Covid 19 - Open Letter from Openreach on digital data connections
31st March, 2020
Covid-19
As the largest digital network in the UK, and in light of the measures announced by the Government to tackle Coronavirus, I thought it would be useful to provide you with some information about the steps we are taking at Openreach to support your constituents during this difficult time. We are in close contact with the UK Government, the Scottish Government, the Government in Wales, and the Northern Ireland Executive - in addition to Ofcom - about our operations and plans, which are being reviewed and refreshed daily as the situation evolves.
We know voice and data connections are vital, especially where they’re supporting your constituents in working from home or maintaining critical services – and we’re determined to play our part in keeping the country going, limiting the impact that Covid-19 has on society and the economy. The Government has classified our engineering teams as critical workers, given we provide services to more than 24 million premises in the UK. The Openreach team is working to keep people connected while prioritising support for critical public services, vulnerable customers and those without a working line. Thankfully a large amount of the work we do – including fixing faults, adding capacity and building full fibre networks - can be completed outside, so you’ll still see Openreach engineers working to maintain service and extend faster more reliable connectivity across the UK, but we are restricting our visits into homes and businesses.
Prioritising critical services
Working with our customers (including BT Group), our highest priority is continuing to support critical national infrastructure and government services including: the NHS; the emergency services; armed forces; government customers; the administration of key utilities; the banking system and the broadcast transmission network. In any emergency situation, we will be focusing our resources on sustaining and/or restoring service to these customers first.
Coping with home working
Openreach has played a leading role in making superfast broadband available to more than 95% of the UK. We’ve also brought gigabit capable, ultra-reliable ‘full fibre’ broadband to 2.3 million homes and businesses. These products should be more than capable of handling the demands of a typical home worker and family.
The types of applications that people use heavily outside of work (such as Netflix, Amazon Prime or Sky Go) use more bandwidth than typical working tools like email, collaboration software or even voice and video conferencing, So we are confident that the UK’s broadband network can handle home working on a mass scale. This is because the network is built to support ‘evening peaks’ - and to cope with large sporting events and major game releases. For example, the Liverpool versus Everton match, which was streamed live by Amazon Prime in December 2019, drove significant peaks in traffic over our network without causing any major issues for our customers. In the current situation – where a large part of the population is working from home and with children online -, the core network traffic during the day is running at around twice the pre coronavirus levels but remains well below the evening peak which the network is built to cope with.
That said, responsibility for IT applications which may not be configured to handle home working on a large scale lies with other companies; most major corporates are currently reviewing and upgrading their IT systems to ensure they can cope with increased use at home. With regard to equipment inside the business/home (for example Wi-Fi hubs and extenders) - which can have a significant impact on the customer experience – these are built and managed by Communication Providers, who sell a service to business or residential properties. We have advice on our website which will help people maximise their existing broadband which is attached to the end of this letter.
Working in partnership to maintain service
Openreach is a wholesaler and we are responsible for the access network (or ‘last mile’ as some people refer to it) which connects the local exchange to people’s homes and businesses. We work on behalf of more than 600 Communications Providers (CPs) such as Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and BT to provide that final link which carries phone and broadband services.
We are working closely with CPs on contingency plans, asking them to identify both critical national infrastructure and vulnerable customers they support in order that we can prioritise these. Our planning includes the potential impact of a reduction in resources available and changes in demand, as both cases of Covid-19 and self-isolation increase. We’re continuing to closely monitor the situation.
We welcomed the categorisation of our engineers as critical workers, this will enable them to maintain services ensuring that the network continues to support the families, businesses and Government services – including the NHS – that need it.
Continuing to work inside homes and businesses
We have well established business continuity and incident management plans and processes in place at Openreach. However, in these unprecedented times we have had to take some difficult decisions in order to protect our engineers and the public.
Therefore, we will be prioritising only essential work and minimise work that requires our engineers to enter customers’ homes or business premises, unless:
- They are providing a service to vulnerable customers (in-home and carried out safely only where essential)
- They are looking after customers who have no other form of broadband or telephony available- and we will look to deal with these via escalation channels jointly with the CP to find a solution that doesn’t require a home visit
- They are carrying out on-premise work for critical national infrastructure customers (NHS, pharmacies, utilities, emergency services, retail and wholesale food distribution outlets, financial services businesses and other categories defined by the Government)
In some instances, customers are able to install services themselves within a home or premises without the need for an engineer visit, these will also continue whenever possible.
Our priority is to ensure that customers remain connected at this time. We will be asking our CPs to work with customers to understand alternative means of connectivity and to limit the movements of customers between networks due to the likelihood of an in-home visit being required. What this means in effect is that we will not be dealing with new orders as the vast majority of these (and all in-home jobs) are people switching between networks. We think this is the right thing to do as we focus on protecting the UK public and completing only essential work, which is predominantly fixing faults.
On repair work we will continue to focus on restoring service with safe working practices, and with revised processes to further reduce social interaction wherever possible. Engineers will be asked to not enter customer premises and to enable/restore service where possible from outside of the premise.
Vulnerable customers
We have an established process with CPs to currently identify vulnerable customers, for example people who rely on a landline for a medical reason or are critically ill. Our team is working with CPs to identify ways we can continue to provide a service and extend it to others who may be at risk from Covid-19, (e.g. a pay-as-you-go mobile phone, or a MiFi mobile broadband device). So far, we haven’t needed to use this process, but we continue to prepare. The sector also published guidance last week, agreed with the Government, as to how vulnerable customers will be treated, I’ve copied this to the end of this letter.
As you will have read, the Government in Westminster has a database of 1.5 million vulnerable individuals which has been passed to supermarkets to help them prioritise grocery deliveries. We have requested similar access in order that we can assess the levels of connectivity for these people and ensure they are similarly prioritised.
Information for your constituents: businesses and households
The best place to go for up to date information about Openreach’s services and our approach is our website and the section dedicated to Covid-19/Coronavirus. These pages will be kept up to date with information. We also urge people to consult the websites of the CPs as they are keeping their customers informed.
If you receive enquiries from any of your constituents asking about superfast or ultrafast fibre broadband availability, we are asking you to refer them to our fibre broadband availability checker on our website. They will be asked to put in their postcode and choose their address from the list provided. They will then get a message giving them the current status of superfast or ultrafast fibre broadband availability for their address. Clearly the rollout of new fibre services could be impacted in the forthcoming months by Covid-19 so we ask that constituents are patient.
For any other Openreach issues that are not related to people waiting for their service to be connected (orders) or waiting for their line to be repaired (faults), we ask you to be patient as it will take us longer than usual to investigate issues.
Yours sincerely
Michael Salter-Church MBE
Director of External Affairs & Policy
Michael.Salter-Church@Openreach.co.uk
Advice for households and businesses to get the most from digital connectivity:
- Make sure your router isn’t hidden away or on the floor and is kept away from other electronics – these can interfere with WiFi signals
- Restart your router if problem persist and regularly reconnect devices like your phone, tablet and laptop to the WiFi
- Consider making calls on your mobile over WiFi using popular apps such as WhatsApp, FaceTime, Skype and Facebook Messenger or use a fixed line.
- Try turning your phone off and on again to refresh your network connection or toggle your flight mode on and off.
- Check your provider’s website for specific tips and support (search: provider name + “help”). If you’re having mobile signal problems, check for any issues in your area using your provider’s online status checker or mobile app.
- Get Further advice on maximising your broadband and mobile connections from Ofcom by searching “Ofcom Stay Connected”.
Guidance on supporting vulnerable consumers:
Government agrees measures with telecoms companies to support vulnerable consumers through COVID-19
Published 27th March
Following constructive discussions with the Digital Secretary and Ofcom, the UK’s major telecommunications providers have today agreed a set of important commitments to support and protect vulnerable consumers and those who may become vulnerable due to circumstances arising from Covid-19.
The UK’s major internet service and mobile providers, namely BT/EE, Openreach, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk, O2, Vodafone, Three, Hyperoptic, Gigaclear, and KCOM have all agreed the following commitments, effective immediately:
- All providers have committed to working with customers who find it difficult to pay their bill as a result of Covid-19 to ensure that they are treated fairly and appropriately supported.
- All providers will remove all data allowance caps on all current fixed broadband services.
- All providers have agreed to offer some new, generous mobile and landline packages to ensure people are connected and the most vulnerable continue to be supported. For example, some of these packages include data boosts at low prices and free calls from their landline or mobile.
- All providers will ensure that vulnerable customers or those self-isolating receive alternative methods of communication wherever possible if priority repairs to fixed broadband and landlines cannot be carried out.
These commitments are in addition to a range of supportive measures offered by the individual providers to their customers affected by circumstances arising from Covid-19.