Openreach Trial Panic Alarms for UK Broadband Engineers as Abuse Rises
Network access provider Openreach (BT) has begun to trial panic alarms for their staff after revealing that UK engineers reported 450 incidents of abuse and assault in the year to the end of March 2025, which is up 8% in the last year and represents a shocking 40% increase when compared with 2022-23. Other providers have seen a similar trend.
The incidents themselves tend to vary – covering everything from verbal abuse to threats with scissors, assault (e.g. being pushed down some stairs, punched or shaken off ladders), racism, spitting, swearing, homeowners preventing staff from leaving, as well as inappropriate or threatening behaviour toward female engineers etc.
Similarly, Virgin Media and O2 reported 26 incidents last year that involved physical or verbal abuse and threatening behaviour, although they’re already predicting that this could double for the current year. Sky (Sky Broadband Sky TV etc.) reported 99 incidents involving engineers last year, although the figure for this year appears to be about the same. Vodafone and Three UK also suffered about 40 to 50 incidents in total.
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Openreach has now been placed in the unenviable position of feeling as if it needs to trial panic alarms, which in this case reflects an app on engineers’ mobile phones. The alarm can connect them in seconds to a monitoring centre and even dispatch the emergency services, if required.
Adam Elsworth, Openreach Health & Safety Director, said:
“I used to be worried about people falling off ladders, road traffic accidents or tripping over potholes. But actually we have seen a steady increase in violence and abuse. A quarter of all the accidents we record are now someone being attacked or abused, and it is continuing to rise. And when I look at these incidents I struggle to see the rationale behind the level of escalation.”
Some of the cases do get reported to police, although it’s unclear how many people have ever been prosecuted as a result. Either way, the rise in abuse is incredibly disturbing, although it’s possible that some of this might be related to the fact that Openreach’s engineers are currently much more active and visible due to being in the peak phase of the operator’s national full fibre (FTTP) broadband roll-out.
According to The Guardian, telecoms providers recently joined 100 other utility firms, major retailers and transport providers in supporting an Open Letter from the Institute of Customer Service (ICS), which called on the UK government to amend its Crime and Policing Bill to better protect workers.
At present the bill does make it a standalone offence to assault a retail worker, but the ICS wants to see this being extended to “include all those in public-facing roles, not only those working in retail.” We support that proposal.
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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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Can’t blame customers for getting angry if they drill through furniture as well as the wall where the Fibre comes in. 🙂
I once saw a window frame that had been drilled to let a cable in! Openreach installers are generally quite good, tidy and neat.
Or it’s the 4th attempt at fixing the same problem….
A contractor installing FTTP on behalf of Openreach the other month almost drilled through from an office into a toilet the other side because they assumed where a wall went and didn’t do any measurements.. If I hadn’t been hanging around “checking their work” it would have been interesting.
Some people think it is ok to hold knives against throats and push people down stairs because they are angry about their order (not the engineers fault – but that doesnt matter to them).
When you work with the public you risk encountering some of the worst unstable animals out there. This app is welcome, but nowhere near enough. It requires a total rethink of violence response by Openreach including not admonishing those who report issues nor sending other engineers back into places to complete orders.
There is a very big difference between being angry and physically or verbally assaulting someone.
Getting to the point you need to assault someone whether verbally or physically over damage to replaceable furniture, especially when that is something refundable when you submit a complaint.
Just to add to my first comment, which was meant to be on the lighthearted side, absolutely no need for any verbal or physical abuse to an engineer out doing a days work! Again to be fair most holes drilled to let the Fibre cable in, are usually made from inside to out.
*or to let the pre terminated inside out cable from the ONT reach the CSP.
How horrible to hear this is going on. The engineers, just like those of us who work in the contact centres or other customer facing roles only want to help. None of us, especially those physically on the frontline, deserve the abuse a small minority throw at us.
Guess there is several reasons for Open Reach and other companies Technicians being on the end of Abuse from customers :-
1: In my recent experience the lineman (badly trained – he had been on the job less than 9 months including his ‘training’) who came to my family home left with just one ‘phone socket out of 4 working. The connection box where the external to internal cables joined cover off and the wires connected in jelly joiners. This is after he had been told the fault was down the Pole route (after years of getting it repaired I could almost take him to the faulty piece of Ariel cable). Master socket left hanging on just one screw. I was left to clear up his mess.
2: numbers of Altnets digging up footpaths and roads delaying traffic, both foot and vehicle. In some cases in towns it not just one Altnet but 2 or 3 coming along one after another so the work carries on for extended periods – months not weeks or overnight disturbing peoples sleep.
3: Appointment work not being done on the appointed day but worked either earlier or later without notification.
4: I really feel sorry for the OR tech’s who get the anger/blame for not working on all the Altnets faulty installations when the Altnet’s customers have problems.
Literally got this spot on!
I worked for nearly 40 years with Post Office Telephones and BT as a linesman (repairing landlines) and in all that time I never once received any abuse or hostility.
Sadly times have changed for the worse
When you have companies like Kelly communications, MJ Quinn’s, Morrisons telecom doing work all on price it irritates the customer through bad quality and experience.
Sadly this is happening all too frequently now. It usually takes 2 visits from a contractor before the task will go to an actual openreach engineer from what ive been told by an insider
Violence towards staff is totally unacceptable, having said that it does not excuse companies for failing to do their job properly. Happy customers are unlikely to turn violent.
The vast majority of the general public are self-centered, narcissistic, over-entitled a***holes.
At least on the phones we mostly only get the easily filtered but constant emotional blackmail (with the occasional “I know it’s not you *personally*, but…” – always good for a laugh, that one), and can hang up on anything worse
Not sure what difference a alarm will do as most people just ignore them as there is that many going off, where i live there’s a car alarm that go’s off every other day, now no one gives a dam.
If it was me id give them the option of wearing a bodycam as well.
…and it could provide a record of the bad workmanship as well.
Abuse and physical assault is completely unacceptable!!! However I’d like to see what percentage of people are genuinely expressing frustration about the quality of work done vs. physically or verbally abusive. Big difference.
I’ve noticed an increase in trend of genuine disappointment and frustration being misinterpreted as abuse when there’s a clear difference. In some cases (Maybe not here), it’s used to shut people up completely.
Do a good job, you’ll receive good feedback.