BT to cease charging Cessation fee

Openreach announces withdrawal of termination charges
Wednesday 09 May 2007 18:09:48 by Sebastien Lahtinen
Openreach, the part of BT Group which manages the connection from the local exchange to end user premises (homes & businesses) has announced today that as of tomorrow it will be dropping the cease charges from £29+VAT to zero. We ought to stress this does not affect end users at this time.

The charge is applied to the wholesale operator (BT Wholesale or another LLU operator) which in turn passes it to the broadband service providers, and finally to end users in most cases. BT Wholesale was not able to confirm its plans at present as to whether the charges were going to be passed on to its customers.

This fee has been criticised by ISP industry insiders for some time due to concerns over its impact on their businesses, in particular when customers can cause the disconnection charge to be applied simply by cancelling the phone line without the ISP's knowledge. There is currently no information on why this change has taken place, or whether it is likely to be extended beyond the one month period in the Ofcom notice from Openreach.

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Mark.J said:

That's a pretty big surprise;

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The new price will be offered following systems changes and a review of the LLU Cease process with the aim of delivering a reduction in Openreach costs. This will be achieved by amending the process so that the cease is effected by a records-only change while the LLU MDF jumpers remain in place. With the line is in this condition it will be available for other CPs to take over as required.

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Cease charges will apply when a BT Wholesale ADSL End User service is terminated or replaced by a non-BT Wholesale ADSL End User service (cease and re-provide).A cease charge will be raised under the following circumstances:· The Service Provider raises a cease order.· The Service Provider asks BT Wholesale to raise a cease order on their behalf.· Openreach issue an unsolicited cease because the PSTN service has been terminated.A cease charge will not be raised in the following circumstances:· The End User line has been migrated to another ADSL service provider using the published migration process.· The End User line has been migrated to an LLU operator (either SMPF or MPF) using the published migration process. · When End User service is migrated to another BT Wholesale ADSL service and / or to another Communications Provider (CP) where a MAC code is used.


End User Cease Charge: £4.90 (exc Vat)
Operative Date:23-08-2007

Temporary price reduction: All end user ceases completed from 10th May 2007until 22nd August 2007 will have a charge of £0.00Operative Date: 10-05-2007

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