WTF can you do about Openreach being apparently incompetent

[MissChief]

Sky has a whole department, with around forty members of staff dealing with failed and delayed orders. Sky could easily have simply turned round and said 'Sorry, we don't install lines, you'll need to go to BT (or another reseller) to get your line installed.' They didn't, but now are at the mercy of Openreach. They never appear to be in a hurry to do anything, nothing is a priority to them and it's one of Sky's (and other companies) biggest annoyances. They even went so far as to request OFCOM open a competition enquiry into Openreach's market position and have consistently asked that Openreach be completely divested from BT themselves.

BT customers have the same issues but while BT remain the largest ISP by customer numbers it's not in their interests to do anything that encourages or benefits their main competitors. That's why I also believe Openreach should be split from BT completely.

 

[Caged]

There are definitely problems with Openreach, but let's not pretend Sky's attacks are anything other than an attempt to hobble a competitor in the TV sports market. They're not some altruistic company wanting to make the Internet better for people.

None of the providers that actually put their own network into the ground as opposed to lobbying for someone else to do it for them seem to care about who legally owns Openreach, because they know it changes nothing about the economics of building networks. They're also quite keen to avoid a situation where they sink a lot of capital into a build, and are then made to wholesale it for a regulated price.

There's nothing preventing Sky from building their own network, other than the fact they don't want to do it. They gave up on their FTTP rollout in York.

Edit: Honestly they are by far the best supplier I have to deal with in this area. Though with the caveat that all telecoms companies are bad.

 

[sg0]

Do you really think Sky would use tactics to hang onto a single customer?

A connection like this that doesn't go smoothly will just be an additional unwanted cost to them on a low margin product.

Single customer? What gives you the idea that this situation is unique? Ispreview, thinkbroad and Openreach put the figure Of around 2200 FTTC cabinets are full so even if we are very conservative and estimate 5 local households per full cabinet are affected then that’s 10400 potential households that Sky can sell their products to.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.p...o-capacity-fttc-fibre-broadband-cabinets.html

This article does not talk about SKY, it’s just for reference for full fttc cabinets in the UK

Sky don’t want just sell you just broadband. The broadband is just to get there foot in the door. The money is in the other products like now tv, satellite channels and other subscriptions. Remember the the time when it was just ADSL back in 2006? Carphone warehouse (talktalk) were giving away free broadband with other offers and where extremely successful in signing up new customers.

Sky has a whole department, with around forty members of staff dealing with failed and delayed orders. Sky could easily have simply turned round and said 'Sorry, we don't install lines, you'll need to go to BT (or another reseller) to get your line installed.' They didn't, but now are at the mercy of Openreach. They never appear to be in a hurry to do anything, nothing is a priority to them and it's one of Sky's (and other companies) biggest annoyances. They even went so far as to request OFCOM open a competition enquiry into Openreach's market position and have consistently asked that Openreach be completely divested from BT themselves.

BT customers have the same issues but while BT remain the largest ISP by customer numbers it's not in their interests to do anything that encourages or benefits their main competitors. That's why I also believe Openreach should be split from BT completely.

I agree, I don’t thinks there is anything wrong with SKY taking on these types of orders as long as they are transparent and honest about the customers situation. If they have identified an untapped customer base and are successful in getting these guys connected it’s all good. The OP is a big boy I’m sure he can decide what’s best for him.

 

[MissChief]

I agree, I don’t thinks there is anything wrong with SKY taking on these types of orders as long as they are transparent and honest about the customers situation. If they have identified an untapped customer base and are successful in getting these guys connected it’s all good. The OP is a big boy I’m sure he can decide what’s best for him.

Often Sky are completely unaware of any issues or delays until openreach come back to them, usually a few days before activation advising there's a delay. It's not even unique to new build properties but often the developers stretch the truth a little. 'There's your master socket so your broadband and phone line are ready to go' when in fact there may be a socket, and it may even be wired up underground but from the edge of the estate to the exchange? Not until Openreach start receiving orders usually.

 

[Caged]

House building stuff is really tricky because it's often very difficult for local authorities to accept that there might be a time period where the place needs an address (to appear on the Openreach database), but that there's no way that council tax should be payable on it (because it isn't finished yet).

This leads to weird situations where the developer only gets addresses allocated on the day of a person completing, so it takes weeks before the house even exists on paper.

They could work with Openreach I guess and supply everybody with the NAD keys of their properties, but a) no developers care that much, b) very few ISPs are capable of accepting an order against a key.