*28\/02\/15 – extra content added*<\/p>\n
The elephant in the room of the\u00a0UKs communications infrastructure is BT Openreach.<\/p>\n
Openreach\u00a0brands itself\u00a0as an independent organisation.<\/p>\n
But\u00a0Openreach\u00a0is\u00a0(and I quote)\u00a0“… part of the BT group”.<\/p>\n
So that means it is answerable to the same CEO as the BT retail division.<\/p>\n
Wikipedia contains this Openreach-related gem:<\/p>\n
“Openreach are accountable to each of the Telecoms providers, as well as Ofcom”<\/p>\n
Wait a minute.<\/p>\n
Openreach, providers of the infrastructure – without which nothing will work – are not accountable to the public?<\/p>\n
Not accountable to the service users?<\/p>\n
Not accountable to those who, indirectly, pay for the Openreach service?<\/p>\n
So even if you happen to be\u00a0a member of the public who uses telecoms from a non-BT communications provider, and should you experience unfortunate infrastructure (ie, Openreach) problems, BT Openreach are not accountable to you?<\/p>\n
Well golly that’s amazing.<\/p>\n
Here’s a thing.<\/p>\n
No communications provider has a decent mechanism that members of the public can invoke, by which members of the public (private or corporate) can make a complaint about Openreach.<\/p>\n
And it is not possible for members of the public (again, private or corporate) to make complaints directly to Openreach.<\/p>\n
Think about that.<\/p>\n
I have had instances in the past where Openreach’s lack of performance has denied me services that I was paying a communications provider for.<\/p>\n
But apparently someone somewhere thinks that this is\u00a0alright, or else brains smarter than mine would have changed this by now.<\/p>\n
So.<\/p>\n
I’m writing this rant as a person who has had his appointment for an Openreach engineer to connect a new business phone line and install the socket postponed Considering there are just five\u00a0working days in the week, and all of these cancellations relate to this five-day week, this is seriously impressive twatting about by Openreach<\/p>\n My fifth appointment, you won’t be too surprised to learn, is actually for next week – 23\/02\/15, exactly one full week after the first appointment was due to take place.<\/p>\n I can’t pick up the phone and yell at Openreach for being a bunch of incompetent twats.<\/p>\n I can ring my communications provider, but they don’t have a robust method of translating my pain directly in to Openreach’s brain.<\/p>\n What I want to do is ask Openreach how they can make and confirm an appointment for an installation and then, just a couple of hours later – on the same day – move it.<\/p>\n And I want to ask Openreach how they can make and confirm an appointment for an installation and then, just half an hour before the 1pm to 6pm slot expires, cancel it.<\/p>\n And do it again.<\/p>\n And again.<\/p>\n Do the Openreach folk think this is acceptable?<\/p>\n If Openreach folk make an appointment with a dentist, would they think this kind of ‘now you have it, now you don’t’ behaviour is normal?<\/p>\n I bet they wouldn’t.<\/p>\n So why is Openreach allowed to operate in this way?<\/p>\n And is the organisation ever going to improve, if it continues to be allowed to be distant from the users of its infrastructure?<\/p>\n Well?<\/p>\n *28\/02\/15 – update*<\/strong><\/p>\n Yesterday I paid a visit to the commercial premises where BT Openreach were due to install the fibre on 23\/02\/15.<\/p>\n I was due to start using the fibre in full-on anger on 28\/02\/15.<\/p>\n The second I walked in I knew I had a problem.<\/p>\n There was no BT Openreach modem plugged in to the fibre socket.<\/p>\n I called my telecomms provider (Plusnet).<\/p>\n I explained as calmly as possible that I was looking at having to postpone work for the second consecutive weekend.<\/p>\n And all because the infrastructure supplier (BT Openreach) had failed to deliver a completed workpackage.<\/p>\n The Plusnet customer service advisor put me on hold and went off to check WTF had happened.<\/p>\n Ten minutes later she came back.<\/p>\n CSA: I’m really sorry about this, but our supplier has cancelled the job we put in. I’ll have to start again and book this as a new job.<\/p>\n Me: ……………<\/p>\n CSA: Really dreadfully sorry.<\/p>\n Me: Your supplier is BT Openreach, yes?<\/p>\n CSA: Yes.<\/p>\n Me: And you can put a job in to your supplier? And they can just cancel that job because it doesn’t suit them?<\/p>\n CSA: (long pause) Yes.<\/p>\n So the bottom line is I have two racked servers ready for OS installation and VM builds, but I continue to be unable to actually commence work, because BT Openreach have not done what they’re being paid to do.<\/p>\n Again.<\/p>\n Let’s all sit down and imagine a world where you, as suppliers, can just cancel workpackage requests that your customer has put in to you, just because you feel like it.<\/p>\n Or because you are the world’s most incompetent, third-world organisation.<\/p>\n And because you are completely unaccountable to the public.<\/p>\n Well I’m lodging complaints with Plusnet.<\/p>\n And Ofsted.<\/p>\n And the chair of the Public Accounts Committee.<\/p>\n Because Openreach needs to be made fully accountable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" *28\/02\/15 – extra content added* The elephant in the room of the\u00a0UKs communications infrastructure is BT Openreach. Openreach\u00a0brands itself\u00a0as an independent organisation. But\u00a0Openreach\u00a0is\u00a0(and I quote)\u00a0“…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}once<\/del>\u00a0twice<\/del> three<\/del> four times this week.<\/p>\n