OTA2 Update for December 2011

At the end of December, the number of unbundled lines stands at 7.92 million. There are 6.32 million WLR lines and the number of telephone numbers using CPS is 2.62 million.

General

This is a shortened format update. We plan to publish our next full update for the month of January 2012 and the following is an interim update on some important areas of our work:

New ‘Backstop’ SLG (Service Level Guarantee)

The initial three CP’s required to submit forecasts, TalkTalk, Sky and BT Retail have now completed two cycles with Openreach. The process has been successful in establishing how the CP’s business plans impact the way Openreach organise its manpower to accommodate visits for new line provision. This process will help establish the tolerance level for triggering SLG payments.

Work is now in progress to determine when and how KPI reports will be produced and published. More details will be available in the next update.

OTA2 Improvement Workstreams

Improve Cancellation Rates
The OTA2 are now reviewing with the initial three forecasting CP’s details of cancellation rates and any system or process behaviour that may contribute. The focus has primarily been on three days prior and up to CCD (customer committed date). Good progress is also being made in the area of Forced appointed provides within WLR.
Review Appointment Process
The OTA2 and Openreach have reviewed the key process elements that may contribute to unnecessary appointments and are now assembling a volume assessment of possible opportunities.
Encourage Adoption of Best Practices like Working Line Takeover (WLTO)
An initial review is underway again focussing on opportunities of maximum benefit. The OTA2 is now engaging with CP’s.
Improve Address Matching Rates
The OTA2 and Openreach are now holding weekly reviews on possible improvements that can be made to the current system in advance of any strategic change. Current opportunities are now being progressed through business case stage. In addition Openreach have been refreshing their Strategic plans with a view to engaging with CP’s at the end of January.
MBORC (Matters Beyond Openreach’s Reasonable Control) – Review process impact on SLG
Openreach have now agreed that no changes will be introduced as a result of the SLA/SLG programme so this area of investigation is now considered closed.
Review Process of Offered Appointments
The work in this area has now concluded and has been presented back at the December OTA2 executive.

Service Performance

Provision & Repair

Provision & Repair volumes continue to trend up.

Strategically, the industry forecasting initiatives mentioned above will provide a much improved ‘forward’ view of demand, enabling Openreach to ‘flex’ resources as the need dictates, in amore timely manner.

Tactically, provision lead times of late have increased as a result of resources being re-directed towards reducing the repair workstack as Xmas & the New Year approaches and to allow some contingency to cope with any exceptional adverse weather which may arise.

Openreach’s current view is that providing the weather is no worse than they have already allowed for over the Xmas period, then the UK average lead-time for appointed provisioning work will return to 14 days from current average of 15.9 days by 21st January.

For repair, every effort is being made to reduce the workstack (i.e. Faults intake) to 10k/week by the end of the year (2011) as this is deemed by Openreach to be their optimum level of working.

EMP Systems performance (i.e. B2B/Portal trading interface) continues to remain stable.

• Plan & Build

OTA2 hosted a new ‘Plan & Build Industry Forum’ in December in response to growing concerns expressed by CPs (Copper & Ethernet communities) across a wide range of issues relating to Delivery lead-time performance & so-called ‘black exchanges’ requiring some form of space, power & frame relief.

General consensus from attendees (i.e. Openreach & CPs) was that the meeting had proved to be very useful and should at least continue through to the end March’12 on a monthly basis. Next meeting arranged for 1-4.30pm, 18th Jan @ Riverside.

Service Levels

Our KPI charts show current performance levels.

OTA2 will continue to focus on:

New ‘backstop’ SLG for appointed orders
Address Data Matching Integrity issues
WLR/LLU Process development
Ethernet Services Process Development
Ethernet Product development
Strategic Review of Consumer Switching
Erroneous Fixed Line Transfers activity
Fixed line porting - Improvements
Service levels (LLU/WLR/Ethernet)
Minimum Security Standards
PIA - Passive Infrastructure Access
VULA – Virtual unbundled line access
Plan & Build Performance Issues
Plan & Build – new SLA/SLG scheme

Rod Smith