Sorry, that's not what I meant .

I was meaning the ludicrous level of the Openreach charge.

If that was at the same level as for ADSLx, then the smaller providers become much more competitive against the big boys with the huge marketing budgets - which is where the connection charge subsidy will be coming from.

Time also for Openreach to be more 'obvious' in their separation from BT Retail, and BT Wholesale, etc, etc.

Spent many minutes explaining to a very old gent, whose line had just come back from a VM cable service to an Openreach based product, what, and to whom, the various bits belonged. He kept referring the 'Post Office', which I took to mean 'generic BT', when the penny finally dropped, that he was getting his shiny new line from the Post Office*, I had to start the whole explanation again..... Doh.






* It really often isn't at all clear on whose behalf you are working, it should be, but isn't.

Yep, they obviously trying to claim back money for their investment by way on ancillary charges

So I guess he was not signing up to the Post Office WLR line rental service, as that would explain it

Are engineers told on which company's behalf the line is being installed? They shouldn't be.

No, they are not (although I think they have the CP name in their notebook) but I mean the old chap may have ordered the line through the Post Office so he though it was them installing the line?

Yes he was, but seeing it in the multitude of, generally pointless, notes can be tricky. Even more so if you are out on an BTw LLU SFI task. Generally you have not a scooby who the ISP that the EU is with, is.

It get's worse on an SFI for business. 'Unit 4, Suttons Business Park' might get you where you need to go, but a company name would be useful, and better still a contact number for someone actually on site, and aware of what the issue is. Often no mention of the issue being reported, 'site flapping' is my favourite, at least the winged building is easy to spot !

I know a geezer who works for a small business ISP, and am fully aware that the in's and out's of the proverbial duck's **** are being input, why the hell don't it come down to the engineers like that ? Current speed, profile if any, what has and hasn't been tried, etc, etc.

In reply to a post by Adsl24:

So I guess he was not signing up to the Post Office WLR line rental service, as that would explain it

The old boy probably referred to it as the post office because BT used to be the GPO, which stands for General Post Office (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Group) still see the initials on a lot of man hole covers. Bit like older people calling a radio a wireless.

Ancilliary charges are always present when you setup an 'internal' market, i.e. the accountants will be trying to justify every button press that occurs within Openreach.

BT Retail has had a history of offering new services at low cost for many years, but with FTTC I think I am right in saying they want your phone service too, so they can cross subsidise the underwriting of the install/migration fees.

So not cross subsidies between business groups, just competing with Virgin Media, who they view more as a competitor, along with TalkTalk and Sky.

The smaller providers are usually left to pick up the crumbs.