BT v Sky.

I see the endless arguments between Sky and BT show no sign of resolving

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/10/05/bt-ch...

What use are more Sky engineers since they can't work on the Openreach network?

Is the Telegraph story true?

My presumption is that just like the TalkTalk BrightSpark engineers they'll resolve internal wiring, fix faceplates etc

What are the odds that the Sky engineers will be dish installers with a few days training

Though that is something that phone support should have been guiding people to do i.e. show if fault exists using test socket and if not suggest a local engineer.

I just wish they would all be trained in everything. Nothing worse than a Broadband engineer coming out only to be told that a phone engineer needs to/should have come out first!

Ive had that twice in the past.

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

Ive had that twice in the past.

With which ISP?

Is the Telegraph story true?

I don't think it is true. By that I mean the Sky reason given and the BT Consumer response are both untrue.

The head of BT�s consumer business has launched a scathing attack on Sky, accusing his rival of �cynicism�, "lies" and �sinking to a new low�, after it emerged it cut its costs on broadband by choosing a slower network repair service.

The decision by Sky was discovered by The Daily Telegraph in Ofcom documents.

The company has downgraded its contract with BT Openreach, the regulated monopoly that owns and runs the national telecoms network, so that broadband customers reporting a fault on their line get an engineer visit within two days rather than one.

John Petter, the chief executive of BT�s consumer business, which is also an Openreach customer, attacked the move in outspoken comments that highlight telecoms industry bitterness amid the debate over the future of Britain�s broadband infrastructure.

Since when has either provided a one-day service for consumer level broadband faults?

As for the jobs the Sky "engineers" will be doing, did they really call out Openreach at Sky's expense for customers' internal wiring work and checks? On a one-day response contract?

BT

Both sides probably have some basis in truth, but once spun out things often make little or no sense when trying to score points.

Perhaps Ofcom should have made the fault levels it requires of Openreach to be much more stringent in the first place and allowed for a larger engineering workforce in how pricing was set-up.

We know there is no guaranteed one-day response, and I'd be very surprised if Sky previously had a no-charge to the customer (even two-day)callout of Openreach to premises-internal issues.

It all has to be garbage.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 06-Oct-16 11:35:54)

In the small village where I lived until recently I was well aware that if I reported a broadband fault to BT I could usually rely on an engineer within two days. Neighbours with Sky and TalkTalk often waited a week.

I always put this down to the time it took the ISP to report the fault to Openreach never having realised the ISP could opt for different service levels from Openreach

It's a bit like poor speeds at peak times caused by ISP not paying for enough bandwidth

Lots of things we don't know in the relationship between these organisations

In reply to a post by 961a:

In the small village where I lived until recently I was well aware that if I reported a broadband fault to BT I could usually rely on an engineer within two days. Neighbours with Sky and TalkTalk often waited a week.

With Sky and TT I've had engineers within 24 hours. I have never waited a week with any ISP.

only reporting as I found it in TD15

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

The decision by Sky was discovered by The Daily Telegraph in Ofcom documents.

The company has downgraded its contract with BT Openreach, the regulated monopoly that owns and runs the national telecoms network, so that broadband customers reporting a fault on their line get an engineer visit within two days rather than one.

Since when has either provided a one-day service for consumer level broadband faults?

For a long, long, long time, Sky Retail had an SLA with Openreach that got their faults fixed one day quicker than the SLA that BT Retail had with Openreach (via BT Wholesale).

However, it was *really* hard to figure this out for certain. Ofcom and OTA2 would create reports about how Openreach were doing relative to the SLA, but never reported what the SLA number was. There were hints dotted around ... but no absolute confirmation.

(Note too that these SLA terms are from when the ISP reports the issue to Openreach; there's nothing to stop the ISP from delaying things for 3 days first )

Eventually, I found a 2010 document from Openreach that described the outcome of a "simplification" of their care levels, which makes it obvious that the basic WLR product has care level 1 ("End of next working day + 1 working day, fix Monday � Friday"), while the simplest LLU product has care level 2 ("End of next working day, fix Monday � Saturday").

WLR products can add the enhanced care levels, but it costs. These enhancements can brings the SLA up to the same as the LLU product or better. For example, Pulse8 sells home line rental at £13pm with care level 1. It sells business line rental at £13.80pm with care level 2, and it has an "Enhanced Line Care" bolt on for an extra £6pm that takes you up to care level 3 ("Report AM fix PM. Report PM fix next AM. Monday � Sunday").

The Openreach price list shows wholesale increments of 63p per month for care level 2, and £4.30 per month for care level 3.

Finally, and probably the reason the the boss of BT Consumer has his knickers in a twist, is the fact that BT retail just upgraded every consumer from care level 1 to care level 2. This can be seen in the quarterly results reported in August. Page 7 here:
http://www.btplc.com/Sharesandperformance/Quarterlyr...

Conclusion: Until this year, BT's consumers were on a 2-day fix ("next day +1"), while Sky was on a 1-day fix ("next day"). Earlier this year, BT's consumers were upgraded by 24 hours to the 1-day fix. Meanwhile Sky's consumers were moved in the other direction.

So ... Sky seem to be demanding that BT performs better with Britain's internet but, behind the scenes and without telling subscribers about the material difference to their contracts, they have made things worse for the end user.

Those accusations: [�cynicism�, "lies" and �sinking to a new low�] seem to be fully justified.

Wow.

Thanks for the detail . Interesting reading indeed.

I can't see Ofcom being taken in by any of it, nor the public. The impression I get on the forums is that Sky is better CS than BT Consumer. I don't expect that will change.

It takes at least an extra day to get to useful BT CS anyway.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 06-Oct-16 16:13:41)

It'll be interesting to see the result on Sky's CS metrics in 12-18 months time.

Obviously having a 24-hour advantage will have helped the metrics as we currently see them - and that advantage won't disappear from the stats for perhaps another 9-12 months. At that point, BT will have the 24 hour advantage instead.

Sky seem to be insisting that they are spending the money on their own engineers instead. Those people might get a fast improvement for people who have internal wiring problems or dicky WiFi, but they will just add a 48-hour delay when the fault is in the external wiring. Suddenly Sky's 24-hour advantage turns into a 72-hour deficit.

That's likely to hit the metrics... eventually (and long after Ofcom make their decision).

(side note: the Openreach price list shows everyone on a GEA product gets service level 2 as a minimum, so the extra delay really applies to LLU ADSL only).

Sky WiFi issues easy fix, ditch 802.11n and get a dual band device, i.e. pushing of Sky Q kit

Sky+ is dead, so the old keeping box as a freeview sat box after contract is gone, as the Sky Q is only hired

What do you mean by saying Sky+ is dead?

Nothing worse than a Broadband engineer coming out only to be told that a phone engineer needs to/should have come out first!

It is in my experience, extremely rare for a broadband trained engineer NOT to be UG trained as well .......

Stopped promotion of Sky+ its all Sky Q now.

FWIW ......

Perhaps EVERYONE'S customers would get better service if all service providers didn't spend so very much time and money having to chase unreasonable stats and fiscal penalties for impractical targets.

Sod who is to blame and infighting for 20p of compensation from someone who has most likely already had their margins squeezed.

Let well trained staff have the back up to do what is right first time for the punters .... NOT the stats-wallahs.

It is in my experience, extremely rare for a broadband trained engineer NOT to be UG trained as well .......

I came across one such engineer yesterday here in Lambeth. He had arrived to enable two new VDSL connections on our new AIO cabinet but when chatting to him he told me that he was unable to enable a neighbour's connection as there was a D-side fault on their line and that as he wasn't underground trained he wasn't allowed to access the DP in the footway.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

We know there is no guaranteed one-day response, and I'd be very surprised if Sky previously had a no-charge to the customer (even two-day)callout of Openreach to premises-internal issues.

It all has to be garbage.

Sky didn't charge for the 6 or so SFI's I had out for my fault... They also didn't push Openreach to swap the R-Dslam port despite being asked several times to even though that really was the next logical step in the diagnostic process given they'd already changed the pair, checked the DP's twice and I'd demonstrated the fault on at least 2 occasions. A quick look at the DLM/Sync history should have told them all they needed to know, but that would require the SFI to call their helldesk which most of them seemed reluctant to do.

Fault behaved like a HR fault in that Sync would drop out and not return unless you called the line or plugged a phone in and tried to use it, this was repeatable in the test socket yet the engineers TDR tests couldn't find the problem and since current on the line tended to temporally resolve it that made it even more difficult to pinpoint.

In the end I got fedup of the repeat visits with no progress being made and Sky let me out of the contract. Probably the cheapest option for them to be honest and I didn't see it progressing anytime soon.

From my experience dealing with them it seems easy enough to get them to book out an openreach engineer but they don't seem to have a process/team to handle repeat faults and escalate properly to ensure they're not going around in circles and that the engineer openreach send out is actually fully aware of the history of that line.


Edit:

This was on my 2nd line (I used to have 2) at the moment I've just got the AAISP line in terms of DSL, not sure what I want to do about the backup.

That said I'd probably still recommend Sky if a friend asked for a cheap(ish) provider given that they seem to be one of the better ones of the larger ISP's and I found them fairly easy to convince it needed an engineer. Lets face it the fault I had was probably one of the rarer ones, also if I'm right about the R-DSLAM port I feel sorry for the poor sod who gets that port next.

Edited by dragon2611 (Thu 06-Oct-16 18:54:44)

I came across one such engineer yesterday here in Lambeth. He had arrived to enable two new VDSL connections on our new AIO cabinet but when chatting to him he told me that he was unable to enable a neighbour's connection as there was a D-side fault on their line and that as he wasn't underground trained he wasn't allowed to access the DP in the footway.

As Mr.Weller once wrote, 'Dig The New Breed' ...... new boys (see them excitedly gossiping on this very forum) given [censored] all training and sent to work they should simply not, IMHO, be doing, yet. It is what the company wants .... sadly not what the customers need.

I had no problem getting Sky to book several OR guys to fix my Sky Fibre Pro line. I had a few problems with the OR guys but it was sorted in the end, at no cost to me.

Getting them to book engineers is easy, getting them escalate and hold openreach accountable when the engineers fail to progress the issue however seems to be the troublesome part.

Thankfully FTTC tends to be pretty reliable and most faults are probably less troublesome than the one I had.

That said at least Sky support seem to be able to actually notice when the computer is sending them down a stupid path and do something about it or at least the agent I had did.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Stopped promotion of Sky+ its all Sky Q now.

Yes, I realise that, but in no way does that mean sky+ is dead

The implications of ordering skyQ, quite apart from the cost of the hire, are far reaching insofar as you can't have sky+ in the same house, since the dish no longer services sky+

That, for me, is a no no, because my present system services 5 rooms. Try working out the cost of that via SkyQ

The stats are a side effect of a regulated firm that has to be seen to be doing things by the book and equally for all customers.

Given that I doubt the accountants allow openreach engineers much downtime in a day these days, if customer service is to improve massively more staff to deal with end-user affecting faults are needed, oh and another wave of staff to deal with a more fibre rich roll-out too.

Alas staff = money which will mean higher bills so probably not going to happen

Only my own view, but it seems to me that BT has been training new recruits to its engineering staff just about as fast as it is possible to go in recent times. These things don't happen overnight and it really is too easy for Sky and Talk Talk to carp while they do little to help

What has come out of this thread is the information about response times and what they cost and which ISP elects to pay for which quality of service

Why is this information not widely available to the consumer?

In reply to a post by 961a:

too easy for Sky and Talk Talk to carp while they do little to help

What should they do? This is Openreach's role.