BT Openreach UK Raise the Price of Premium Line Rental and Boost Repairs

BTOpenreach are preparing to increase the cost of their premium wholesale line rental product, which ISPs often sell on to businesses as part of a phone or broadband bundle, from £110 +vat per year to £114 (+3.64%). It follows a similar rise in the cost of Basic Line Rental on 17th May 2014, which went from £93.32 to £96.17 (+3.05%).

The price change, which is due to be introduced from 22nd September 2014, will also come alongside the introduction of several improvements including an enhanced service management centre, a call diversion product (Smart Divert), cheaper access to more flexible engineer appointments (fee of £12.50), named engineers (fee of £30) and improved repair performance via Business 2 Plus.

Openreach said its ambition for Business 2 Plus is to deliver On-Time Repair (OTR) performance 80-85% of the time, within 3-6 months of launch, excluding MBORC (major incidents that require them to refocus on essential network repairs). Openreach said they would also demonstrate their commitment to the new Service Maintenance Level (SML) by “introducing an additional proactive, rebate payment of £2 per fault on this SML should we not meet our commitment.”

It’s worth reminding readers that the named engineer service, which allows customers to request the name of the engineer that will attend their site (e.g. your home or office) 48 hours in advance of the appointment, is still technically in the trial phase and thus the price of that service remains subject to change.

In addition, the new Business 2 Plus repair solution will also become available to fully unbundled (MPF) and basic line rental services from 22nd November 2014. But it won’t be included in the standard cost, as it is with the premium wholesale line rental solution above, and will instead attract a cost of £13.44 (per year) for MPF or £19.76 for the basic WLR.

At some point the Business 2 Plus service will also find its way on to ISDN2, ISDN30, SMPF (shared unbundled) and NGA (GEA FTTC and FTTP) services (details TBA).