informs us that the decision to exclude Holiday Homes is the result of Openreach’s own interpretation of their USO rules, rather than the rule itself. However, if someone doesn’t agree with BT’s interpretation, they can bring a formal complaint to Ofcom and the regulator would consider whether the operator has breached its obligations.