It's fashionable these days to knock service provision by large companies, but two recent experiences with BT Openreach have been highly satisfying, and it is perhaps no surprise that the division is now the jewel in BT's crown given both positive market developments and what seems to be a very positive customer attitude from a relatively young organisation.
Without going into too much boring detail, in recent weeks I have had need to call out BT Openreach to repair a line fault in a house in East Sussex and to install a new line in Megabuyte's new office in Scotland. The first required two visits to correct the problem, which arose from a faulty connection at the nearby pole, but booking and then rebooking the engineer was carried out speedily and efficiently online, and given that the fault was genuine, was all done at no cost to me.
The new phone and broadband line in Scotland was ordered via BT Retail, but was carried out by BT Openreach. The engineer turned up at the advertised time and, despite the property having an existing line that was not on BT's records, managed to find the other end 750m away and make a successful connection. What is perhaps more of a surprise is that I am now online with 2Mbps, whilst being 5 miles from the nearest town (Aberfeldy), a broadband speed that many in more urban areas would be pleased to get. We are fortunate that the nearest exchange is just a mile or two away in the nearby hamlet, having been the one exchange to survive from the consolidation of several local ones a few years ago. As the Openreach engineer noted, BT may not have been quite so hasty to close local exchanges had it been able to foresee the broadband revolution.
Maybe my two favourable experiences have been unusual, but what is clear is that BT Openreach is rapidly becoming the jewel in the BT crown from a financial perspective; as we reported on Megabuyte.com, in the last quarter Openreach grew EBITDA 12% on revenues up 4%, a marked contrast to the overall 4% EBITDA growth on 4% revenue declines for the whole of BT. Openreach is benefiting from increased use of local loop unbundling, as well as exploding demand for Ethernet and fibre access.
Openreach's creation was forced upon BT by Ofcom as part of structural separation to create a more level playing field for competing service providers, and to BT's credit it has established an organisation that seems to do what it says on the tin. The engineer who installed the new line may have been a BT Old Timer, but as far as he was concerned, it did not matter whether he was carrying out work for BT Retail or any other service provider. Full marks to BT and to BT Openreach.