Ofcom plans instant payback for broadband woes

[pc-guy]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39377492

This would certainly make the ISPs perform. But I think what's missing from these measures are the ability for customers to take the ISP to ombudsman or to small court with automatic verdicts. I can see some ISP just don't pay and there is nothing the customer can do other than write to Ofcom. Ofcom is generally slow to act and can take months by which time for a critical service such as internet, it is far too late for the customer

 

[MonsterMoshi]

This is well overdue

It strikes me how terrible Openreach are at maintaining equipment compared to other utility providers.
As an example, Western Power noted our some local equipment needed some preventative maintenance, kept us well informed, installed a generator to provide power which kept down time to approx 30 minutes over 7 days of work.
I pray for the day we see Openreach cutting back trees to protect overhead cabling or providing 4G modems when your broadband goes down.

 

[Semple]

• £6 for each calendar day of delay at the start of a new service, including the missed start date.

I think this will certainly give peace of mind to those having services installed and then worrying about whether an engineer will turn up or not.

or providing 4G modems when your broadband goes down.

I don't understand why they can't do this anyway, (i'm going on the assumption that BT and openreach are still part of the same company). BT has the 4G infrastructure, they should effectively install them in their vans, so when parked in a residential area and the lines need to go down, customers can connect to their vans 4G hotspot.

 

[Cuchulain]

I don't understand why they can't do this anyway, (i'm going on the assumption that BT and openreach are still part of the same company). BT has the 4G infrastructure, they should effectively install them in their vans, so when parked in a residential area and the lines need to go down, customers can connect to their vans 4G hotspot.

I don't think that's even remotely viable, how would they connect to the hotspot? They'd need to be at least in wifi/bluetooth range and unless they ran countless connections to the mobile network it would end up being saturated almost instantly.

 

[pc-guy]

£10/day for outage is great. My last bout with Plusnet was exactly 14 days that would be my entire year of line rental paid in penalties. I think that is a really good incentive.

However I do think there maybe a bit of a problem of fining ISP when it is the supplier that is at fault such as Openreach...

but I am sure there will be some industrial agreement whereby if the ISP is fined due to supplier fault then the supplier is to pickup the bill retrospectively.

 

[pc-guy]

I don't think that's even remotely viable, how would they connect to the hotspot? They'd need to be at least in wifi/bluetooth range and unless they ran countless connections to the mobile network it would end up being saturated almost instantly.

actually BT operate a massive WIFI network. While my internet was down I was offered money to buy access to BT's wifi network. Although my connection was patchy and it only allowed 2 devices to access at any given time, it is better than nothing.

So it is perfectly viable and ISP can technically offer money to customers to buy any existing Wifi hotspot logins regardless if it is BT/Virgin/EE/O2 etc

 

[Semple]

I don't think that's even remotely viable, how would they connect to the hotspot? They'd need to be at least in wifi/bluetooth range and unless they ran countless connections to the mobile network it would end up being saturated almost instantly.

Having a rethink you're right, this would only be beneficial to people who are likely within 100ft of the exchange box, as that's the most likely place the van would park. My parents are several miles from their nearest exchange, so would have no chance.

Most people have the ability and allowance to at least do some tethering for a short while. It's certainly what ive done in the past when having no internet.

actually BT operate a massive WIFI network. While my internet was down I was offered money to buy access to BT's wifi network. Although my connection was patchy and it only allowed 2 devices to access at any given time, it is better than nothing.

So it is perfectly viable and ISP can technically offer money to customers to buy any existing Wifi hotspot logins regardless if it is BT/Virgin/EE/O2 etc

The problem with this is that it would require BT's link to stay up. If they have to disconnect internet to the entire street, then BT's wifi coverage also goes with it.

 

[APM]

About time too.

 

[pc-guy]

The problem with this is that it would require BT's link to stay up. If they have to disconnect internet to the entire street, then BT's wifi coverage also goes with it.

doesn't have to be BT links, can be off fast LTE networks. anyway there are ways they can implement this. its all down to incentives. There is no carrots for ISP to behave nice, so you have beat them with sticks.

 

[APM]

All depends how they define a loss of service and what confirmation is acceptable for that to be recognised.

 

[Caged]

On the face of it it's not really something that you can argue against - providing that it's fair on all parties. E.g. I'm not sure that Openreach should necessarily be compensating ISPs if someone shoves their car into a fibre cabinet unless that consequential loss can also be recovered from the insurer of the driver. Clear marketing is needed to ensure people who genuinely have a requirement for reliable connectivity are covered by products with failover, since compensation will likely be capped at your monthly spend, and there's already enough people complaining about losing thousands of pounds a week when their cheap ADSL dies without giving people the wrong idea that this has improved the underlying service.

 

[TheVoice]

actually BT operate a massive WIFI network. While my internet was down I was offered money to buy access to BT's wifi network. Although my connection was patchy and it only allowed 2 devices to access at any given time, it is better than nothing.

So it is perfectly viable and ISP can technically offer money to customers to buy any existing Wifi hotspot logins regardless if it is BT/Virgin/EE/O2 etc

That doesn't answer his question. To connect to a 4G hotspot in a BT/Openreach van, you'd need to be in range of that van. Realistically, it'd only ever be of use to a handful of people at any one time.

£10 a day compensation for having no service is nice, but also seems a bit disproportionate considering how cheap home broadband services are these days.

 

[APM]

I was waiting for years for virgin to fix my connection and it didn't happen.

If I'd had something like this to fall back on and a route for a complaints process then maybe they would have acted.

 

[pc-guy]

I was waiting for years for virgin to fix my connection and it didn't happen.

If I'd had something like this to fall back on and a route for a complaints process then maybe they would have acted.

indeed. virgin in my opinion is the worst ISP as they have no effective competition on their network. and unfortunately sometimes you are at their mercy as some areas will have only virgin as viable internet access or you have to be contempt with 1-4mbps slow ADSL

 

[APM]

Yes,it's a little too late for me but good in a way as I've been on a faultless BT network for a few weeks now.

 

[bledd]

I think this will drive prices up for all customers :/

 

[varkanoid]

So OFCOM today have fined BT £42 million for not paying out compensation charges to Virgin etc for Openreach service failures and on top have demanded they pay the £300 million outstanding compensation payout to Virgin etc. This could be even worse and invite more price increases for BT customers.

Although it makes me think who gets that £42 million ?

 

[Immsy]

The OFCOM rep answered that on BBC Radio 4 - the treasury.