Who knew that BT Openreach – the part of BT responsible for fault finding, repairs and infrastructural maintenance – had successfully applied to Ofcom to have areas like rural Argyll classed as offering conditions that are ‘beyond their control’?
This means bad weather; and an official classification of an area as being beyond BT’s control means that the company is not required to honour their contract to sustain a service.
Ofcom agreed to the BT Openreach request. The Scottish Government will have had to be party to this agreement in respect of rural areas in Scotland being classified in this way – and with the loss of service residents are consequently simply left to bear.
The continuing state of affairs in Glendaruel
The impact of agreeing to this classification is that:
- some residents of Glendaruel in Cowal have had no phone service since early August 2012
- residents at the northern end of the glen – 70% of the its population – had an eleven day phone service outage from 3rd September 2012
- some residents have had no phone service at all since 3rd September 2012
This loss of phone service also, of course, wipes out broadband services so these residents lose their entire communications capacity - and there is now no pressure on BT to get the service restored.
Glendaruel has not experienced any particularly awful weather over the period affected.
The real problem is that Glendaruel has a telephone line network that is over 40 years old, without reinvestment, and is very long – 13.8km.
One engineer complained to the resident who has had no service since 3rd September that ‘this place has cost BT £20,000′. That, of course, is buttons against what should have been spent on bringing the infrastructure up to capability.
BT claim:
- they need permission to dig
- they need planning permission
- they have a team out every day
However they are simply not getting the team out to walk the 13.8km to source and fix the fault – or faults.
The length of this line system leaves the diagnostic equipment at the exchange incapable of registering faults at that distance so faults at homes and businesses at the far end of the line require a team to walk the line as the only way to locate the faults. This is not being done.
A sympathetic engineer has explained the problem to one badly hit resident, with two businesses to run and no communications since early September. In this case the land line failure is aggravated by the mobile phone blackspots that are also a feature of Glendaruel.
The engineer’s explanation for what perpetually goes wrong in Glendaruel is that the line is so old and runs for so long (13.8km) from the exchange that at the junctions along the way the connectors fill up with water. Residents then get awful crackling on the line and cannot hear callers on the line.
They report a fault. The length of the line means that the exchange equipment cannot detect faults at the far end of the system. So they get told that there is no fault and that if they want to pursue the matter they must pay for an engineer to come out. They book an engineer who tests the inhouse equipment [usually fault-free] and then goes and empties the water out of the broken connector, replacing whatever may make it water tight.
This ‘patch-up’ approach has has been going in Glendaruel for well over a decade.
Moreover, one currently affected household reports from its on-line bill that they are not only still paying line rental fees to BT, but they are also, inexplicably, paying for calls they cannot make. The only way they can account for this is that engineer ‘test’ calls are somehow being charged to their line.
The associated costs
This continuing situation means that the resident with two business to run has had to buy a least four phones a year, to replace those destroyed by the shorting line.
They used to have a fax but decided they could not afford to replace it each time it also blew because even the normal phone line signal in Glendaruel was so poor the Fax often could not send.
The same household also lost a desk top computer.
These outage-associated equipment failures are all due to surges on the line, which BT say is not possible – although their engineers, who actually know, say otherwise.
Trying to get leverage on the situation
The household whose businesses as well as personal lives have been affected by this since early September first spent four frustrating weeks talking to BT call centres in India – whose operatives are simply reading from call sheets. This led to engineers booked, turning up but no restoration of service.
They now have contact details for a department in England, whose staff have told them that they cannot be counted as a ‘priority’ because their home area, Glendaruel, is officially ‘beyond our control’.
The big question
So when exactly did this ‘deal’ get made between BR and Ofcom, with the consent of the Scottish Government – and with what customer consultation?
Who is defending these victims of corporate and governmental irresponsibility?
In Glendaruel there is no immediate prospect, no ETA, of any resolution to their unable service.
What on earth was the Scottish Government thinking of in agreeing to this Ofcom classification.
And who is going to get the situation in Glendaruel sorted out? We are contacting BT Openreach to explore the current narrative.
Note: We would be interested to see comments from readers on relevant experiences of BT, particularly but not exclusively from those in rural areas of Argyll and in the wider Scotland.
I wonder if BBC TV’s Watchdog would be interested? If the Scottish Government is complicit in this decision, perhaps Chairman Salmond is showing his true colours.
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“The real problem is that Glendaruel has a telephone line network that is over 40 years old, without reinvestment, and is very long – 13.8km.” This time span covers a few governments, this problem happens through out our rural areas in the UK. If telecommunication companies like Vodafone paid their taxes ( http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/blog/press-release-uk-uncut-demand-that-vodafone-pay-tax-in-the-uk )then a percentage could be reinvested into a national communication network. If you and I did not pay our taxes we would go to jail, why do all UK based governments let the multi nationals get away with non payment of taxes.
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Hear! hear !…
I have a question…however dim it may seem.
Tiree has a Microwave link over a similar distance with the mainland. Why not install the same ?
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Tiree’s microwave link is, I understand it, horrendously expensive (Tiree broadband themselves quote an average installation cost of £500). Judging from the comments from those who use the service, it’s far from reliable either. If I had to take a guess, I’d say the capital cost of such a microwave link would be far higher than a proper upgrade of the land line system, and the latter is likely to be more reliable. The other issue is line of sight – microwaves cannot travel far through solid matter and tend not to diffract around objects readily. I don’t know Glendaurel at all but unless there is good line of sight then microwaves are unlikely to be effective.
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Tiree Broadband charge £500 to install broadband in parts of the island where the conventional telephone line broadband doesn’t reach – i.e. too far from the exchange. That surely has nothing to do with BT’s microwave link to the island. After all, don’t all the islands have microwave telephone links? Coll, Mull, Islay, Jura, Gigha?
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For John Sinclair: Absolutely.
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It doesn’t do anything to help the broader problem, but some extension leads come with surge protection not only for the power sockets but for the phone line as well. They cost no more than £10 or so and would at least avoid further damage to phones and computers.
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A ridiculous state of affairs; how does this square with the commitment to give everyone access via fibre optic? How will the knowledge economy flourish if there is limited access?
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I wonder if BT has become complacent through the understandable reluctance of their customers to face up to them and threaten to withold payment for bad service – for fear of being cut off?
Surely we should be able to rely on OfCom to put the squeeze on BT, but if they’re acquiescing in an ‘Openreach’ wheeze to designate some rural areas ‘beyond their control’ it needs someone with more clout than a supine ‘regulator’.
For starters, how about our government insisting that OfCom publish a map of Scotland showing these areas beyond the reach of ‘Openreach’?
The voters can then prod the relevant MSPs into asking the bosses of BT and Openreach when were they granted the right to treat some of their customers as expendable?
Glendaruel seems to be sharing with the Northwest Frontier of Pakistan the dubious honour of being officially considered ‘beyond the pale’, but as yet the natives haven’t got so rebellious that anyone is flying pilotless drones up the glen to take out the revolting peasants with guided missiles.
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Map … showing “areas beyond control”.
Yes please.
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How does this affect those in rural Argyll who have and pay for telecare services? Still waiting for compensation for a BT fault (not weather-related) back in February!!
Was Argyll & Bute Council involved in discussions? What does the Council intend doing about it? What do our MP and MSPs think?
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It would be good to have accurate information here about the fault you suffered in February and how long it lasted.
We understand from some residents in Glendaruel that they caught BT at confirming online that a fault was fixed as soon as an engineer went out to site – even though, in this complex system failing, fixing one fault did not restore the service.
This move of reporting situation’s resolved where they were not, is BT’s way of avoiding compensation payments which are linked to fault duration.
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Appalling state of affairs. Seems that the entirety of Rural Argyll is beyond the pale.
How can this be justifiable?
How can isolated communities attract new folk in if they can’t even guarantee security of communication?
One of the first questions people ask when considering moving to a new area is what is the broadband like?
If communities across Argyll can’t even say that the telephones are dependable where does that leave us? Unable to attract people in, unable to grow communities, unable to ensure institutions like rural schools are kept open.
Come on BT get your act together!
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After wasting a bit of time on BT whose phone system is a labyrinth leading to a black hole, I called Ofcom. They say they are not aware of an agreement and suggest the affected parties go through the BT complaint procedure and then appeal to the Ombudsman.
Everyone I spoke to agreed that the exceptions are where there’s an extraordinary circumstance like storm, flood, ice or fire and none had heard of an entire region being “beyond control”. That doesn’t mean it’s not happening. It just means no-one working for BT actually knows about it, including their head office apparently.
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We are checking with our sources and will report back on renewed confirmation in full – but the immediate and obvious logic is that, if there were NOT to be an agreement relieving BT of their contractual obligations, why have they not been compelled to restore the Glendaruel service as they would then be obliged to do?
It also has to be said that Ofcom’s care for customer service is clearly not a priority. Referring customers – already without a phone service for five weeks – back to what you yourself have experienced as a ‘black hole’ is hardly conducive to conflict resolution in the interests of the paying victim.
It is oddly remarkable that in your own comments, there is no interest whatsoever in customers who have indubitably been denied a service for a substantial time and for which they continue to pay.
In contrast you appear more exercised to act as an apologist for BT and Ofcom and, by extension, for the Scottish Government – all of whom can defend themselves, legitimately or not, where the disabled residents of Glendaruel can not.
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Ofcom did suggest getting that assertion in writing as situations often change when evidence is required.
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And that obviously cuts both ways.
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Newsroom, I failed to read your post completely as I was sneaking a look on the phone during an appointment. My post was short because I spent rather too long on the phone earlier and feared I’d be late. Equally my later comment was rushed for similar reasons. In neither case did I express any apology for anyone.
My own village endured years of BT handling complaints badly as their call centre is just not geared up for faults originating with the exchange and it’s almost impossible to get them to stop telling you to reboot your computer or router and muck about with cables. Only when we discovered we were each labouring with the same problem did we get together and escalate the complaint via the then MSP, Jim Mather. Subsequent complaints, if not resolved quickly, are now sent via our current MSP.
I am utterly clear that BT is a shambles and an excellent example of limbs being severed from the brain. Equally Ofcom has failed to see this dismembered organisation for what it is. At the time of our problems Jim Mather was clear that the Scottish Government had provided funding for this infrastructure and this was why he easily held them to account. I have no up to date details on the current situation because that campaign is in the safe hands of Deirdre Henderson and I trust absolutely that she would call for my assistance if I could be of help. My efforts are aimed elsewhere for the moment.
As for the customers,anyone in my village would understand and empathise. I cannot think why you’d imagine I’d apologise for the organisations who are failing to solve these problems and consigning rural Scotland to failure in the process. What was your thinking?
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I remember some years ago BT lost the cable into Kinlochleven after a thunderstorm. They put a temporary microwave link into Kinlochleven from somewhere up around Ballachulish and had the temporary link site manned 24/7.
At least BT attempt to provide a service in Argyll, I don’t see Virgin, Sky or any of the other telecoms companies out there running cables to the area and to subscribers houses.
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Surely the point is that where BT have historically provided service to customers, they should continue to do so – and don’t other telecoms providers pay for extensive use of BT infrastructure rather than install their own?
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I suspect that other broadband and telephone providers using BT subscriber lines pay a flat rate. I somehow can’t imagine them paying a higher rate for someone on a remote rural exchange and living many miles from the exchange. They probably pay the same as what they do for someone living on a prewired estate in a big city. If they had to pay a higher rate they would either pass that cost on to their customer or refuse customers on more expensive lines.
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It is normal for any company to have clauses in contracts to cover Acts of God, extreme conditions etc etc.
I used to deal with BT at work when we had faults and got far better service from them than from the other telecom companies that my employer started using presumably because they were cheaper, one was just incompetent.
BT would always throw lots of resources at serious faults though like most other organisations they have got more and more centralised.
I went out to one fault and was told that their exchange down in the village had been hit by lightning and they could not get in because their electronic door lock system had failed and they could not override because the circuits to the exchange had failed!
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No one is complaining about the BT engineers who are pretty universally respected. This is consistent with your own experience.
BT’s problems do, as you say, appear to have arisen from privatisation and specific corporate development.
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Well, we had an on-going fault last year , ongoing, basically every time it rains, th line goes down, not heavy, not storm, just rain and our phone comes back on when the line ‘dry’s out’ BT faults use this phrase ‘An engineer has been allocated to resolve your fault it is no longer possible to make any changes’ What this means, via BT head office is that Offcom have designated area’s were open reach do not have to adhere to their contact, because of conditions (i.e weather – regardless of how big or how high). This was an agreement that was given which means rural customers cannot be ‘prioritised’. Its there BT tell you its there, so Off Com claiming they dont know it there is more smoke screen. The point is surely regardless of whom decides to ring Offcom or BT or not, on some-one’s behalf, or not (I rang BT not Offcom and this was the info I was given as we had no phone line), is that those of us who have suffered, are suffering because large companies, spin a line and say anything to avoid doing the proper work needed to keep rural communities operating in the real 21st C, not as a third world country, with 3rd world capabilities and they are getting away with it. To be sold a line is too easy here and we are vulnerable, end of! We love living in Argyll, though isn’t it time to pull together, and call for modern services for all!
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I dealt with BT at work long after privatisation and still found competitors much worse to deal with than BT. As you say BT staff were always very helpful (unlike other companies – pay peanuts, get monkeys?)
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We too have an intermittent fault in hot sunny weather. Thankfully not as often as the ‘waiting for the line to dry out’ fault – we’ve had that in the past as well. The faults have got harder to resolve in recent years due to the elderly infrastructure and also changes to the fault reporting / resolving procedure. Now each call out is given a one hour time slot for fixing. If the engineer cannot resolve the fault i.e. By walking the 6 miles of line to do a visual inspection, within this time, they have to go away again. The fault is then logged as ‘open’, but one has to go through all the agonising stages of fault reporting phone calls again to get a repeat visit from the engineer. When the engineer comes back, the line dries out / sun goes away and the fault cannot be traced. Its all incredibly frustrating and must also be for the engineers – no complaints about them.
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Britain’s most remote broadband user?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19924028
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What terrible journalism; whatever is being transmitted between Skye and Knoydart, it definitely isn’t wifi.
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Why exactly do you find fault with this?
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It’s not very accurate. Is accuracy too much to expect from journalists?
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What’s not accurate about it?
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Lucky you lot talking about wifi – what about a basic ‘phone call’! Lines are still out in Glendaruel, was over there this morning and it is gloriously sunny, cold, but no wind or rain…. No Phones!!!
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We have a similar situation on Gometra. The engineers do a fantastic job trying to keep our landlines working in very difficult circumstances, but the landlines are unreliable, sometimes working very well with no problems but sometimes with with outages of weeks or months, muffling of voices, loud crackling sounds, repeated silences during calls, etc. They are too poor quality to carry dial up or broadband internet or fax. We do not have mobile reception in our homes. In the past my family has been cut off from any ability to call the offshore world including emergency services for weeks at a time. The engineers are our saviours in keeping any service going at all, but it would be helpful if they had more backup from the Government and BT.
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The aerial cable serving Glendaruel was badly damaged on several parts of the route by lightning from a previous storm. The three lines affected were restored to service earlier this week and we’d like to apologise for the time it’s taken to carry out the repair.
The delay was due to the fact that we had no means of providing temporary service and to restore service we had to replace more than a kilometre of overhead cable.
Lightning damages the insulation on the cable and it can be many weeks later before water penetrates the cable leading to corrosion.
We have visited two of the homes to complete final testing on the lines and the local Openreach operations manager has given them his mobile phone number so they can quickly raise a fault should problems occur in the future. One of the homes was unoccupied but the line to it is now testing okay.
Ofcom permit Openreach, like many other service providers, to declare MBORC (Matters Beyond Our Reasonable Control) when normal repair times can’t be met because of external circumstances causing high numbers of faults over a wide area.
This can be for a variety of reasons including third party cable cutting, flooding, heavy snow, fire and other acts of nature. When the level of faults falls and normal repair times are resumed, MBORC is withdrawn.
Contrary to your online story, the Scottish Government play no part in this temporary procedure.
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“Lightning damages the insulation on the cable and it can be many weeks later before water penetrates the cable leading to corrosion.”
Well that’s very interesting, to insulate is to prevent the passage of electricity (that’s what lightning is) so how can lightning damage it? Most modern cables have an insulating sheath on the outside and each individual conductor inside the cable is also insulated backed up with petroleum jelly to prevent the ingress and spread of moisture should the outer sheath leak. Has Mr Reid or his non engineering accademic statitician graduate advisor not heard of Proximity strikes which give rise to induced surges in BT/OR’s network.Once a lightning surge is induced it can cause havoc.This induced surge wants to go to ground, travelling along the metal conductors not the “plastic insulation” Each leg of a telephone line is classed as “earthed” and all exchanges have good low resistance earths. Over the years BT etc. have developed lightning protection devices for the exchanges with some success but not total. The other route for the surge seeking ground is towards the customer where BT/OR should have provided protection where defined as needed. Most customers equipment now a days will be mains fired which will involve earthing as will protection devices on site. Where does the surge want to go,, earth! Along these cable routes damage to the cable sheath caused by hook, tree, suspension wire rubs can expose bare conductors 50% earthing, direct hit, as the surge travels interaction between all the parameters concerned can melt insulation and conductors.
MBORC when declared is a means for BT/OR to avoid paying
proper timescale compensation. How many of you out there have been or know someone who has been charged lots of money for damage to their internal installation due to lightning causing surges in mains power damaging sensitive electronics. Now, regardless of how the surge was delivered, by mains, post, carrier pigeon or the most likely telephone line, surely as far as the customer is concerned it’s aMatter Beyond Their Reasonable control and they should not be charged just like, at the whim of BT/OR compesantion is denied? The extent of the network in question is so vast that wherever lightning goes to ground you can be sure there is part of the network close by.
If? as Mr Reid wrongly claims the faults occurred several weeks after the lightning damage surely the MBORC was over. These, it would seem were three faults in a remote rural area. What stopped temp.svce? Through out Argyll and the islands there must 100′s of kilometres of what is known as “self burying cable” , why not use that. I don’t suspect there would be that many road crossings. Can they, in the light of this justify charges for lightning damage whilst withholding compensation payments?
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I’m not an expert on telephone cables, but lightning is many times higher voltage than the power carried in electricity supply cables, let alone telephone cables. This means that it can overcome resistance far more readily. Consequently an insulator that may be more than adequate to prevent electrocution while handling a cable will do nothing to insulate against a lightning strike. Wood is an insulator but that does nothing to prevent lightning damaging trees. There’s a reason buildings are protected by lightning conductors rather than attempting to insulate the building.
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Hi…Trees contain water…one of the reasons they explode or split. They are also a carbon lifeform…carbon is a conductor.
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Graphite is a conductor. Carbon compounds, including the carbohydrates that make up living organisms, are generally not. Except, as I say, for very high voltages. Additionally, part of the reason trees tend to explode is precisely because they are not good conductors – large resistance tends to result in increased temperatures and heat results in expansion and combustion.
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” There’s a reason buildings are protected by lightning conductors rather than attempting to insulate the building.”
and that reason is?…always keen to learn, me. It’s the sap in wood that allows the flow of electricity, and on that note I would advise you to stay inside during next thunderstorm. What are your views on the more important fact that people are being charged for MBORC’s? I know very little about ferrys or tunnels so I don’t waste my time and that of others by posting on these subjects.
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Reply to Flaming June Advice given to us forty years ago when our phone kept going off in periods of drought (we did have them in the past) Where your phone line enters the house throw a bucket of water at it. If that doesnt work find the earth pole and throw a bucket of water over it. It never failed to work. If you dont know where your earth pole is ask the engineer. We still use this method to “repair our phone”
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An entertaining tale, and it clearly worked, but hardly appropriate in the 21st century and unlikely to work for a broadband router. BT made £1.5bn last year, so I think they can afford to run a line that works.
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Reading the BT press office statement, it sounds as if what they really need is:
A – an effective way to check for the sort of damage to cable insulation that might lead to water penetration and corrosion, and
B – a policy of replacing any such cable a.s.a.p.
The press office statement seems reasonable to me, but so does the notion that a really large company – with resources and profits to match – should be able to crack this one.
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Indeed; the 1 hour window to fix may be appropriate in an urban area, but manifestly isn’t in rural Scotland. Surely Openreach would save money from an engineer attending once until fixed, rather than a half dozen attendances which solve little other than ticking a box?
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We have received the email below from a badly affected resident of Glendaruel, Sadie Dixon Spain.
Given the informative chain of comments, it seemed right to place this communication here.
She wishes to thank Alan Reid MP and Michael Russell MSP, both of whom have worked to get this matter resolved.
She also wishes to thank Marie Claire Docherty, who works in Mr Russell’s constituency office, wh has been very helpful and who is the recipient of an email from BT – which is attached to the foot of Sadie Dixon Spain’s letter and which has specific passages inserted by her as annotations, as explained in her own email to us.
Email from Sadie Dixon Spain
‘I am replying by e-mail to you regarding BT’s comments published on ForArgyll today, to put the record straight.
‘Firstly I want to thank Mr Livingston and his Board and Mr Nicholls (of BT), who have worked hard and enabled us to get our phone service back. To date I have had good correspondance with them, Mr Nicholls was appointed to work with us and he has been excellent, through his efforts we are now after weeks of struggle in the loop, we understand what can be done and now for the last few days we have a phone, he is also sorting the issue of temporary repaire etc…and as far as I can tell negotiating through the quagmire that is BT Open Reach to try to get answers. Until this shocking piece of fiction came through today and was published on ForArgyll, I was feeling confident that all was going in the right direction.
‘I am utterly shocked by this e-mail from BT and whomever, has made this up and ‘fed’ it to Ms Humphries is frankly a disgrace. This type of un-factual rhetoric, designed to malign the ‘client’ and ‘community’ is shameful. Much better to say, ‘we have got round to fixing the lines and upgrade, it will take time’, but to tell what is in essence lies, and can be proven to be so, undermines all the hard work that individuals from BT have done for us todate. Even worse to go to press without even making contact with the customer and attempt to understanding what has been going on.
‘I am sending this to you, as a department of BT have chosen to make this public. I am also going to copy to their board, as I believe this is truly a disgraceful way to treat customers, it should be removed or corrected.
‘I have gone through the e-mail in detail and highlighted in bold my response to each point:
‘I am copying in all relevant parties.
‘I look forward to at the least a factual correction; I also look forward to a permanent fixed telephone line.
Many thanks
Sadie Dixon-Spain
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Sadie Dixon-Spain
Date: 26 October 2012 18:49
On 26 Oct 2012, at 18:34, wrote:
Dear Sadie & Bill
Please see the email below received from BT by way of an explanation towards recent faults.
From: louise.humphrey@bt.com [mailto:louise.humphrey@bt.com]
Sent: 26 October 2012 17:31
To: Docherty M (Marie-Claire)
Subject: FW: Glendaruel
Hello Marie-Claire
Just wanted to share this update with you re the Glendaruel, in response to the recent blog posted by one of the residents, hopefully this will give some insight into some of the recent repairs that have been undertaken to restore service. Please feel free to share with constituents as I believe our press officer Mitch will be posting it onto the Glendaruel website.
The aerial cable serving Glendaruel was badly damaged on several parts of the route by lightning from a previous storm. The three lines affected were restored to service earlier this week.
** No storm on or around the time out phone went down. It was rain, not big rain, just rain! (met office records will confirm). The lines are so old that the connectors are cracked and filling with water, so every time it rained we either had severe interference (on-going since 2003 and apparently an issue prior according to 2 previous owners), the issue just got worse and worse as BT ignored engineers advice to repair:
We lost phones in Dec of 2011, and at that point engineers advised they had recommended replacement of 9km of cable: To date this has not been done: Because of my contact with their board, they were forced to action, up till then they were claiming MBORC; They have now confirmed replacement of 6km and we are on a ‘temporary repair’ (via engineers)
The delay to the repair was due to the fact that we had no means of providing temporary service and to restore service we had to replace more than a kilometre of overhead cable.
**See above: For the first 3 weeks they kept trying to sign off the job as fixed: They then told us the delay was due to a series of ‘changing’ reasons: a) they needed permission to dig (what). b) They needed planning permission: c) the cable was so long it needed a ‘special order’ c) the job was so costly it needed special authorisation (that I can believe). The moved to fix our phones came within 24 hours of myself e-mailing their board who kindly created a rocket and appointed a very useful and helpful UK based gentleman to help us.
Lightning damages the insulation on the cable and it can be many weeks later before water penetrates the cable leading to corrosion.
**Possible, however our cable is decades old and age and lack of investment has caused failure, confirmed repeatedly by engineers who visited us and by the constant surges on the line: Since moving here, we have lost 1 computer, 3 airports, 1 fax and 14 digital hand sets: We have placed surge protectors where possible, but as the cable is so old, we cant entirely protect against it. This ‘fault’ is years old and a well documented issue: All they need to do is look at our records of reported faults alone: It is the same fault over and over again.
We have visited two of the homes to complete final testing on the lines and the local Openreach operations manager has given them his mobile phone number so they can quickly raise a fault should problems occur in the future. One of the homes was unoccupied but the line to it is now testing okay.
**Dunans and The Garden House are the last 2 residential houses on this line: Both are occupied, our neighbour was in, she saw the cars arrive, but she was not spoken to and can confirm. She was quite upset they did not go and speak to her. The last engineer to come, confirmed our repaire is only temporary, a ‘lash’ has been created to enable our phone: We are still waiting for confirmation of the repaire becoming permanent! Mr Scott Wallace did indeed visit our house on the 22nd Oct and gave his mobile number, but we have not had any contact prior to that.
Ofcom permit Openreach, like many other service providers, to declare MBORC (Matters Beyond Our Reasonable Control) when normal repair times can’t be met because of external circumstances causing high numbers of faults over a wide area.
**True – and the only reason for the Glen going down is because of the age of line: This fault was waiting to happen and has been getting worse for years with engineers papering over the cracks, to hide behind the weather is wrong.
This can be for a variety of reasons including third party cable cutting, flooding, heavy snow, fire and other acts of nature. When the level of faults falls and normal repair times are resumed, MBORC is withdrawn.
**Didn’t apply in first place, lack of investment over decades was the reason:
Contrary to your online story, the Scottish Government play no part in this temporary procedure.
**Glad to hear it: I have always had confidence in the Scot Govt, so let us hope the Govt will ensure rural communities and customers are treated fairly and with respect, I am only sorry that those who have worked hard for us and really taken the matter seriously are being let down by these insulting claims:
Kind regards
Louise
Louise Humphrey
Head of Scottish Affairs – BT Scotland
Email: louise.humphrey@bt.com
Tel : 0131 448 3977
Mobile: 07918 039465
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from my attempt to question the reply from BT press office and the above, BT lied at every turn?? An engineering company run my number crunchers and the perpetuation of buffoonery brigade Do you know that BT employ spotters at ++£25k per annum to check that charges are levied at every chance and at one time (not sure if still in place but does enhance score on annual appraisments)rewards were granted to those raising most charges? They literally drool at the prospect of flooding, they fitted most sockets on skirting boards, closest to first flooding levels but still charge for repairs. Nobody has yet commented on their not paying comp. MBORC but still charging customers for MB their RC??
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