“This is a major achievement for the LLUOs, BT/Openreach, Ofcom and the OTA Team. The OTA set a target for the end of 2006 of a million lines unbundled; achieving this will be a source of great satisfaction. I want to thank my executives Clive Fedida and Jim Reilly for their leadership, continuous focus and hard work in making the OTA Scheme and LLU successful.”
Black went on to add, “I reported last month that a number of Quality of Service measures were causing severe concern. For example the Right First Time delivery of Business As Usual (BAU) unbundled lines was 78% (currently 81%) against a target of 98%.
As I was sceptical following previous assurances that had not come to fruition, I requested a Service Improvement Paper & Plan from Openreach that would set out all the improvement and ongoing stability plans for LLU and that it should cover Plan & Build; Backhaul Delivery; BAU Unbundled Loop Delivery; EMP, and Assurance (Repair) Performance.
A Service Improvement Paper & Plan has been presented that the OTA believes is credible; that Steve Robertson, CEO of Openreach is confident will address the majority of outstanding Quality of Service issues in reasonably short timescales; and that the OTA are prepared to endorse.
The Plan has short term goals in the context of longer term improvement targets. Our main concern is the longer term sustainability and continuous improvement programmes that will be required to ensure the improved performance will be embedded in ‘The Way Openreach Do Business’. The longer term plans do not yet define, in some cases, when Quality will be restored to the Industry Agreed quality levels.
However we do think this plan will address a number of key deficiencies and set Openreach on an improvement curve that, if sustained, will improve operating quality substantially. We will be monitoring the performance of the Plan very closely; we have noticed green shoots of improvement in the OTA RFT KPI (Office of the Telecommunications Adjudicator, Right First Time Key Performance Indicators) over last two weeks."