As a result of the Government restrictions placed across the UK this week many of our suppliers are finding their operational activities severely impacted.
Below is a communication sent to the industry by Openreach this week:
Openreach Communication Update
Declaration of Matter Beyond Our Reasonable Control (MBORC) on ALL products, effective 24th March 2020 23:59
Openreach provide much of the cabling infrastructure in the UK and engineering resource, the declaration of MBORC is a contractual provision contained in all Openreach contracts which releases Openreach from liability under the relevant product terms and conditions in certain circumstances. The relief removes Openreach from any contractual SLAs and SLGs. The declaration affects all products taken directly from Openreach and will also affect those providers who rely on Openreach engineering to deliver their services
The products affected include (and is not restricted to) the list below:
- GEA (FTTC (including Gfast), FTTP (including Fibre-on-Demand), GEA Cablelink / SOGEA / SOGfast
- LLU MPF and SMPF (ADSL)
- WLR (PSTN, ISDN2, ISDN30)
- Ethernet: EAD, EBD, Cablelink, Street Access, CCTV access, Broadcast Access, WES/WEES/BES (repair only), TDM Access Service
- New Sites
Openreach will now prioritise only the essential work and absolutely minimise work that requires their engineers to enter end customer premises. Provision work carried out by Service Delivery and Fibre and Network Delivery will be limited to:
- Self-install activities (i.e. where there is no engineering visit to the end customer premises)
- Service to vulnerable end customers (in-home and carried out safely, only where essential)
- Those end customers who have no other form of broadband or telephony available – Openreach will look to deal with these via escalation channels jointly with the CP to find a solution that doesn’t require a home visit
- On-premises 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)
With immediate effect:
- Appointment books will be closed for new appointed provision with books moved out to 1st June 2020
- Openreach will attempt to complete appointed in-flight orders outside of the premises
- Non appointed orders will continue to go ahead where no visit is required to go to the premises (transfers, upgrades to Fibre to the Cabinet)
- Repair books will remain open at this time - Openreach are reviewing non urgent repair
- Engineers will be asked NOT to enter the end customer premises and to enable/restore service where possible from outside of the premises
- Openreach will ask CPs to help them identify Critical Network Infrastructure and vulnerable end customer tasks in order to prioritise these.
We will provide further updates from other suppliers as and when any changes are made.
