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Covid-19

Carrier Updates 25-03

BT Openreach (who help us supply internet connectivity services) have advised that provision and repair of their services are now on a “best endeavours” basis only across the UK and will impact all our connectivity products: DSL, Ethernet, FTTC, FTTP, FIBRE, PSTN, ISDN2, ISDN30, LLU MPF and SMPF

Priority restoration of services will only take place for organisations deemed “critical”, including NHS, pharmacies, utilities etc (full list below)

Ongoing repairs will continue for all, but with priority given to critical organisations

All newly-appointed provisioning will be pushed back to Monday 1st June 2020 at the earliest

Openreach/BT have declared that the current situation they and we are all facing is a matter beyond their control in light of COVID-19.

As such, appointments for provision and repair are on a best endeavours basis only, this covers everyone nationwide and will impact the following products that we provide: DSL, Ethernet, FTTC, FTTP, FIBRE, PSTN, ISDN2, ISDN30, LLU MPF and SMPF, including adjustment of orders.

Fault Repair

During this time, priority and restoration of services will take place for critical functions only, such as NHS, pharmacies, utilities, emergency services, retail and wholesale food distribution outlets and financial services.

Ongoing repairs to the BT/Openreach infrastructure will continue, but with high priority focus being on the above-mentioned critical core services ahead of all others. We appreciate your patience during these times, and we’re sure you understand that the protection and restoration of core services is paramount to sustaining core infrastructure services.

Openreach have advised on Fault repair with immediate effect: 

To support efforts to reduce human contact and promote social distancing, all installation activities that require access to a customer’s premises are now suspended until after 1st June 2020. Openreach will attempt to complete as much of the inflight orders from outside of the premises as possible, but if internal work is required, these will be rebooked post 1st June 2020. Any orders that do not require on premise installation will proceed as normal, but we appreciate these cases are limited.
 
The exception to these rules are those businesses identified as critical national infrastructure. This includes; NHS, pharmacies, utilities, emergency services, retail and wholesale food distribution outlets, and financial services businesses. On site installation work will be permitted for these businesses but we will have to justify the criticality of the service to Openreach.

Porting of Numbers

During this time, the ability to port and move numbers between all core telecoms suppliers has also been affected, with BT/Openreach now declaring the following porting requests that are in flight will be affected with immediate effect. Those porting services affected are:

Ports that are Multi Line (a number of sequential numbers 01234 000000 – 01234 000100 or broken number ranges) as these have to be manually triggered. These port requests will be postponed until further notice and will not be ported to your new supplier. They will remain operational until they can be processed within a normal timeframe.

Single Line ports (i.e. 01234 567890) are still available but may be delayed beyond a previously agreed date

Any new import requests for porting where BT is the range holder will not be accepted until further notice

New Orders

All new orders received with immediate effect that require BT or Openreach infrastructure (the majority) are being moved to commence from 1st June 2020 onwards. This will be under constant review and may have further delays should the situation worsen.

All existing orders in the system with BT or Openreach will continue to progress, but with a view to completing the orders as soon as possible and may be delivered well outside of expected and industry standard timelines.

We are still accepting new orders, however, there will be a delivery backlog for any products requiring BT or Openreach provision until at least 1st June 2020 onwards.

Core infrastructure service providers

We will continue to share more information from core suppliers like BT Openreach on this page as soon as we have it. A full breakdown of Openreach’s current service status is in the table below.