BT Openreach Improves Service Level Guarantees for New Phone Lines

BTOpenreach, which looks after BT’s national UK telecoms network, has advised ISPs of several “improvements” to its Service Level Agreement (SLA) and Guarantees (SLG) that will reduce the provision time for new phone lines and improve compensation when things go wrong.

The changes, which we’ve detailed below, will impact UK phone and broadband lines based off BT’s basic and premium Wholesale Line Rental (WLR), fully unbundled (MPF) and ISDN2 services.

Openreach’s 3 SLA/SLG Changes

1. Shorter provision times

The new scheme will commit to making appointments available within 13 working days at the point of order placement, compared to 14 working days in the current scheme. This is the Service Level Agreement (SLA).

If we fail to make the first appointment available within 13 working days, this will result in an SLG payment for each working day in excess of the SLA up to the point where the first appointment is available.

2. New SLG payment structure

If we fail to make the first appointment available within 13 working days, this will result in an SLG payment of £2, for each of (working) days 14, 15 and 16. For example, if the first available appointment is on day 16, then an SLG of £6 (3 times £2) would be payable.

If the availability of the first appointment goes beyond SLA+3 (i.e. beyond 16 working days), an SLG payment of £4 per day will apply for the whole period from (working) day 14 onwards, up to where the first appointment is available. For example, if the first available appointment is on day 20, then an SLG of £28 (7 times £4) would be payable.

3. Greater flexibility for forecasting accuracy

Currently a number of Communication Providers (CPs) that are the largest users of appointed jobs are required to provide forecasts. This is to enable us to ensure that we have engineering resource in the right place at the right time for the benefit of all customers. These forecasts currently need to be within a level of accuracy of +/-10% in order for the CP to be able to receive the SLG payment for the region where their forecast is specified.

In the new scheme, the level of accuracy is changing from +/-10% to +/-15%. All other forecasting terms and conditions are unchanged. Those CPs which are required to forecast, are aware of their obligations already. There is no need for any other CPs to take further action.

It’s understood that the new provision times have already been implemented, while the new payment structure will take effect from 1st January 2013. On top of that the SLA provision times will then be further cut from 13 to 12 working days from 1st November 2013, which is also when the requirement for forecasting accuracy will revert to +/-10%.

As ever Openreach’s provision targets can still be affected by storms and other bad weather, which often requires the group to re-focus their efforts towards repair work at the cost of delaying new installations.