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.”

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.