BT Openreach Engineers Forget to Install VDSL Modems in FTTC Homes

“Oops!.. I did it again” is a well-known song recorded by American pop-star Britney Spears and one that also comes to mind after learning that, very occasionally, some of BTOpenreach’s telecoms engineers will neglect to install a VDSL modem as part of their superfast broadband FTTC Basic Install process.

Openreach currently offers a Basic, Managed and PCP Only Install of their up to 40-80Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) lines. A Basic Install is where the engineer visits the local street cabinet and then the end-user’s home to install the necessary Openreach VDSL modem. By comparison a Managed Install is similar to the above, albeit without the Openreach modem (e.g. using the ISPs VDSL modem/router kit) and a PCP Only (self install) allows the customer to install their own kit without an engineer visit.

At present most FTTC installs are of the ‘Basic’ variety because the non-Openreach modem path is fairly new and not many ISPs offer a self-installation (wires-only) option. But Openreach has now embarrassingly had to implement a “temporary process” to handle so-called ‘No Modem‘ cases, which appear to occur when engineers forget to install the necessary modem during the ‘Basic Install’ process.

Thankfully Openreach states that there are “relatively few cases” with this occurrence, although it’s not known how that converts numerically (i.e. total affected customers).

Openreach Statement

“While we have seen relatively few cases, we recognise that the inconvenience for customers. Openreach is focussed on fixing the cause and preventing any further occurrences, but to provide reassurance in the short-term is providing the temporary process to resolve the issue quickly and easily if it is encountered.”

Customers who experience this annoying problem are being advised to contact their ISP and the ISP has then been supplied with a specific process to deal with ‘No Modem’ incidents, which will involve assigning a new engineer to visit the customer’s property ASAP.

As a precaution customers should probably also check to see if the VDSL modem has been installed before the engineer leaves, which obviously won’t apply if you’re one of the few taking a self-install service.

At this point the title for a few other Britney Spears songs comes to mind (“Work B****” etc.) and, in my defence, I Googled them to find out and now feel somewhat dirty. Oh.. that could be a reference to a Christina Aguilera track. Right, that’s it! No more pop culture references!