UPDATE2 BT Openreach Add Performance Update and Service Outage Search

BTOpenreach, which works to maintain and upgrade BT’s national telecoms and broadband network across the United Kingdom, looks set to update their performance information website (www.expect.openreach.co.uk) next week with the latest repair statistics and the addition of some interesting new features.

The website was updated with the new info. in July 2014 after the telecoms regulator, Ofcom, started requiring Openreach to enhance their Quality of Service and make details of their performance public (here). The performance reports are intended to be a quarterly update that must “provide clear, meaningful and transparent information about how long Openreach is taking to repair faults and install new lines, allowing consumers to keep track of the company’s performance“.

The initial Expect-Openreach report (here), which covered the period from 1st April – 30th June 2014, proved to be interesting if also somewhat basic. But reliable sources have informed ISPreview.co.uk that a recent presentation of the next website update, which could surface sometime early next week (possibly Monday), will be completely overhauled in order to make it more user friendly (new information for councils and builders may also be included).

But of most interest is talk of a new search system for service outages, which could potentially make life significantly easier for consumers who might wish to understand the status of local network problems. Admittedly many ISPs do offer service status pages, although most of these are hard to find, vague and often fail to share all of the available information. Hopefully Openreach’s outage checker is better than those.

So far Openreach has only revealed some general details about their forthcoming changes to the industry and we have already contacted the operator to request some extra information ahead of next week, although failing that we should all be able to see the changes soon enough.

UPDATE 12:33pm

Openreach’s Local Network Status Checker can be played with here, although it will only work for current outages (would have been nice to see historic problems too).

http://www.expect.openreach.co.uk/problems-with-your-phone-or-broadband/search.aspx

UPDATE 20th October 2014

As report last week, Openreach are currently updating their website this morning with the latest statistics and info. about their broadband / phone installations and repair performance, although aside from the new Local Network Status Checker (linked above) there’s not a lot to report.

The checker could perhaps do with adding some more information though, such as what the problem is and a dated/timed progress update, since at present even major cable break incidents only offer the most basic of information. Some ISPs already seem able to give more detail than Openreach and so clearly there’s scope for improvement.