BT Openreach Clears UK Backlog of Broadband and Phone Repairs

BTOpenreach, the group that manages access to BT’s national UK telecoms network, yesterday informed ISPs that it had lifted all of its remaining service warnings, which forced them to focus on repair work after a series of storms caused widespread damage to their telecoms infrastructure.

The development means that Openreach engineers can now re-focus their efforts back towards the provision of new services and upgrades, which will allow them to tackle a backlog of service delays that have been building up ever since the first floods and high winds hit at the end of spring.

The stormy conditions forced Openreach to declare Matters Beyond Our Reasonable Control (MBORC) across a sizeable area of the United Kingdom, which references regions where serious damage to their network can slow lead times for new services (i.e. repairs take priority).

Unfortunately the problems left customers in some parts of the country waiting for several months before they could get a new service installed. At the time an Openreach spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk that, “the UK has seen the worst summer weather for more than 100 years“. Another spate of flooding in October 2012 then added further misery (here).

Openreach Status Update (14th November 2012)

Following the last MBORC update issued last Wednesday, 7 November 2012, where we were able to lift MBORC on 4 areas and leaving 3 areas still subject to MBORC, we are now able to advise, with effect from 13:00 today, MBORC has been lifted on the remaining 3 areas:-

Durham
Northumberland
Southampton

To confirm, MBORC no longer applies on any area of the UK.

The bad news is that it will still take a little while longer before Openreach can return to normal and clear its entirely backlog of new provision work, meanwhile the threat of harsh Winter weather is already on the horizon.