Broadband rivals lash out at BT’s Openreach

THREE of Britain’s biggest internet providers have told the regulator that broadband customers are suffering outages due to poor service from BT’s infrastructure arm.

Vodafone, Sky and TalkTalk – which use Openreach’s network – have written to the chief executive of telecoms watchdog Ofcom claiming that increasing numbers of customers are suffering faults.

In the letter to Dame Melanie Dawes, which has also been sent to Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden, they claim that almost 6 per cent of customers who buy an Openreachbased broadband service experience a fault in the first month. This is a rise of almost a fifth from December 2019 to November 2020.

They also claim that one in 15 customers who had a problem repaired experienced a further fault within a month of the repair.

The trio are concerned that Openreach’s push to roll out full-fibre broadband across the country may leave customers on older, copper wire-based services behind, experiencing more outages and worsening service at a higher cost.

The broadband providers want Ofcom to set new standards on service quality for Openreach. Ofcom said it would soon set out regulations for Openreach’s repair and installation times.

Openreach director Olly Kunc said: ‘With demand for broadband doubling, we’ve been open with our partners about the challenges – like having to temporarily pause home visits to keep customers and engineers safe – so it’s disappointing to see these selective figures.’

Vodafone, Sky and TalkTalk all declined to comment.