COVID-19 – Openreach Limit UK Broadband ISP and Phone Work UPDATE

In a significant development Openreach (BT) has issued a status of Matters Beyond Our Reasonable Control (MBORC) across a variety of popular products, which from 23:59 tonight will effectively stop, limit or delay many new broadband and phone provisions (installs), repair jobs and engineer appointments on a “national basis.”

The move is surprising since the Government, and consumers alike, generally consider broadband and telephone services, as well as leased lines for businesses, to be absolutely essential. Nevertheless the current situation is truly unprecedented and Openreach will still aim to maintain as many of their normal operations as possible in order to support consumers, particularly with so many people now needing to work from home.

In MBORC areas the operator’s resources are normally refocused toward repairs, such as following major storm damage, but today’s announcement also covers repairs. Meanwhile the CTO of UK ISP M12 Solutions (Giganet), Matthew Skipsey, informed us: “This means no new provides unless it’s an un-appointed job (migration or upgrade to FTTC). No indoor customer premises visits. CNI and vulnerable customers exempted in areas.”

A number of other providers had told us this morning that they were also having trouble with number ports because Openreach had “closed their offices,” although this was a reference to their centre in India, which deals with certain issues, and not the UK where they remain open. Otherwise the key changes can be found below.

In a statement to UK ISPs the network access provider said, “We will now prioritise only the essential work and absolutely minimise work that requires our engineers to enter end customer premises.”

An Openreach spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

“Our number one priority is to keep people connected, and we’ve been working closely with our Communications Provider customers to minimise the impact that the Government’s new restrictions have on the services we can provide.

We know that what Openreach does is critical, and connecting people has never been more important. That’s why many of our roles have been given ‘key worker’ status.

That said, the safety of our people and the public is come first and, based on the new guidance, we’re now prioritising essential work.

That means we’re focussing on the repair and maintenance of connections that support critical national infrastructure, essential public services, vulnerable customers and those without service. And our CP customers are helping us to identify and prioritise these groups.

We’ve also advised our engineers to avoid entering customer premises. A large amount of our work we do can be completed outside, and we can often fix problems without entering a customer’s property – so we’re advising them not to complete any work inside a property unless it would leave a vulnerable customer with no form of connection, and it’s not possible to provide one by any other means.”

Just to help give some extra context, we’ve posted the detail of what Openreach has been telling ISPs below. The exception for “self-install activities” should mean that ADSL and Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) broadband and phone services aren’t too heavily impacted as they rarely require an engineer to enter your home, although it’s a different story with “full fibre” (FTTP) and G.fast that will now see installation delays.

Key Changes and Exceptions

Provision work carried out by Service Delivery and Fibre and Network Delivery will be limited to:

• Self-install activities (i.e. where there is no engineering visit to the end customer premises).

• Service to vulnerable end customers (in-home and carried out safely, only where essential).

• Those end customers who have no other form of broadband or telephony available – and we will look to deal with these via escalation channels jointly with the CP to find a solution that doesn’t require a home visit.

• On-premises work for critical national infrastructure customers (NHS, pharmacies, utilities, emergency services, retail and wholesale food distribution outlets, financial services businesses and other categories defined by the Government).

Repair work for both volume and business products will continue to be focused on restoring service with safe working practices, and with revised processes to further reduce social interaction wherever possible.

With immediate effect:

• Appointment books will be closed for new appointed provision with books moved out to 1 June 2020.

• We will attempt to complete appointed inflight orders outside of the premises.

• Non appointed orders will continue to go ahead where no visit is required to go to the premises (transfers, upgrades to Fibre to the Cabinet).

• Repair books will remain open at this time- we are reviewing non urgent repair.

• Engineers will be asked NOT to enter the end customer premises and to enable/restore service where possible from outside of the premises.

• We will ask CPs to help us identify Critical Network Infrastructure and vulnerable end customer tasks in order to prioritise these.

Our priority is to ensure that end customers remain connected at this time. We will be asking our CPs to work with their end customers to understand alternative means of connectivity and to limit the movements of end customers between networks, due to the likelihood of an in-home visit being required.

It is our expectation that we will shortly announce national MBORC. This will be subject to separate communications that will be provided later today.

We will be sharing more detail as it is available, and we will be reaching out to the operational teams to work this through.

The hope is that Openreach will be able to start returning to normal after 1st June 2020, although this is very much a provisional date as the COVID-19 situation continues to unfold. In short, don’t be surprised if you book some new installs or upgrades and find that they won’t occur until later in the Spring or Summer time.

UPDATE 4:58pm

Some people with FTTP installs due soon, such as those in the process of a house move, had asked what might happen to them. Openreach informs us that they will be trying to complete all orders where an appointment has already been booked.

The operator added that those customers who have no other form of broadband or telephony available will probably be dealt with via escalation channels jointly with their ISP to find a solution, preferably one that doesn’t require a home visit.

UPDATE 27th March 2020

Openreach has also issued a response to some concerns that were raised about number porting on another website.

Katie Milligan, OR MD for Customer Commercial and Propositions, said:

“We were really disappointed to see comments accusing Openreach of blocking porting and ceasing operations. That’s simply not true at all.

The lockdown situation in India did mean we had to quickly move our number porting team from being office based to working from home.

We’re continuing to work with our colleagues in India to make sure they have the tools they need to bring the service back to its usual standard whilst they’re in lockdown and we’re training more colleagues to help lighten the load. In the meantime, we have not stopped porting. We’ll ensure that all of our customers can continue to have their number porting requests dealt with quickly and seamlessly.

As this situation unfolded, we acted as quickly as we could and kept our customers informed throughout.

Like any business, Covid-19 has had a huge impact on the way we’ve been able to operate during the last couple of weeks, and we continue to work tirelessly to keep as many customers as connected as possible and so far I think we’ve done a brilliant job across the business to keep services as normal as possible. I have to say thank you to those in the wider Industry for pulling together in the interests of customers.”