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.