Openreach Encourages UK ISPs to Cancel Late Ethernet Orders
Openreach (BT) has begun encouraging ISPs to cancel “unwanted” orders for their high capacity Ethernet Access Direct (EAD) connectivity products, which they’ve defined as any orders that are taking longer than 90 days to deliver. Some might just call those “late“.
The network giant is telling ISPs to “help remove unwanted orders from our workstack” (here) by introducing an eight week one-off EAD cancellation special offer between 1st August 2019 to 26th September 2019. During this period providers will be able to cancel “aged EAD orders” (> 90 days from the Order Validation Date) without incurring standard cancellation charges, and with up to the first £5,000 of incurred excess construction charges exempted.
The operator added that they want ISPs to “please support this activity and work with us to remove all orders that need to be cancelled. This will assist our delivery teams by focusing efforts on orders that are business critical for customers.”
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We suspect that end-users with delayed EAD orders may not be too pleased at having their costly outlay described as “unwanted” by the national telecoms giant. As the CTO of one communications firm jokingly put it to us, “Openreach to CPs: Please cancel your orders, we’re too busy!” On top of that the operator also has the regulator’s targets to consider.
At present the latest Key Performance Indicators state that it takes them an average of 40.29 working days to install a new circuit and 84.60% of circuits are delivered by the original agreed date. Meanwhile Ofcom are proposing a target of no more than 38 working days from early 2020 and an 85% goal for delivery by the agreed date (here).
The operator will also need to achieve this while at the same time committing significant resources to their national “full fibre” (FTTP) broadband rollout, which won’t be easy. Naturally we’ve hailed Openreach’s PR team and are awaiting a reply.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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They should start allowing cancellation for ‘FTTP on demand’ orders that can take a year or more to get delivered!
I would love to know which School of Civil Engineering you went to! Perhaps you’d like to setup a new fibre altnet and have 99% of the UK FTTP cabled up within 12 months?
It could be done, for a price. Issue is BT (and we) are not collectively willing to pay that price. Heck, ADSL still seems to be good enough for plenty of people as it is, judging by the stats recently released.
99% of the UK with FTTP within 12 months? No that can’t be done. At that point the issue is not a matter of money, instead it becomes an issue of access to masses of extra short-term but highly skilled labour (most of whom would lose their jobs after a year), politics (time needed to make the policy), supplier issues and problems of competition / law etc.
Maybe if this was the Soviet Union of the United Kingdom, where we all live in identical apartments and are paid in peanuts, then you can create 100,000 or 200,000 engineers at the drop of a hat. But they won’t be especially skilled.
Mark I was being sarcastic 🙂
Sorry my reply was to Laurence saying it was possible.
I used to use a lot of EADs in my previous role with a major ICT provider prior to retiremen,t and have to say that BTs performance in delivering was a big factor behind me leaving the industry after over 25 years ! got fed up with the hassle from customers that I could do nothing about so I decided I didnt want to do this any more !
I agree with Mark; although if it was the Soviet Union a good number of those ‘trained’ engineers would have been shot pour encourager les autres!
“have 99% of the UK FTTP cabled up within 12 months?”
FTTPoD is not targeting a widespread network, it’s designed for individual businesses or premises only, with an overall small numbers of orders.
The issue is with Openreach and its lack of proper planning or management. If it can’t deliver a product in a reasonable time frame, then it shouldn’t offer FTTPoD in the first place.
“The issue is with Openreach and its lack of proper planning or management.”
So should Openreach employ the services of Mystic Meg in order to predict where & when future FTTPoD orders will take place? In case you’re not aware, native FTTP builds are usually planned many years in advance, FTTPoD builds don’t get the same luxury wrt allocation of resources & manpower.
I assume the next step is to stop accepting orders that might take more than the target time to deploy.
It can take a year to get a leased line installed…. so 90 cancelling at 90 days would just mean starting from scratch again.
Can get a rebate if we cancel Brexit? It’s been three years, now… ;-p
Seriously, though, if companies were willing to make the outlay they’re probably not going to let a small refund on costs get in their way. Hold their feet to the fire!
If you cancel brexit the money goes to the EU.
I’d imagine this is in relation to orders where considerable costs and delays are going to be incurred, due to civils and authorities no doubt, and the customer is unsure as to whether they want to progress with the order. Basically giving them the option to walk away.
I thought you had the standard contract has the right for the customer to walk at the point that you received notification of the ECC.
So this isn’t about that. As Mark implies, it seems to be more about manipulating performance stats for Ofcom…..
Ordered FTTPoD in May 2018, still waiting for Openreach to install, yes 2018..