OTA releases update for November
The OTA (Office of the Telecommunications Adjudicator) update for the month November, 2007 shows that the unbundled LLU lines in the UK have touched the 3,552 million mark while the WLR lines and CPS telephone lines are estimated to be 4.48 million and 5.82 million respectively.
While OTA acknowledges that there are indications of improvements in provision, repair and migration services from Openreach and Industry, it also points out that these services are still under-performing and unable to deliver the services to the satisfactory levels that customers expect. Therefore, OTA will continue to give priority to these areas in its agenda, the report says.
As far as migration or the issue of switching broadband provider is concerned, there are significant improvements thanks to the joint work carried out by OTA2, Openreach and CP’s. As a result there was a sharp decline (48%) in the number of TAG related calls received by BT customer service during the last few months indicating the difficulties experienced by the users in migration process were on decline. However, OTA2 also reports that there was a sharp rise on the number of MAC related calls during the same period. OTA2 says that both Ofcom and OTA2 will look into this issue and find the solution for this issue.
Regarding WLR3 products, OTA2 is chalking out plans with Openreach and CP’s to draw the level of functionality that will have all agreed features.
“We have been frustrated and disappointed this month by the news from Openreach that the delivery of agreed features to the WLR3 product has slipped significantly. These features are required because Industry believes that the WLR3 product as available today falls short of the capability offered by WLR2. We therefore worked with Openreach and CP’s to agree a level of functionality that would be required to reach a ‘baseline’ position, and in July we agreed a plan with Openreach and the CP’s that would see delivery of the required functionality over several software builds, but with the urgent functionality being delivered in two releases scheduled for January and April 2008.”
