Openreach Prep UK ISP Pilot of Harmonised Broadband and Phone Repairs

Openreach (BT) has today announced their intention to run a national pilot of the new Harmonised Repair service, which will begin on 24th July 2017 and run for 12 months with up to 500,000 broadband and phone lines of various different types (WLR, LLU, FTTC, FTTP and SoGEA).

The last time we reported on Openreach’s Harmonised Repair service, which is designed to “simplify the customer experience, with a single engineering visit to fix both network and home domain issues, to remove faults and optimise broadband“, was when it was still just a Proof of Concept solution during 2015 (here).

Existing Special Fault Investigation (SFI/SFI2) engineer visits are somewhat limited in their scope and ability to repair faulty broadband services. By comparison the Harmonised approach means that customers should be able to get a single visit from a multi-skilled engineer who will be able to fix both landline or broadband faults, uplift speeds (if optimisation is needed) and perform an overall broadband health check.

In theory this could resolve some of the complaints that ISPs have had with the limitations or cost of existing SFI services and it may also reduce the number of repeat visits that engineers need to make in order to fix certain broadband problems.

Openreach Statement

We’ll be testing customer experience asks such as:

• Next day appointment SLA across faults and line optimisation visits
• Two hour appointment slots for all appointed visits
• Broadband Health Check – capped at 25 per cent of all visits during pilot
• Small damage, e.g. if the end customer wiring is damaged
• Same journey which covers both broadband and voice issues

Line optimisation visits will be charged separately [at £130 per visit].

The pilot prices below will be charged in addition to line rental: