BT’s network division Openreach has launched a page on its site where it shows how quickly it’s fixing lines and getting new customers connected.
The interactive report card lets you analyse BT’s performance on a regional basis. Figures from the beginning of the year, represented in quarterly chunks, shows you how quick BT is to reconnect customers across ten UK regions.
At a glance you’ll also be able to see how quickly new customers are getting connected to services across the UK as well.
While the page is useful for customers who want to get a better idea of how long they can expect broadband outages to last in their area, or how quickly Openreach will connect them, the site is also a useful tool for BT to prove to telecoms regulator Ofcom that it’s hitting its agreed targets.
Starting this month, BT’s network team has had to start hitting some targets set by Ofcom. As of July 1, 2014 70 per cent of all repairs will have to be fixed by two days and 55 per cent of new connections need to be completed within 12 days.
The percentage of faults due to be repaired within 2 days was a below-target 67.78 per cent in the first three months of 2014. But between April and July – before the new targets applied – this jumped up to 78.85 per cent.
The page also shows that in the first three months of 2014, Openreach had been hitting the targets for new connections – but only just. From January to March of this year it took on average 11.19 days for an engineer slot to become available. Things have improved, with this figure falling to 8.05 between April and June.
At the start of the year, 93.10 per cent of new installations were delivered on time, a figure which crept to 93.19 three months later.
The figures suggest that engineers in Northern Ireland are the quickest off the mark, with an average wait time of 3.31 days reported for appointments in April-June 2014.
Folks in North Wales and the North Midlands faced the longest average wait of 9.5 days in the same time frame.
Repair percentages were also higher in Northern Ireland than anywhere else in the UK and, again, lower in North Wales and the North Midlands.
The site itself looks nice, but it’s pretty hard to navigate. You’re best off opening pages as new tabs as it’s sometimes impossible to get back to the main page.
As it stands, it looks like BT is on track to exceed Ofcom’s targets from July onwards. The targets for repairs and new connections were brought in following complaints from Sky and TalkTalk. Should BT fail to hit the targets, Ofcom will issue fines but it’s not known how big these will be.
From 2016 onwards, BT’s network division will have to work harder as new targets, requiring 80 per cent of repair and connection jobs to be done within 2 and 12 days, will come into force.
You can view the ‘Our Responsibilities’ page on Openreach’s site here.
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