“We have a reputation for arguing with BT – and sometimes for fixing lines where others have given up”
When you’re an ISP with no option but to deal with an effective monopoly, it can feel like you’re Sisyphus pushing a rock up a hill
Sisyphus, in Greek mythology, was punished for his deceit and cunning by being forced to push a rock up to the top of a hill, only to then have to watch it roll back down, and then to repeat this demoralising process for all eternity. It’s arguable that ancient mythology isn’t relevant in the modern world, but have you had dealings with BT Wholesale of late?
I work for Andrews & Arnold. We are an ISP that buys VDSL and ADSL tails from BT Wholesale and TalkTalk, we operate our own network in our own IP address space, and have our own transit and peering. We’re not a reseller or white-labeller; we’re a real ISP.
We aim to run in a way that differs from other ISPs: our circuits don’t slow down in the evening; they have native IPv6, real IPv4 and a very high level of quality monitoring; we test every line, every second; all our support staff are UK-based experts. We try to do things the right way.
It would also be fair to admit that, within the industry, we have a little bit of a reputation for arguing with BT – and sometimes for fixing lines where others have given up. This means we spend a disproportionate amount of time at loggerheads with the firm.
To give an insight into what we face in our everyday business, I’ll outline some of the scenarios we experience, forced as we are to deal with part of our nation’s monopoly telco, BT Wholesale.
I should be fair and say that there are undoubtedly some good people working for BT; we have contacts in most departments who individually are helpful and decent, but there are some major structural and procedural problems that negatively impact our business on a continual basis. I wish all of the following examples were untrue, or exaggeration. But they’re not.
False profit
In the old days, we paid BT for a working service (say, an ADSL circuit). When it broke, BT sent out an engineer to fix it. This was, of course, free of charge. We were, after all, buying a working service, so the costs of ensuring that it stayed working were naturally the supplier’s responsibility. This situation worked well, except that some ISPs were using BT’s fault-repair service almost as first-line support; numerous engineers were being needlessly dispatched where no physical fault existed.
Rather than tackle this problem in a targeted way, BT brought in a Special Fault Investigation (SFI) charge. This was implemented in the shape of a chargeable service that we could order, in the case of a fault, for £140 plus VAT, and would result in an engineer visit.
If the fault turned out to be with customer equipment or wiring (as opposed to an issue in BT’s domain) then the charge would stand; we’d have to pay it, and then usually pass it onto our customer. But if the fault wasn’t with customer equipment, and instead was in BT’s network, the SFI charge would be credited back to us. If it had been implemented fairly, we’d have little or no argument, but problems creep in as soon as a mentality pervades that it’s okay to charge for fixing a fault.
For example, right from the start, an engineer would fix a genuine fault – perhaps replacing a waterlogged junction box – and then conduct the line test. They’d then log a “Right When Tested” result back to their internal system. This is the same as saying “no fault found; a wasted visit; charge the ISP”.
Sometimes an SFI engineer is sent out for congestion problems within BT’s core network. This is still a fault within BT’s domain and yet the only answer on offer, albeit obviously incorrectly, is to send out an SFI. The copper line is fine, of course, so a “right when tested” result is recorded.
A third example: an engineer swaps the customer’s DSLAM port in the exchange, then goes back to the customer premises and records the same “right when tested” result.
In all of these stupefying situations, we were charged for the visit, and forced to run through time-consuming dispute processes. Situations identical to all three of those examples still occur today, albeit slightly less frequently than when SFI was new.
There are occasional examples so egregious as to beggar belief. Some time ago, we had a few charges on our
“In all these stupefying situations, we were charged for the visit, and forced to run timeconsuming dispute processes”