When I was in the game, Openreach provided proactive automatic compensation to providers when they fail to meet their Service Level Guarantees. So it is disappointing if IDNET are receiving compo but not passing on to customers.

13 weeks is pretty standard notice for permit for planned provision works. Customer out of service permit is likely to be much faster

I know, but in this case the LA still refused to budge with customers out of service. OR found a way round it though.

Ian, excuse my naivety, but don't Openreach pay their customer (Zen, whose customer in turn is IDNet) a daily sum when the Openreach service connection has failed for more than a set number of hours? I thought this was in their standard business FTTP SLA? If that money is not passed on to the end customer, then there is a peverse incentive to drag out repairs for the intermediate companies.

IDNet is actually more expensive than a number of CPs and, given that, as the post after yours indicates, even BT are more supportive of their customers, when there is an Openreach fault, I think asking the question whether there are better business CPs than IDNet is not unreasonable.

It's a good thing we do have back-up provision at the site, as, otherwise we would have some very unhappy customers. But that back-up does not have the throughput of FTTP and no other fibre provider passes the site.

That is my understanding, also. The chain in this case goes Openreach-Zen-IDNet to ourselves. If Zen or IDNet are pocketing the cash, that provides a perverse incentive on chasing to get repairs done promptly.

The fault could have been proved and a "loss of service" streetworks permit could have been requested on day 1, rather than thinking about it on day 13.

I'm familiar with organising road closures for our own works and the sooner you start the sooner you finish.

Well someone booked an appointment on the 2nd, which by the sounds of things Openreach struggled to meet.

So it is likely that the testing or flow charts, be it Openreach, Zen or Idnet, suggested a fault likely at the customer premises. I doubt anyone is going to be closing roads before that has been checked.

Edited by FibreBubble (Mon 08-Dec-25 18:36:14)

No road closure was needed to measure the optical power at the CBT, which the Openreach man attending on the 2nd declined to do. Since the CBT is in a street box in the verge of a public highway this required no site access either and so could have been done days before the 2nd Dec. Any road restriction needed for repair work could then have been applied for.

Since IDNet has declined to pay any compensation to its customer, even though it seems from other posts that Openreach pays compensation for delayed repairs it seems that everyone is happy except IDNet's customer.

Day 17 and no action by Openreach. I checked with the local highway authority. No traffic management application made. The officer told me, "Openreach do this a lot- they don't have the staff to do the work, so they use us as an excuse" He also confirmed that Openreach could use the 2hr retroactive notification procedure for complete loss of service faults, but "never do that because it costs more".

Nice example of why UK productivity is so low relative to other economies. There is no incentive for IDNet, Zen or Openreach to get the fault repaired. Instead of employing people to repair faults people are employed to generate excuses.

The problem atm is that you a) have no service, and b) paying for it.

As you are into day 17, review how the system is coping and when its back up do some tests with fully wireless connectivity and copper (which you are kinda in now ).. and work out if you can use one or the other exclusivly or a mixture.

I feel your pain as this has been sadly rumbling on without the cause being clearly explained to you.

For me its always easier to cope with an outage (not just broadband) if you know exactly when it will be up and running again but now you're stuck in limbo not knowing if it will be a week or a month.

If it was me I would be escalating this to Openreach high level complaints, it may not get the issue resolved any quicker but it will give them a kick up the [censored] and you may find out more about the cause.