Ofcom UK Proposes to Tweak One of Openreach’s QoS Targets

Ofcom has proposed to tweak how it calculates one of Openreach’s regulated Quality of Service (QoS) standards for Ethernet and Dark Fibre repairs, which would replace the current “on-time repair” target with a “mean time to repair” target. The change reflects the fact that the operator’s performance has improved, not worsened.

The regulator currently sets Openreach annual targets for repairs and installations to help ensure a certain level of performance. One target states that, each year, 94% of Ethernet and Dark Fibre faults must be repaired within the time stipulated in its contractual service level agreement (SLA).

Over the years, Openreach has improved their repair process, which has caused a reduction in faults that are easier to fix. But this creates a problem because the issues that remain tend to me more complex and those take longer to resolve, which makes the regulator’s target “increasingly more difficult to meet, even though the customer repair experience overall has improved.”

“Specifically, we are proposing that the current QoS standard, which is an ‘on-time repair’ measure, is removed and replaced with a new QoS standard that is based on a mean time to repair (‘MTTR’) measure, with a recalculated target for that new measure based on a revised assessment of appropriate faults for inclusion in the standard reflecting a change in mix in faults since the standard was originally set,” said Ofcom.

The original request was raised by Openreach itself and, at the time, they also proposed to exclude force majeure (or “matters beyond our reasonable control” (MBORC)) events from the standard (i.e. they suggested tracking MBORCs via a separate performance indicator). But Ofcom were “not convinced” and instead suggested that it would be more appropriate to consider such a change during the next market review.

Openreach also requested to exclude customer faults from the proposed new metrics on the basis that these are outside their control. Ofcom agreed that “previous concerns around Openreach misassigning fault causes appear to no longer be warranted, and hence the inclusion of customer faults in the overall standard no longer seems necessary.” But they did propose to continue to monitor the impact of this change, just in case.

The consultation on this is expected to run until 24th August 2023 and the outcome will be confirmed later this year.