BT Extend UK ISP Proactive Cable Theft and Damage Report Trial Nationwide

BTOpenreach has announced that its proof of concept trial, which uses a new system to proactively notify broadband ISPs and phone operators about Major Service Outage’s (MSO) on BT’s UK telecoms network (e.g. such as those caused by cable theft or damage), will soon be extended nationwide.

The current trial, which was first launched in July 2012 (original news) and had been intended to end on 5th October 2012, is said to have discovered that the new system could “effectively identify major cable breakdowns” but was still taking up to 4 hours to notify ISPs about the problem (i.e. due to the level of work associated with investigating the root cause).

As a result it was found that end users had often already reported related faults before the system could identify them, which somewhat negated “the benefit of the process“. To solve this Openreach has decided that related notifications “will be sent without prior validation from the Police or Openreach“, which “in most cases” should reduce the wait from 4 hours down to just 15 minutes.

BTOpenreachs Statement

“Although CPs should be aware that because of the immediate dispatch of the email alert, this may mean there are alerts where there is no actual incident due to the fact the location has not been attended in person. Openreach will try to minimise reports reaching CPs unnecessarily but this may not always be possible due to their proactive nature.

The trial will also be extended from the original end date of 5 October 2012 until the new date of 30 November 2012 to increase learning from this new functionality and allow CP best practice to be developed by Openreach working with CPs.”

On top of all that Openreach announced that the trial, which has already helped police to make several arrests, will now be extended nationwide 24/7.